Lollyphile Absinthe flavored lollipops?  Fancy, I think I want some *wink*  (Thank you Andi)

“I wonder where this tunnel leads?”

     I was commuting home from work as I always do, one hour each way, when I notice this car careening down the break down lane in my passenger side mirror.  I am trying to pry a pistachio from it’s shell in my mouth while sucking the salt out of it while listening to NPR in the slow lane doing about 70 in the not quite bumper to bumper traffic.  This car in my mirror is approaching incredibly fast and fishtailing.  It was alarming and there was hardly time to think.  It swerve out and then in, almost hitting the car about four cars behind me, swerves out and in at me.  I veer into the other lane, and the speeding car misses me by inches.  Honestly my first thought was that I should check to see if it was a Toyota.  It smashes into the small truck in front of my which flies to the left, then turns sharply to the right until it is perpendicular to the highway.  It starts rolling down the i85, bouncing pretty high as it goes, dust and smoke everywhere.  I come to a complete stop in my lane.  Checking my rear view mirror I am surprised that no one is coming close to hitting me, a stopped car in lane on the highway.  Then I put down the pistachio and turn off NPR.

     The driver of the careening car jumps out of his car and inexplicably runs for the woods(!?!)  A few people get out of their cars and check on the cylinder of crushed metal that used to be the truck in front of me.  At this point I realize something about my self.  I do not like auto accidents, nor do I like being the first person to pull someone out of one.  The only two I have seen (this one included) involved something very wrong, and I don’t really want to be the first person to meet a drunk or otherwise off or upset individual who just got in an accident.  I somehow see this as a shortcoming, I don’t usually have issues helping strangers in what could theoretically be a dangerous situation, especially when they look like they need it.  For example, I pick up hitch hikers as often as I can, and sometimes stop to help with a broken-down car, especially if it is an air-cooled VW. 

     Within seconds I hear the siren of a Sheriff coming down the break down lane in what had apparently been hot pursuit.  He jumps out and chases the guy running into the woods.  Moments later one of those highway accident trucks pulls up behind me.  Then the cavalry arrive, Highway Patrol, more Sheriff’s, State Police.  And a black dude on a green motorcycle pulls up next to me. When I roll down my window he asks if I saw it.  After I tell him about it he says that he saw the guy pulled over on Hillsboro St. where the dude jumped in the car and sped off.  But he said it didn’t look like he was speeding off nearly fast enough to out run a Sheriff’s car.  So he followed him.  Someone walking back from the say there was a woman pinned in the car, and it looks mangled.

     At this point the ambulance and fire trucks arrive and the rescuing really gets under way.  I have the time to lean against me car, take the scene in, and contemplate the seconds and and inches it would have taken for me to be in that crumpled up piece of metal beside the road.  Had I been going just a hair faster, or had I not noticed him in my mirror and swerved, or had he turned in just a second sooner, I would have been the poor mangled lady.  In a truck with Maryland plates, a truck with a camper and bed liner shredded on the side of the highway.  A bike that now has twisted wheels resting near it.  And a little pile (I don’t know how it all ended up in one place, it must have come out when her truck veered) of bags, including her purse, gym back, and another small bag. 

     When I just about thought that they had cleared the highway, fourty or so minutes into the afternoon sun, a helicopter comes roaring in and lands right in the middle of the highway.  I don’t mind, better that than a bag. 

Now I feel totally safe!

(Taken by Beyond Joy)

I just love the logic here