24 April 2008

Freeways and ramps

Every time I travel the northbound 15, and I approach the the exit towards the westbound 10, I feel anxious.

I don't really have a fear of heights, but on that ramp -the 15 to the 10 - I sometimes do. Like yesterday and today, after spending four-hours helping the Mira Loma Borders get ready for opening. As I traveled, the sun setting in the western sky, I exit the 15, and begin the climb on the big ass ramp. It goes and goes, and suddenly you realize you're way up in the sky. You look to your left, and then down. You see a few things, the ramp from the westbound 10 to the southbound 15. Then you see the eastbound ramp to the northbound 15, then finally, the southbound ramp to the westbound 10.

And for a moment, you feel your flying. And also in that moment, I feel that if there was going to be the big quake everyone knows is coming, this will be the time when it happens. When I'm at the apex of the 15 ramp to the 10.

It would be just like that 1970's disaster movie, funny enough, called Earthquake. I would be on that ramp as the earth started shaking. I would hear the pillars that hold the ramp up in the sky start to snap like redwoods caught in a tornado. The ramp itself would twist and turn like taffy at a carnival.

Then I drop, like a stone to the ground below.

Funny, though, the odds would predict that I would survive.

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