|
Last year: Those of you who are sick and tired of reading about the house, you have my permission to leave now. |
Matt and I had passed a pleasant Friday evening with K.T. and Kevin. K.T. made spaghetti for dinner, and we'd rented Dangerous Beauty and watched it. (An excellent film, by the way. Especially if you're going to be playing 7th Sea, but good in any case. We watched the entire thing despite an annoying staticky noise that kept cropping up in the copy we rented.)
Finally, around 10:30 or 11, Matt and I made our farewells, and headed home. The easiest way home for us from the Hicks' is the interstate - there's an on-ramp almost absurdly close to their apartment complex, and our house is nestled snuggly between two exits which are about three miles apart. Very easy ride, especially late at night.
There's a great deal of construction happening on the interstate at the Hicks' end of this stretch, with lanes shifted and blocked by concrete barriers and cones and repainted lines. The trick is to keep an eye on the cars ahead of you and look at the reflectors in the road rather than the painted lines.
So I was looking right at the dark blue jeep when it very nearly followed the painted lines smack into a concrete barrier. "Oh, shit," I breathed. I pointed the car out to Matt. "We almost witnessed an accident."
Well, everyone makes mistakes, and it's a pretty confusing bit of construction there, in the night, especially if you haven't driven it recently.
But a minute or two later, I came to completely different conclusion about the dark blue jeep. "That guy's as drunk as a loon," I muttered, horrified. And he (or she, I suppose) was. Most obviously. The vehicle drifted from lane to lane, only to be jerked back almost out of the lane on the other side. It drifted off the road several times. Cars passing it gave it an enormously wide berth, nearly scraping against the barriers or driving off the road rather than chance a meeting with the jeep. Matt wondered where the heck the cops were when you needed them.
I was afraid to try to pass it, myself, so I kept a fair distance behind it and prayed that whatever gods the driver believed in were watching over them. I was on the edges of an adrenaline surge when a giant two-trailer truck passed us with G.O.D. emblazoned on its sides and back. (Garunteed Overnight Delivery)
The dark blue jeep drifted and swerved in the truck's wake, and almost had an accident with G.O.D. I started laughing almost hysterically.
In ten minutes, I had witnessed at least four close calls, and a dozen other near-accidents avoided only by the wide berth given the dark blue jeep by the other cars. As we reached the halfway point, I told Matt I was going to get off the interstate and take Route 143 the rest of the way home. It's a little slower, but I would feel infinitely safer. Matt agreed wholeheartedly. I took the exit after making sure the jeep was continuing straight.
We got off the interstate at Fort Eustis, and drove past the park in silence, passing only a handful of other cars driving the other way on the road. We weren't stopped by the light at the base, and drove past another on-ramp for the interstate. (The interstate parallels 143 for a goodly way.) Then, as we approached the Naval Weapons Station, we saw blue lights.
A lot of blue lights.
It looked like every state car in the vicinity had pulled into the empty weapons station parking lot and had set up a roadblock and checkpoint. A sign of lights warned me that I was going to be stopped for a routine check...
For sobriety.
- River of Blue Fire by Tad Williams
Current Projects:
- not much
Diet Progress: 4.5 lbs lost
| Previous Reflection |
Current Reflections Reflect Back |
Next Reflection |