When a Harley road hog is coming at you riderless...
...you get out of the way. Or you get hit. Wait a sec, I'll back up a bit.
I was a bit lethargic this morning. Didn't really wanna get up and go to work. I'm sure you know the feeling. Gray skies, not quite the peaceful rest I would have liked to have. Dreary day overall. But I fight through that and finally make it out to my garage, slide my woozy butt into the seat of my Saturn and back out of the driveway. Granted I'm pretty much late at this point. Don't care. I've never seen my boss in the office in the next two hours anyway.. so there isn't too much worry that I'll take the metal-edged ruler to the knuckles for being late.
Curiosity gets the better of me upon my shifting gears from reverse to drive. Our neighbor to the north has been incognito for quite some time now. They no longer have a lawn out front, they have a field. There is a pink notice on his door. I shift back into reverse and scoot back to see if I can make out anything on the pink sign from this range. Not a chance. Type is too small and the front yards in our neighborhood are long. Can't find house numbers either, dammit. I figure if I can muster up the brassy ones I'll go take a walk up his driveway after work and see what's up with that sign. Keep in mind the last action we saw in that driveway were three squads pulling stuff out of a minivan followed by the minivan being towed. This event happened several days after we had the pleasure of listening to some guy shout up at a window from the same driveway about "his money". Loudly. In the rain. For a while. Anyway, you may see why I might be somewhat hesitant in approaching this house for any reason. We'll see which wins, wisdom or curiosity.
Switch gears to drive. I've wasted even more time trying to find my way to work. I really really need to get going. It's been raining, probably for the last few hours. "Bloody mosquitos are going to be brutal..." I think to myself as I turn right. I reach my first major intersection and find myself first in line for the green left arrow. Lights are red, though. And they last forever. I note that the traffic seems pretty damned mellow. There is this lull I can catch when I'm late which makes for a very peaceful drive in to work. I'm guessing that I've caught it. That doesn't help my attentiveness. Then again the only thing that probably would help raise my level of consciousness is a cattle prod. Or possibly a Harley Davidson road hog rolling sideways at me at a high speed. My consciousness was raised in the next few seconds and there was no cattle prod present.
It's amazing that I can't remember most of what I did yesterday, but those five seconds this morning are vividly burnt into my memory. I'm even more surprised that scientists haven't come up with a memory drug based on adrenaline-like substances. It really seems to help with the long-term memory. Remember when I said it was raining? The roads are slick. And in my experience, they don't increase the length of time of the yellow light accordingly just for slippery road conditions despite what some Harley riders may believe. This, of course, is only postulation on my part, but what else should I assume when I look to my left and find a road hog tumbling sideways at a high speed towards the side of my car. Bits and pieces of it are flying off as if there was some safety release triggered which was designed to launch these missiles from the core of the cycle in case of an accident. In this same glance I note that the rider is not only actually ambulatory still, but is running after the cycle in some desperate measure to try to tackle it or impede its progress somehow. Granted, if I was watching five figures worth of investment quickly tumble and fragment in front of me, I'd probably try in vain as well. So I'm going to get hit right? I mean. I'm at a red light. I can either get hit by the Harley or rush out into traffic... wait a sec... the light just turned. I have a green arrow! I punch it and don't look back using that tried and true street psychology of "if I avoid eye contact with it, maybe it'll be less likely to notice me and mess with me".
It works! And I clear the intersection unscathed. I quickly run through the mental checklist: I'm ok. *check* My Saturn is ok. *check* The cycle driver was ambulatory plus there were tons of other drivers back there to call for help if he was running around damaged on adrenaline. *check* That's as far as I got on my checklist. I'm sure I missed something important, but at this point I'm just tickled that my reactions spared me a rather unpleasant encounter.
I was a bit lethargic this morning. Didn't really wanna get up and go to work. I'm sure you know the feeling. Gray skies, not quite the peaceful rest I would have liked to have. Dreary day overall. But I fight through that and finally make it out to my garage, slide my woozy butt into the seat of my Saturn and back out of the driveway. Granted I'm pretty much late at this point. Don't care. I've never seen my boss in the office in the next two hours anyway.. so there isn't too much worry that I'll take the metal-edged ruler to the knuckles for being late.
Curiosity gets the better of me upon my shifting gears from reverse to drive. Our neighbor to the north has been incognito for quite some time now. They no longer have a lawn out front, they have a field. There is a pink notice on his door. I shift back into reverse and scoot back to see if I can make out anything on the pink sign from this range. Not a chance. Type is too small and the front yards in our neighborhood are long. Can't find house numbers either, dammit. I figure if I can muster up the brassy ones I'll go take a walk up his driveway after work and see what's up with that sign. Keep in mind the last action we saw in that driveway were three squads pulling stuff out of a minivan followed by the minivan being towed. This event happened several days after we had the pleasure of listening to some guy shout up at a window from the same driveway about "his money". Loudly. In the rain. For a while. Anyway, you may see why I might be somewhat hesitant in approaching this house for any reason. We'll see which wins, wisdom or curiosity.
Switch gears to drive. I've wasted even more time trying to find my way to work. I really really need to get going. It's been raining, probably for the last few hours. "Bloody mosquitos are going to be brutal..." I think to myself as I turn right. I reach my first major intersection and find myself first in line for the green left arrow. Lights are red, though. And they last forever. I note that the traffic seems pretty damned mellow. There is this lull I can catch when I'm late which makes for a very peaceful drive in to work. I'm guessing that I've caught it. That doesn't help my attentiveness. Then again the only thing that probably would help raise my level of consciousness is a cattle prod. Or possibly a Harley Davidson road hog rolling sideways at me at a high speed. My consciousness was raised in the next few seconds and there was no cattle prod present.
It's amazing that I can't remember most of what I did yesterday, but those five seconds this morning are vividly burnt into my memory. I'm even more surprised that scientists haven't come up with a memory drug based on adrenaline-like substances. It really seems to help with the long-term memory. Remember when I said it was raining? The roads are slick. And in my experience, they don't increase the length of time of the yellow light accordingly just for slippery road conditions despite what some Harley riders may believe. This, of course, is only postulation on my part, but what else should I assume when I look to my left and find a road hog tumbling sideways at a high speed towards the side of my car. Bits and pieces of it are flying off as if there was some safety release triggered which was designed to launch these missiles from the core of the cycle in case of an accident. In this same glance I note that the rider is not only actually ambulatory still, but is running after the cycle in some desperate measure to try to tackle it or impede its progress somehow. Granted, if I was watching five figures worth of investment quickly tumble and fragment in front of me, I'd probably try in vain as well. So I'm going to get hit right? I mean. I'm at a red light. I can either get hit by the Harley or rush out into traffic... wait a sec... the light just turned. I have a green arrow! I punch it and don't look back using that tried and true street psychology of "if I avoid eye contact with it, maybe it'll be less likely to notice me and mess with me".
It works! And I clear the intersection unscathed. I quickly run through the mental checklist: I'm ok. *check* My Saturn is ok. *check* The cycle driver was ambulatory plus there were tons of other drivers back there to call for help if he was running around damaged on adrenaline. *check* That's as far as I got on my checklist. I'm sure I missed something important, but at this point I'm just tickled that my reactions spared me a rather unpleasant encounter.
4 Comments:
Good story, I'm sure I would have done the same thing. Though I don't think I could have told as good a story about it as you did.
Save the Saturn. At all costs... save the Saturn.
Well thank you Paula, my muse was chatty this morning.
dewdew, yes. That precise idea was what weighed my foot in a flash. The last resting place of that spinning oversized toy of destruction is unknown to me, but I know it wasn't the side of my car. Did I mention he was helmetless? Or was that just assumed with the make of the whirling wheeled torpedo of tomfoolery?
Actually it wasn't much fun Alice. I prefer to miss events like accidents. Sadly they still like to try to crash my little party.
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