(or); How to scare the crap out of yourself and 20 or 30 other people.
So I was driving up Broadway in downtown San Diego, you know, just doing the delivery driver thing. I saw the light in front of me turn yellow, so I sped up, you know, like you do. That was when I noticed the bus, that had pulled over to pick up or drop off passengers, start to pull out right in front of me. You know, like they do. I judged the distance and the clearance. I would just make it, if I stamped on the gas. I couldn’t move to the left because there was already a car stopping for the soon-to-be- red-light there.
And I did make it. Sort of.
I had forgotten about the big passenger side rear view mirror on the van.
So you know how buses have those rivets on the sides? It turned out that the rear view mirror was at the same height as one of those rows of rivets. You know that game kids played, where you walk beside a wooden picket fence and drag a stick over the boards to make a cool clacking sound? Now picture that game, if the stick and the fence were both made of metal, and the kid was running at 30 miles an hour. It sounded like a freekin fifty caliber machine gun.
The part that I found particularly interesting, as I watched the bus zip by outside my passenger window, was the faces of the passengers on that bus. As I came up to each window, I would see a terrified face swivel quickly towards me, mouths formed into interesting shapes of dread and fear, eyes bulging wide. It was like I was watching the strangest movie ever made, all quick cuts of people caught in a moment of crises.
I didn’t think it was funny while it was happening. I was too afraid. Afraid that the bus would keep pulling out and I would get sandwiched between it and the car on the other side. Fortunately the bus driver had the presence of mind to stop. I made it through the light while it was still more or less yellow. I still didn’t think it was funny for the next few minutes while I got my breathing and heart rate under control, and tried to dump all that adrenaline out of my system so my hands would stop shaking.
And I didn’t think it was funny later on, when I started to feel horrible for scaring the crap out of all those unsuspecting people.
But in between my fear and my guilt, for a few hours, I admit that I thought that was pretty funny.
I leave it for you to decide if it is funny now.
I could go either way.
Pouring My Art Out 
Buses and narrow downtown lanes are a bad combination Art. I had a driver out for a test drive one day with a tractor trailer. We were stopped at a red light on a one way 4-lane street at the intersection of another one way street. We were in the third lane from the right – it being the leftmost straight ahead lane. A city bus pulled up beside us in the far left lane – to turn left onto the other street. In Ontario it is legal to turn left on red from a one way street to a one way street. So we were at the stop line on a red light when the bus diver cranks his wheel hard to the left and turns left on red. The tail end of the bus swung into our lane (tail swing- whereby the part behind the wheels goes the opposite direction of the vehicle) and surgically removed a large fender mounted mirror from our truck. We never did catch or identify the bus driver.
As long as no one is hurt, the surreality of the situation makes it funny, to my mind.
Drivingis not to be taken lightly ever.
Nobody got hurt. It’s funny.
(I’m sorry. I’m a jerk.)
That is how you are supposed to take that, I think
works for me
me too
That’s crazy…I don’t know if it’s funny or not
It’s still funny.
I’d still be shaking (and now I’d have to get my seats detailed.) 😦
I just wore depends at work.
🙂
When you close your eyes do you still see their horrified faces and har the screeching?
No. When I close my eyes I see Rush Limbaugh’s face as I feed him slowly, feet first, into a wood chipper. Or run over him with a road grader., and then put the flattened corpse in a manure spreader…. industrial sized…
Wow. That’s terrible. That you almost had an accident with the bus, I mean.
I came close to having a serious accident about once a week average. And it was never my fault. That is the down side of driving that many hours a day. In Southern California.
Yeah. You nearly hit an Escalade with your Hummer stretch limo.
It was the work van, and people just pull out in front of you, cut you off, drift into your lane, forget to signal, slam on the brakes, etc.
But some of those people were driving Escalades and stretch Hummers… which would be another good name for a heavy metal band… the stretched Hummers.
Deathscalade!
Scaldedescalade. Hummerhumor.
Ahhhh… Why is WordPress trying to make me put my name and e-mail on all my comments to the blogs I follow, oh wise and mysterious one?
Are you logged in?
I thought I was. I don’t know any more.
You gave the bus riders a great story to tell when they got home.
That is what I live for…