I kept forgetting to write about this. About a week and a half ago, I decided to drive to Mohawk Raceway one evening, about 25 miles from my hometown of Brampton, Ontario, just outside Toronto. I gave myself 30 minutes to get there, which should have been sufficient. As I got on Highway 401, the traffic was bumper to bumper, barely moving. It was a warm and pleasant evening and so I rolled down the windows, turned off the air conditioning and enjoyed the fresh air and sunshine. After fifteen minutes of this, and having covered only a few miles, the pleasantness was quickly fading. It must be some serious accident, I thought to myself.
The answer came fifteen minutes and a few more long miles down the six lane highway. It was, indeed, a substantial accident. A transport truck had flipped over on its side and was blocking all but one lane. I hoped that no one was seriously hurt. My prayers go out to anyone who was involved. I didn't examine the scene very closely, so I couldn't say how many vehicles and or how badly they may have been damaged. The reason being that I just wanted to get on my way. What really irritated me about the whole thing is that this terrible accident caused me and literally thousands of other drivers great inconvenience--never mind the wasted gas, even though it occurred ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HIGHWAY!
You want to hear a much sadder story? Let me tell you about the poor folks on the other side as I was speeding away from the scene. And I am not exaggerating. I estimate that about 25-50% of those travellers had come out of their vehicles resigned to the fact that they weren't moving even an inch anytime soon. They were having parties, throwing frisbees, chatting, walking, kids were playing tag, etc. It resembled a tail gate party more than it did one of the busiest highways in North America. This continued for pretty much the rest of the way to my destination. Maybe it wasn't sadder for them after all.
I had missed the first (horse) race, but was happy I wasn't going the other way. The evening was uneventful except for when I asked the girl serving me a cappuccino if anyone had ever told her she looks a lot like Ellen Degeneres. She was wearing a baseball cap and had her head down digging out my change, but I could see she had a large grin on her face. She said "Yes, but..." and the rest I couldn't make out as she mumbled it. And from my left, the female of a couple of cops agreed with me saying "Yes, she sure does, doesn't she?"
About three hours later, I hop in my car--which is hard to do since I don't drive a convertible, and hit the highway. Yeah, you guessed it. Sort of. The accident had been cleared, but for some unGodly reason, the stretch continued to be routed through a single lane. There appeared to be some construction going on, but I saw nothing to warrant using only one lane. It was stop and go, but only for a few miles, so again comparatively speaking, I felt lucky.
To all you rubber neckers: Keep your fricken eyes on the road ahead of you! And to everyone: Always carry a frisbee in the trunk.
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