One of the neighbors who was out watching the activity the other night told me about how, 30 years ago, another person was killed at that intersection one sunny Sunday afternoon. He recounted it like it had happened last week. That, he said, was when they finally put up a traffic light.

Of course, i’ve got a good crash story. Well it’s not good because i’m not sure anyone survived this one. We were visiting our friends in FLA (Denise, who you met at the Lit) and a friend of theirs comes over on his motorcycle and we’re all gonna go to dinner at some hideaway spot in Daytona Beach. Supposedly a half hour drive. Guy with the bike asks me if i want to ride there on the back of his bike. I say ok, cuz i’m feeling free and so i put on my leather jacket and no helmet and we start out following the others in two cars. Not 5 minutes into it, it starts to rain and we’re on the 4 which i think runs from Dayton all the way to Tampa. Anyway this particular stretch of 4 has two lanes and then a deep trench that’s about 50 feet wide at least and then two lanes going the opposite direction. Anyway, it did NOT take a half hour because the traffic was really bad and by the time we hit the turn off to Daytona the guy says he’s about to run out of gas. So we stop for gas and lose the rest of our group in the cars and we have no cell phones and we don’t know where the restaurant is. OK, finally we get in touch with them on a pay phone and find our way to the restaurant, soaking wet. As we’re leaving the restaurant, the guy asks me if i’m gonna ride back with him, i say “no thanks” and get into one of the cars. We get back on the 4 and within 5 minutes traffic comes to a sudden stop. Rey and Denise’s husband get out to see what happened. What happened was a car from the other side of the 4 careened right over that 50 foot trench in the middle, to our side of the freeway and smashed into a car on our side. One of the cars ends up about 30 feet up a pole. I am not making this up. The other car is turned over and twisted and partly up the pole too. So we spend 4 hours sitting in the car watching while the jaws of life try to get these people out and then the tow trucks and cranes or whatever pry those cars off the pole and get them one out of there. It was the worst crash i’ve ever seen. Later Denise tells me the 4 is notoriously the worst highway for accidents especially during the rain.

I’ve also SEEN with my own eyes TWICE people go under a truck on their motorcycle. Once was at Yellowstone NP. Right in front of us but going the other direction. We were first on the scene. I was afraid to look, but we pulled them out from under the truck. I was sure the guy and woman on the bike would be dead but they weren’t. Rey and another guy attended to the woman who was pretty banged up and bleeding. She was in shock and couldn’t talk. I took care of the guy who also was obviously in shock. He said he was ok, but he wasn’t. We got blankets from our van and covered them until the paramedics got there.

Oh i’ve got enough road trip stories to write a book. Some of it is so incredible and funny tho that people might think it was made up.