During the past six years, I've spent a lot of time in my car. When I lived in Chicago from 2004 to 2007, I worked as a manager for a dog walking service. My job required me to spend the day driving around the more congested neighborhoods in Chicago, fighting traffic, parking enforcement, and pedestrians so that I could make constant stops at our clients' homes to either supervise their dog walker's visit or in many cases cover the walk myself.
Having since relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area, I commute across either the Bay Bridge or the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge daily to reach my employer near the San Francisco airport from my residence in Oakland, and vise versa at the day's end. I currently spend at least two and a half hours in my car per work day, and in Chicago it may have been more. I thought at this point that I could no longer be amazed by the inept, idiotic, imbecilic driving manuevers demonstrated by an omnipresent portion of the American population. I assumed that I'd seen them all. Today I learned I was wrong.
What I saw today was possibly the stupidest thing that I've encountered yet on the road. It wasn't so much the move of one driver- accordingly, you could make a case that a single motorist who begins cutting across four lanes of traffic 50 feet before their exit without signaling still utilizes a lesser degree of brain activity than one person in the mass I came across. However, I would argue that comparing the aforementioned example to what I witnessed on my morning commute is like comparing apples to oranges. The incident at hand involved the mass inconsideration, the absent-minded cluelessness of nearly every driver in front of me on the San Mateo Bridge, a span of Hwy 92 that connects the East Bay region to the peninsula south of San Francisco by crossing the bay itself.
Anyone that has driven on a highway (or riden in a car for that matter) is familiar with the "rubbernecking" phenomenon. When there's an accident or traffic hazard in the on-coming lanes or on the shoulder not directly blocking traffic, people appear incapable of not slowing down to look back at the incident at least briefly. Perhaps it's the desire to at least understand the reason behind the prior traffic snarl, or maybe it's just an instinct on the part of each driver to observe something out of the ordinary. As traffic began to devolve into stop and go conditions on the highway today, this phenomenon or some type of obstacle in the road would have logically been likely culprits.
The play-by-play: I passed through the toll plaza, parted with my $4, and merged back in from the cash only lane to the regular flow of traffic without incident. I continued for several miles down the flat causeway, occasionally circumventing a slower-than-appropriate car by making simple lane changes. For those unfamilar, the westbound bridge begins in Hayward, CA and ends in Foster City, CA in San Mateo County. Immediately before the final approach to Foster City, the bridge raises up to form a large overpass that allows ships to travel underneath as the rest of the bridge sits just above water level. It was at the beginning of the incline to this portion of the span that traffic came to a crawl.
Having since relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area, I commute across either the Bay Bridge or the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge daily to reach my employer near the San Francisco airport from my residence in Oakland, and vise versa at the day's end. I currently spend at least two and a half hours in my car per work day, and in Chicago it may have been more. I thought at this point that I could no longer be amazed by the inept, idiotic, imbecilic driving manuevers demonstrated by an omnipresent portion of the American population. I assumed that I'd seen them all. Today I learned I was wrong.
What I saw today was possibly the stupidest thing that I've encountered yet on the road. It wasn't so much the move of one driver- accordingly, you could make a case that a single motorist who begins cutting across four lanes of traffic 50 feet before their exit without signaling still utilizes a lesser degree of brain activity than one person in the mass I came across. However, I would argue that comparing the aforementioned example to what I witnessed on my morning commute is like comparing apples to oranges. The incident at hand involved the mass inconsideration, the absent-minded cluelessness of nearly every driver in front of me on the San Mateo Bridge, a span of Hwy 92 that connects the East Bay region to the peninsula south of San Francisco by crossing the bay itself.
Anyone that has driven on a highway (or riden in a car for that matter) is familiar with the "rubbernecking" phenomenon. When there's an accident or traffic hazard in the on-coming lanes or on the shoulder not directly blocking traffic, people appear incapable of not slowing down to look back at the incident at least briefly. Perhaps it's the desire to at least understand the reason behind the prior traffic snarl, or maybe it's just an instinct on the part of each driver to observe something out of the ordinary. As traffic began to devolve into stop and go conditions on the highway today, this phenomenon or some type of obstacle in the road would have logically been likely culprits.
The play-by-play: I passed through the toll plaza, parted with my $4, and merged back in from the cash only lane to the regular flow of traffic without incident. I continued for several miles down the flat causeway, occasionally circumventing a slower-than-appropriate car by making simple lane changes. For those unfamilar, the westbound bridge begins in Hayward, CA and ends in Foster City, CA in San Mateo County. Immediately before the final approach to Foster City, the bridge raises up to form a large overpass that allows ships to travel underneath as the rest of the bridge sits just above water level. It was at the beginning of the incline to this portion of the span that traffic came to a crawl.
The weather was somewhat overcast, cool and damp when I'd gotten into my car in Oakland. It felt like rain, and as droplets of water started to pelt my windshield almost simultaneously with the slowing of traffic, I was prepared for a full on bout of rain as I entered the other side of the bay. Curiously, as edged forward up the incline in the road, the amount of rainfall didn't increase. I observed a boldly colored, well-defined rainbow off to the right of the bridge and concluded that perhaps the rain had already passed. This led me to the conclusion that in the previous rain some fool had lost control of his vehicle and caused a fender-bender in the road ahead, or worse. Due to my familiarity with Bay Area traffic patterns, the idea that the incident was in the eastbound lanes and people were "rubbernecking" also seemed plausible.
I continued to creep up to the apex of the bridge's rise and found myself depressing the brake pedal with less frequency as I made my subsequent decent into Foster City. I now had a clear view of the road ahead, and while there were occasional brake lights flickering on the vehicles ahead of me, I could see traffic was beginning to flow more openly and there were no traces of an impediment in the road responsible for the previous delays. The oncoming traffic appeared to be moving clearly as well. I could feel my blood begin to churn as I came to the realization that there was no tangible reason for the hold up. The San Mateo Bridge is routine to me, and the rise and fall of the raised segment is not normally enough of an obstacle to delay all three westbound lanes. I cursed to myself and wondered, "What phantom could be responsible for this travesty?" With no physical roadblock in sight and several more miles to drive, I began to ponder the issue...
Within less than a mile of further travel, I came to a disturbing, flabbergasting, Ipecacian conclusion that I'm 110% sure is the accurate reason for my morning delay. As I stated previously, there were no physical obstacles on the road and any strong rain had already subsided. The word "physical" was the key to my discovery. Brace yourself, for what I discovered was the cause of the commuting delay was no tangible object, but merely a illusion of light. The rainbow itself was the source of the traffic jam.
"Really?!" I shouted aloud in my car, the sound reverberating through the interior. The noise of my cry seeped out of my cracked windows and reached the eardrums of an elderly woman in a small Honda Civic next to me. Ignoring her alarmed gaze, I visualized that the gears in my brain begin to accelerate, causing the overall structure of my mental machinery began to smoke as springs and bolts burst from it. A rainbow!
I began to wonder: were the other drivers slowing as they strained to look over the bridge on the off chance that they were able to spy a wee leprechaun seated atop his pot of gold at rainbow's end? Perhaps they expected the rainbow to be exploding from the belly of a cub-sized pink bear. Maybe they had to look twice (or based on the time delay 525 times) to ensure that a certain agile, yet mildly obese plumber wasn't running up the multi-colored arch in a cape, using it as a bridge to reach some green pipe sticking out of a cloud above. Anticipated sightings of unicorns and Ronnie James Dio may have also been likely.
I don't hate rainbows. The one I saw this morning was a particularly visible one, but it was not a great deal different to the frequent others I'd seen on Peninsula surrounding previous winter rainstorms as recently as a few weeks prior. I can understand taking a moment to absorb the natural beauty of this phenomenon. However, let's review three key facts: this was a morning commute, when people depend upon reaching their destination promptly in order to retain employment so they can provide for themselves and their families. Accordingly, this was not some scenic drive through the country or along the coast during non-peak commute hours where coming to a near standstill in the middle of the road would not necessarily be reprehensible behavior. Finally, the rainbow was not anchored to one static location, and driving at highway appropriate speeds easily allowed one to look at it multiple times without fear of suddenly passing the optical and meteorological wonder.
It seems more than a little bit ironic that a symbol of peace, love, and pride could be the literal cause of death for my faith in mankind's ability to operate a motor vehicle appropriately. What I realized is that the rainbow was just a path for me to see the terrible reality that drivers, particularly in the Bay Area, are oblivious and void of logic. Similar to a rainbow being regarded as the path of Iris, the messenger between Heaven and Earth in Greek mythology, this rainbow was the path between sanity and irrationality on the highways of California.
Perhaps it is selfish of me to seek to deny other drivers their chance to slow down to a halt and take in the natural beauty. Perhaps I'm the irrational one. But dude, I just need to get to work. Please- do that somewhere over the rainbow, not on the highway next to it.
Dude, you know there is an article in the newspaper that is the exact opposite of yours that espouses how sometimes you need to slow down in life and take in a beautiful rainbow, etc., etc.
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