It was certainly an interesting ride home from work today, although it began as any other 5:30 commute. Traffic was pretty shitty mostly thanks to large trucks and slow-driving fogeys in conversion vans with cellphones attached to their heads. I snaked through the mess and took my usual sidestreet shortcut through an industrial park. Emerging on the other side, I took a short jaunt up another main street and diverted down a small, recently-opened street that take me to a lesser-used road. This road, Orange Blossom, runs alongside the our main library. Even during the tourist season, it’s a nice, easy drive and a quick way to avoid one of the worst intersections in town.

The speed limit on this small street is 30 MPH, so that’s what I was doing. (Well, I admit that I did once let a Viper RT/10 hear the sound of my exhaust as he went by.) The road is two lanes, one on each side, and winding, so it’s double-yellow lined the whole way until you get to a part that’s actually split by a median. I had a few cars ahead of me as we approached the median’ed portion, when suddenly traffic ahead began to slow, and I caught sight of movement up ahead of one of the vehicles in front of me. Strange movement. A flash in the corner of my eye.

A flash of something large and dark, something that momentarily appeared in a peculiar place—above the roof of the Hondra CR-V three cars ahead. A red Dodge Dakota that had been coming up the road was stopping in the middle of his lane. Suddenly I saw debris—and lots of it. The cars ahead of me came to a full stop, and their drivers jumped out, already yammering into cellphones at what I was beginning to realize had to be the 911 operator. I saw the tail end of a candy-apple red Harley-Davidson lying in the middle of the street and knew what had just happened.

My windows were down and the T-tops were stowed in the hatch well, so it wasn’t long before I heard the tortured screams of a man coming up from the crash site. Wincing, I realized that whoever had been on that motorcycle had just taken a huge flop—that had been the rider’s body I’d seen careening into the air above the roof of the Honda SUV!

Welp, I was close enough to the crash site, and in my estimation, there weren’t too many people around yet—although traffic was building. I sat there for a moment, not knowing what to do, then I rolled up the windows, set the emergency brake and turned on the hazards. Turning off the engine, I locked the car behind me and jogged up to the wreck site to see if I could help. I was a bit anxious about going up there, for fear I’d see body parts and blood scattered all over the asphalt.

Fortunately, the Harley rider appeared to be in one piece with no obvious wounds, but he was howling and screaming up a storm. He was lying on the road in the eastbound lane, but he was facing westbound, with his head close to the front tire of his fallen bike. He was grabbing onto the Harley’s front tire with both hands as if holding on for dear life. There was broken glass and plastic everywhere. The man’s helmet lay a few feet away. At least he’d been wearing one—since the state of Florida repealed the helmet law a few years ago, I’ve been seeing more and more bikers going without. Deciding to wear his helmet probably saved this guy’s life.

Anyway, he was screaming up a storm—something about his left leg (which he was lying on), and how he couldn’t feel anything below his knees. Not good. A couple of other drivers were already up there comforting the guy, and two women appeared to be on their cell phones with the paramedics already. I really wasn’t of much use, so I kept out of the way, except at one point I helped one of the other guys find the Harley’s ignition. The injured dude was chomping on a rag to keep from screaming himself hoarse, but he still managed to ask us to turn his bike’s ignition off. I’d imagine I’d probably be doing something similar. The bike had gotten pretty messed up, but it looked far from a total loss.

Pretty soon police began arriving, then paramedics, then fire, and soon we were surrounded by EMTs and all kinds of other officials. As the professionals took over, the rest of us went back to our cars and started clearing out. I briefly spoke to one of the women who had been an eye-witness to the whole thing, and she said that the Harley rider had been in the midst of passing her in the opposing traffic lane when he ran right into the Dodge pickup truck. Harley dude must have never even seen the truck coming, and he wiped out right into it. The truck was in pretty bad shape, too. I guess the Harley guy even admitted to the woman (between screams, I suppose) that it was his fault.

Just another sobering reminder of why they paint double yellow lines on roads!

Footnote: As I was getting back into my T/A and starting ‘er back up, a Jeep Cherokee drove up behind me and stopped REAL close (“Thanks, now I can’t back up to turn around, asshat,” I thought). The sheriff’s deputy who was standing practically right next to my car started ordering them to turn around, shouting that the road was closed. He shouted it three times, but the Jeep didn’t move. Then, this incredibly annoying old bitch with an European accent jumped out of the passenger side of the Jeep and came rushing over to the cop, getting all upset with him about the road being closed and explaining that they were trying to get somewhere, probably their stupid fucking house in the gated community a few yards away. “TURN. AROUND,” the cop said with maddening slowness, nearly making me crack up. “You will have to go around the other way! Take Livingston Road!”

“Livingston is okay,” said the woman, and went back to her Jeep. Hmph! Like this solution met with her approval! As if the cop would have cared whether it was okay with her or not. What a smacktard.

Once the Jeep cleared out, the deputy told me it was clear to make a U-turn. “What year is your car?” he was asking as I prepared to move out. “Do you like it?” Seemed like an odd time to make conversation, but I responded in the affirmative!

Traffic continued to suck all the way home, but you can bet your sweet ass that I was more careful than ever before. Finally made it home exactly one hour after leaving my office, which is just 12 miles away. Considering what happened, that’s not really too bad. On the way, I witnessed people honking, yelling, doing crazy-ass things and getting pissed at people who were in their way but could not possibly move due to the traffic jam. I just wonder what people are thinking sometimes. When they see a line of cars, all bumper-to-bumper for a mile up the road, why to they honk when they can’t get through? Where are people supposed to magically teleport their cars to so that the aggressive boob can get through? Christ.

Irony of all ironies: The local afternoon talk radio show, which I had playing in the car during all of this, was featuring a 3-hour segment on road rage with one of our county sheriff’s deputies!