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Zoom! Crash! ::
I found myself in a sleek sports car, zooming along city streets, freeways, and mountain roads in a pack of other similar cars. Smash! I ran into the wall. The sounds of revving motors faded, replaced by dream-like music. In my final moments I nudged my flaming wreck into the path of another car. Boom! At least I took someone else with me.
Suddenly I was reincarnated and chasing the pack of other sports cars again. I discovered that I crashed into buses and big trucks, but I could run regular cars off the road simply by plowing through them at speeds up to 200 mph—as long as they were traveling in the same direction as me. Oncoming cars flashed their lights and honked at me and running into them would cause a head-on collision. With practice, I was crashing less often, slamming my competitors off the road in occasionally spectacular ways, and cutting through packs of “civilian” cars like a lawnmower, leaving a vast swath of debris behind me. It was 10:45 pm Friday, and I was at J and C’s, playing Road Rage on their Xbox.
About a mile from J and C’s in San Francisco is US 101, which soon meets I-80 and the Bay Bridge. From there, I-80 traverses the Sacramento delta, ascends into the Sierras, crosses Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, where it meets I-90, which leads to I-86 in Pennsylvania and across New York State’s Southern Tier, and to NY 13 to Ithaca.
Now imagine zooming across those 2800-odd miles in a few seconds, as if you were highlighting the route on a map, because at that precise moment, 1:45 am Eastern Time, on the country roads east of Ithaca, the driver of a 2005 Mercedes was being almost as reckless as I was.
We can only imagine what feats of idiotic bravado he’d previously attempted and survived, but we do know that he was traveling at 80 or 90 mph when he reached the bottom of Mount Pleasant road, ran the stop sign at NY 366, slammed on the brakes, and literally flew onto Freese Road, judging by the large gaps in the skid marks. The Mercedes ran into the ditch on the right side of the road, damaging a culvert, went airborne again, crunched into a tree on the left side of the street, leaving a headlight embedded in the trunk, bounced again, finally slamming into a mobile home where it laid to rest and caught fire, starting a fire in the trailer.
[Dave] recently bought the place from me.
He was out at the time, but a neighbor called him on his cell phone to tell him that his trailer was on fire. He hopped in his car and started driving 70 mph towards Varna. He passed a pair of Cornell police cars, one of which eventually appeared in his rearview mirror, lights flashing. He thought he’d just lead the cop all the way, but even at 70 mph the cop was getting quite close to his rear bumper. Dave pulled over and jumped out of the car with his hands held high in the air.
“Get back in the car!” the officer yelled.
Dave ran a short ways towards the police car before the policeman repeated his order. It looked like he was reaching for his gun.
Dave shouted, “My trailer’s on fire, and my dog’s inside. I’m going to get back in the car and drive there. Follow me.” And he did just that. The police and fire department were already on the scene. The firemen didn’t want to let him go inside to get his dog, but he did.
The dog was fine. The fire was contained, destroying only one room; ironically, the one room in the trailer where the renovations were complete. Miraculously, no one in the car was injured (quite a tribute to Mercedes engineering.)
The policeman told Dave, “I’d have done exactly what you did,” and didn’t write him any tickets.
Back in San Francisco, I continued to terrorize the streets of a city resembling Miami with my own reckless driving. My cell phone vibrated and sang in my pocket. I ignored it. It stopped. It started vibrating and ringing again. I pulled it out, and looked at it. It was Dave. What the hell could he want at 2 am in New York?! I didn’t answer, but I was still so distracted that I crashed repeatedly. C joked that when I talked to him I should tell him I’d had a bad accident while trying to drive and deal with the phone.
I’m glad that’s not what I told him.
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