When I drive to the beach house from my regular house, it takes exactly two hours if there are no accidents, roadwork or bad weather. Today was not a two-hour-drive day.
I pulled out of the driveway at 10:02, thinking I’d be there by noon. The dogs were in the back seat, Daisy on her tether, since she is nervous and unpredictable. Pepper is usually calm and smiling all the way there. Never count your chickens before they hatch, as the old saying goes.
I’d only gone as far as the Pleasanton/Sunol border when all three lanes slowed down to 5 mph. Then we were totally stopped. I sang along to my CD, since it was Love Shack.
My driving foot was getting tired. I put the car in park. Big mistake. That unlocks all the doors with a big sound, and the dogs think they are getting out. I calmed them down, but Pepper suddenly started whining and vocalizing fearful sounds that I’ve never heard her do, ever, in her nine years of life. She stopped just as suddenly as she had started.
That’s weird.
Since we were stopped, I looked at the CalTrans guys building the new retaining wall where they had cut away part of a hill to make an extra lane. We were going so slowly that I could really study what they were doing. Then my phone went off, and I got my glasses out of a bag so I could see if it was an Amber Alert. Instead, it was a tsunami warning, saying to get away from beaches and to go inland.
Wow, I thought, Is the universe trying to tell me not to go to the beach house today? Obviously, there was an accident ahead, and now the warning?
Then my adult child (who lives with me) called. They said not to worry about the tsunami warning. They told me about the 7.0 earthquake in Humboldt County way north of here. It had been 35 years since we’d had such a big quake (that one was 6.9 and based under Santa Cruz). 63 people died in 1989 when cement buildings collapsed in Santa Cruz, a tiered freeway pancaked in Oakland, and part of the Bay Bridge to San Francisco collapsed. That earthquake was my first (Midwestern girl), and for fifteen seconds, I wondered why the floor was rolling under my feet.
Back to this morning. The next thing I knew there was a fire truck behind me honking for all of us in the third lane to move over so it could get by and get to the scene of the accident.
I managed to squeeze into the 2nd lane and eventually ended the call with my child/housemate. I glanced at my watch. It was already 11:00 and I’d only gotten to Sunol. Then we got the speed up to 9 mph. Wow!
Shortly after that, I passed a highway patrol car, a tow truck with a truck in its truck bed, and another truck on the shoulder smashed up as well. Later, I heard on the radio that it was a six-vehicle injury accident that happened at 10:03. I usually leave at 10:30, but today I left earlier, only to go slow for almost an hour.
I fed the dogs bananas once we got off the highway and took the surface roads to the house, avoiding the road along the coast.
We got to the beach house at 12:50, and we three were ready to get out of the car.
The tsunami warning was cancelled, and I ate lunch at 3:00 after picking up the pinecones that fell during the last storm (since the dogs chew on them), and also chatting with a neighbor.
FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER! 