A Tree Falls in Connecticut

I was driving home today from DC to Philadelphia, and the first semi-major road I get on is Connecticut Avenue, or MD-185. It's three lanes per side, but the speed limit is 30.

There were storms predicted today. Severe thunderstorm watch for the district and the surrounding areas, and it was starting to look stormy when I drove out. About half an hour later, I was a ways up 185, and it started to get really stormy. It started off slow, but quickly I could hardly see out of my windsheild, I could see the wind sweeping the water everywhere, and bits of tree were dropping left and right. I felt a little scared. I think I actually may have thought about a tree falling.

Visibility was extremely, extremely low.

After about a minute it let up, and visibility returned a bit. There was a light very very shortly in front of me. It was green, but almost no one was moving, and I had no idea why. After I inched up a little bit more, and the visibility came back, I could see that there was a tree blocking five of the six lanes on the other side of the intersection. People were merging all the way to the rightmost lane on my side of the road to get past. I called the local NPR station, WAMU, and told them there was a tree down that was blocking the southbound side of 185 right at East West Highway intersection.

As I drove past, I looked to the left. There were people out of their cars. I saw what looked like a family almost fleaing the scene, and I remember one person lifting a very small boy up to a larger man for him to carry, from one family member to another, I thought. I think they were not-white but I couldn't really tell, and can't really remember.

I looked a little bit more. I saw a white man moving sort of hurriedly and urgently to one end of the tree. It was a big tree. The report says that it was two or three feet in diameter, but I would put three feet at the lower bound of that estimate. I realized that at least one car was crushed underneath the tree. I didn't feel anything, which I think is okay, because the other option was to panic. I didn't know exactly what to do. I kept driving on, slowly.

For a moment I thought that I should just go on. I thought too about calling 911, but figured someone else would do it. Then I remebered the concept of diffusion of responsibility from psychology class in junior year, and knowing there were more than three people around, I called 911. An automated machine said someone would be with me shortly, an agent from Montgomery County. I was afraid I was calling the wrong 911, but it was correct. In about a minute I got a guy on the phone, and he asked what the emergency was.

"I don't know if you've heard this yet, but a tree fell on top of one or two cars at the intersection of 185 and East West Highway."

"Okay, let me put you with Fire and Ambulance. Hold on, they're very busy."

"Okay, staying."

And then I was on wait for about 20 seconds. The operator picked up.

"Firetruck or ambulance?"

"Ambulance."

"What's the situation?"

"A tree fell on top of one or two cars at the intersection of 185 and East West Highway."

"Okay, so there's a tree down, definitely vehicles trapped underneath it, and a power line?"

"I can't spe-- I don't know about the power line, all I know for sure is that there's at least one car under the tree."

"Okay. We're on our way."

My phone stayed in Emergency Mode for about five minutes. I don't know what the purpose of it is. WAMU reported the tree down a little bit later and said that fire, police, and ambulance were all on the scene.

I found out when I got home that there was definitely at least one car underneath the tree, a minivan with eight people in it. A woman and a girl were killed, and a boy was injured to a life-threatening point.

Motherfucker.

I'm glad that I called 911, but I wonder if - and think that, yes, - I should have stayed to help. I don't know if there is really anything more I could have done than what I did, or if it would have been safe for me to help. But the point is that I might have had a chance to save someone's life, and I didn't take it. I made a mistake, I'm not going to kill myself over it, but I'm going to try not to make the same mistake twice.

//

This story reports that the time was just after 8pm, but I am pretty sure that it was closer to 7:40pm. My phone didn't record what time the call to 911 was, though.

This top right picture is what I saw when I drove by.

Peace out.

My posts are getting longer than I intend them to be increasingly often. I wanted that last one to be about two paragraphs, and that's how it turned out. Sorry.

Peace out.

Hockey Pants II

I decided that I wanted to go play hockey after work on Thursday, so I brought my hockey pants and a pair of socks in the car with me on the way to work and found a new route to the hockey rink right from Cheiron. It took me about 45 minutes, but I got there. So I got changed. There was some kid from the middle school at the rink (which is right next to it) playing soccer in the rink, and I had to take my pants off (not boxers) to get changed, which felt a little awkward, but I did it anyway. I didn't bring an extra shirt, so I just took my work shirt off. I dropped my work khakis on the ground and they got super dirty, and now I have to wash them.

I played hockey for about an hour, and really tired myself out. I didn't have anything to drink, either, so the Gatorade that I got at the gas station afterwards was about the most quenched I have ever felt in my entire life. When I got tired when I was playing, I would go sit in the car and listen to NPR with the air conditioning on. I tried to pull my car up to the rink and play NPR real loud so I could hear when I was playing, but it didn't really work, so I turned that off. Good thing, because two other kids came a little closer to six.

Anyway, when I was done, I didn't feel like changing all the way, especially not into my dirty, dirty pants. So I left on my hockey pants and put back on my work shoes, and my work shirt when I was in the car.

In case you don't know, hockey pants are pretty ridiculous looking. Take a look at these. Those are essentially what I was wearing.

So when I got back to the house, I was looking for a place for parking. It's a residential city block set-up, so you just have to parallel park on the east side of the street. There are some white parts blocked out where parking is legal. It's 2-hour limit between 7:30AM and 7:30PM, unless you have a permit saying that you live there. I don't have one of those licenses, but it was past 5:30, so I could get past the two hour limit legally and still park there.

So I pulled up to the parking spot I wanted, which was nice and open, which is always a nice break. It was right in front of this house that has a garden with an Eco-Friendly Garden sign sticking out of it, and I always sort of thought it smelled funny, it a bad way. Not that it's growing pot or something, just that it seriously smells pretty bad. The woman of the house was outside watering her garden, or picking at it, or something. I scraped my wheel a little bit when I was parking, and since I'm afraid of being an Axel Murderer, I was compelled to kick my hubcap back into place when I got out of the car.

So I got out of the car, got some of my stuff (backpack, clothes), and went over to kick my wheel in.

The woman stared at me. Like, stared at me. I was on the same side of the car as her, right up near her property, and god, she was trying to burn me with her eyes. I could easily see that she was, and it was making me uneasy. She had a strange and mean feel about her. I looked right at her for a second, and sort of said softly, "What?"

She shook her head and went back to working at her garden. I opened the door to get some stuff when I was done kicking in the wheel, and I looked over when I was done getting my other stuff out, and she was staring at me. Again. She might as well have been wearing a robe and wielding a gavel. But what was she even concerned about? So I asked her a bit more meanly, "What." She shook her head and walked away and turned on the water to her garden.

It was the strangest thing. Was it the hockey pants? I don't know. Maybe I'll talk to her sometime, but probably not, she seemed mean.

Peace out.

Business Sighed of Things

I was walking out of my boss's office today, making small talk with her, and she said, "You're gonna be a businessman, definitely, I can tell." She meant it as a compliment, but it made me feel empty (I think that's the best word to describe it). I feel like all I do right now is just go into a building, push a bunch of papers around my desk for 7.5 hours, and then leave the building. I told her I was considering being a teacher. "Why?" "Because it's pure math-ier than business." She told me I could be a teacher in a business, too, like our CEO teaches people here, or a guy named Ken teaches clients. She means well, and I'm sure she thinks it's what I'd like to do, but I don't think I believe it.

Peace out.

Mist Connection

I was driving to work on the beltway today as usual, but a little bit later than normal, it was probably 9:00AM or so right around when I was getting on. This was before the big straight hill that lets me know when it's almost time to exit on my way home.

Well anyway, traffic appeared to be moving really fast and everyone was going 55-65 miles an hour, which is what you do on a 55mph limit highway when there's essentially no traffic. But then, basically out of nowhere, the traffic came to an almost standstill for a little bit after about a mile. It even caught me by surprise, and I had to put the brakes on fairly quickly to make sure I stayed a safe distance from the car in front of me.

I'm not sure exactly what I noticed was happening first. There was a blue BMW on the leftmost lane (I was in the 2nd-to-leftmost lane) about two or three car lengths in front of me. I think what I noticed first was that it was pulling to the left, to the shoulder of the road. I didn't really understand why. Then, over my left shoulder came a speeding truck. It wasn't just a pick-up, but it wasn't an 18-wheeler - it was one of those short-haul trucks that could maybe carry backhoe or two on its bed. But it was seriously barreling through the lane right at this car, and I put together why she was moving out of the lane. It was all happening really, really quickly though and I wasn't sure the car would make it out of the way on time.

As the truck got closer - probably going something like 40 or 50 mph - the car just veered left and pulled forward to get out of the way of the truck, and at almost the last second, the truck veered right, into my lane. Right in front of me. Somehow it actually managed to kill a lot of its speed in that swing into my lane, and slowed down in maybe a second or so after it was in my lane. The blue BMW pulled back into its lane. I'm sure the driver's heart was beating a mile a minute. I suppose I didn't say this explicity, but if that truck had barreled into her car, it would have done really serious damage. Probably it wouldn't have been fatal, since it was from the rear, but it's still not something anyone would ever want to experience.

I realized later that if I had been side-by-side with that blue BMW, the truck probably would have plowed right into me, for lack of anywhere else to go, in an attempt to avoid a definite hit of the other car. When I was thinking about that possibility in my head, I couldn't help but think that I would enjoy that it would get me off from work for a day.

I pulled up to the blue BMW later, side-by-side, to see how the driver was doing. It was a pretty attractive 40-something woman with black hair and large sunglasses, and it seemed like she was doing fine. I don't know how she knew that truck was coming though. I didn't hear it, I don't think it's horn was blowing or anything; I definitely never would have known.

Peace out.

RADAR Enforced Speed Deception

Two weekends ago, I came home for a night to go to Emily U's birthday party, and to sleep over Chloe's house. I actually had an incredibly wonderful time at the party, I met a lot of really cool people and connected with other people who were a lot cooler than I remembered, and loved talking to Chloe until something like three in the morning. It was definitely one of the best nights I'd had in a long time. I didn't tell my mom and dad that I was coming, though, because I thought they'd be upset with me leaving Washington, DC, all the time.

So I got a call today when I was out seeing friends, from my mom, asking me where I was, and saying (very quietly) that I had gotten a speeding ticket from somewhere in Maryland. I don't know why she was talking so quietly - she always does that, on the phone, in the car, on the couch, whatever. In either case, she said I needed to be careful about having points on my license, and that it was $40. Apparently I had gone 41 in a 30 zone. I don't know how I feel about that.

But I wasn't really worried about the whole thing. I was worried that it would give away where I had been on that Saturday that I drove back to PA. I spent the day avoiding home so that I could get home after my mom went to bed, so I could see where and when the ticket was from. If it was from southern Maryland on that day, I could write it off and just say I was around DC, or think of some excuse. If it was from the border with Delaware, I would just be enjoying my last night of freedom.

I got home around midnight. My mom was still up. I was worried that she had figured something out. The ticket was on the table, a picture of my car, one the body, one the license plate. The date said the sixth, which was the day I had driven to Emily's.

But the address was a basically a mile outside of DC. What a relief.

//

Chloe writes wonderful letters.

//

I brought home the lyrics sheet to a song I'd like to record. My parents came home today, so I didn't have the house empty tonight so that I could record it. I'm not sure what I'm going to do now. I feel strangely self-conscious about the pseudo-screaming I do at the end of this song.

Peace out.