Flirting with Disaster
July 8th, 2008We were in a car accident last night. There were no serious injuries, but there could have been. A lane was blocked off on our way into Seattle and a trucker boxed us into the soon-to-be-gone lane, so we couldn’t get behind him and merge. Our passenger-side mirror was knocked off by a barrel, and we shook a little bit but managed to get into the safe lane. We were silent for a moment when Dan asked if I was okay. I said, “I’ve actually just been holding in a joke. ‘Good thing we’ve got insurance!’”
Once it became clear that we were safe and would be safe, there was no point holding the humor.
The centerpiece of our trip to Eugene, Oregon was supposed to be a side-trip to Toketee Falls, but when we arrived there in the early-afternoon on the fifth we saw that it was closed as a result of snowstorms destroying the route back in January. Now, we had come a long way to see the Falls, and it was difficult to accept that we’d just wasted a couple of hours driving away from our ultimate direction to get there, so when we parked to assess the situation we decided to keep going. Or Dan did. “I didn’t come out here to turn around with nothing,” he said, and we drew up a timetable for his return, with the agreement that I would stay behind and call the proper authorities if he did not return in reasonable time and then maybe we’d do it all over again.
Fortunately, it did not have a disastrous outcome for either of us. He returned about forty minutes after he left me and said, “I would not recommend what I just did to anyone. But it was beautiful. You know all those things we saw in the pictures? I was right there, and it was beautiful.” This piqued my interest, and so I asked him for more detail. He said that all of the staircases have been destroyed, and there’s a bridge out that you must now cross over a tree, in addition to numerous other impediments along the path. Then when you arrive at the falls, the observation deck is fragile and has sustained some serious damage that makes it dangerous to stand on, to say the least. It is about a hundred feet high over a cliff.
They need to fix that path soon because it is absolutely gorgeous and it’s been blocked since January, which is more than half-a-year ago and so it is unacceptable for them to take so long in fixing it. But that wasn’t the only excitement we had on the fifth. We had woken up that morning in a harbor in Crescent City, California, where we had arrived at in the middle of the night looking for a place to stay as Eureka had not had any. We’d been in Eureka the night before because that is the town that Dan was born in but has no recollection of, so he wanted to go there to get to know his roots. Like a salmon. Well, we were there to watch fireworks but there was a ridiculous amount of fog and it was almost impossible to see the actual fireworks. The clouds did change colors in a beautiful fashion, at least, and it was pleasant to walk around the town. There was a carnival… besides us, that is. Sleeping in the harbor was probably the worst thing to happen to us so far this trip, even if nothing happened to us aside from getting a lousy amount of sleep inside of a car. It’s just frustrating to not have a bed and to have it happen because you didn’t think to reserve a place somewhere on the Fourth of July. We’re much smarter than that, but I guess we were having too much fun.
Last night Dan and I were walking and talking in downtown Seattle and I said to him, “I guess that everyone traveling across such a large area as we are would have a near-death experience or two on the way, right?” He laughed and said that he didn’t think so. “I guess you’re right… how many other people would walk into the ocean fully-clothed or stand atop a compromised balcony?” It’s called “style.”
I apologize for the delay in writing. It’s been delightful on this trip, and I’ve been very, very busy. I’ll write again soon, and try to include earlier days and more recent days, too. I do want to say that the fast lane is for people “who want to go fast.” It’s not very complicated, but a couple of days ago we were going under the speed limit in the freeway on the way up to Portland because everyone else was going slow. Don’t think that all we’re doing is nearly-dying, as we are having a great deal of fun and are generally being quite safe about everything. The car “accident” was mostly a fluke, and everything else is alright.