The Day I Drove over the Scariest Bridge in the United States

I can’t say that he didn’t warn me.  I had helped my Navy friend Matt move a truckload of his belongings from Virginia to Pennsylvania (including a little side trip to Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Willow Grove outside of Philly) and we were on our way back.  Matt, originally from the great state of Maryland (home of some very dubious drivers in my opinion but the birthplace of what he considers to be the most advanced system of roadways the world has ever seen) was soon transferring to Willow Grove.  It was my turn to drive.  Matt was vaguely aware of my irrational fear of bridges.  If they’re too low to the water, I don’t like them.  If they’re very high over the water, even worse.  We were on 301 approaching Dahlgren, Virginia, and he sort of warned me about a bridge up ahead.  Not wanting to appear the big baby I truly am, I declined to surrender the wheel and proclaimed myself fit to drive.

There’s this recurring dream that often wakes me soaked in sweat in the middle of the night.  I’m driving my truck up a bridge (my truck does NOT have automatic transmission, making this nightmare even worse).  The bridge apparently has the steepest grade known to mankind because as I get halfway up to the top my truck starts slipping backward.  I’m able to start climbing again but my truck begins slipping backward, crashing into the cars behind me.  Then I wake up.  Sweating.  Hating bridges.

The bridge that Matt and I were approaching in real life was the Governor Harry NICE Memorial Bridge (very inappropriately named, I might add).  It crosses the Potomac.  I looked this bridge up on Wikipedia, which as everyone knows is the ultimate authoritative source on anything.  It is described as very narrow, with only one 11-foot wide lane in each direction and NO SHOULDERS.  It also has a fairly steep grade (3.75%).  The best part is that they make YOU pay to drive over this unholy invention conceived in the sick and twisted mind of some bridge-designing maniac.

After we went through the toll booth, I saw the bridge up ahead and gasped.  The time was late at night and it looked as though the bridge climbed straight up into the dark heavens and disappeared.  I noticed all at once that there were several things wrong here: (A) this bridge went up at a 90 degree angle; (B) there was only one lane of traffic going each way; (C) there was only Jersey wall on the side of the bridge – no railings or retaining devices of any other kind; (D) the pavement was bumpy as if it hadn’t been paved in about 50 years; and (E) when I looked over the side all I saw was blackness like we were floating in space or riding on a narrow concrete platform over a swirling black hole that could suck us in at any minute.  A side note.  How can they be allowed to just put Jersey wall on a bridge?  How does that keep you from plummeting over the side?  Aren’t there any laws that say you have to make a wall that PREVENTS vehicles from careening off the edge?!

At this point Matt seemed to be enjoying my agony.  Oh he “said” he was sorry.  He reminded me that he DID try to warn me.  Somehow his constant giggling made these apologies come across as less than sincere.  I was providing my friend a little cheap entertainment, and I knew it.  I was even more determined to make it across without any drama.

I gripped the steering wheel with all my might and pressed the accelerator.  I was so terrified that I just couldn’t seem to go any faster than 25 miles per hour.  Matt pointed out the multiple signs declaring that the MINIMUM speed was 40MPH on the Governor Harry Nice Memorial Bridge.  40?!  How could anyone possibly drive 40 up this bridge, especially in a 16-foot box truck?  The laws of Physics wouldn’t permit it.  Instead of hearing my friend Matt utter the encouraging words “You can do it, Mike; I have confidence in you,” all I heard was “Drive faster!  Faster!”  This was undoubtedly the scariest experience of my entire life, and for all intents and purposes I just knew I was going to drive the truck over the side, unfortunately taking Matt with me.  The only consolation was that at least I knew he could swim.

For some reason God had mercy on my soul.  In the entire time I was driving up that bridge, not a single vehicle came in the other lane, headed in my direction.  I was straddling the center line, trying to stay as far away from the clutches of the Jersey wall as possible.  If there had actually been oncoming traffic, forcing me to move over, I think I would have stopped the truck, gotten out, and made Matt drive.  Of course, once we exited the truck we would have needed rappelling equipment, because it would have been like climbing Mount Everest.

I was grateful that once we reached the top, and began the descent down the other side, I relaxed a little.  Prior to that moment, I was sure I was going to snap the steering wheel into thirds from my grip at the 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock positions!  One good thing about the Governor Harry Nice Memorial Bridge is that on the Virginia side, the grade is much less.  The more sensible Virginians probably objected to the steep grade approaching from the Maryland side, and demanded a safe and sane gradual descent on our side!

At last we were on the other side on dry land.  Flat land.  Low-to-the-ground land.  Matt apologized profusely in between hearty laughs.  A true friend helps you move.  A truer friend risks life and limb in the process!  The truest friend laughs about it all later, recalling the one-of-a-kind adventure you both had doing something as mundane as moving.

The Day I Rode an Elephant at the Circus

It actually wasn’t the first time I had been to see the Universoul Circus.  The first time I went there was a tornado warning mid-way through the show, right after they had just loaded the lions and tigers into the cage in the center of the Big Top.  The whole tent began shaking in heavy wind.  Except for the nervous roaring of the imposing beasts in the ring about 20 feet away from us, you could hear a pin drop.  Everybody was scared.  It wasn’t long before the Ringmaster stepped forward to ask the audience to exit the tent in an orderly fashion.  Always the nonconformist, I was never so anxious to obey another person’s orders in my entire life.

But this story isn’t about tornados.  It’s about an elephant.  A rather large, gentle, forlorn but accommodating elephant who became a magic carpet ride for dozens of eager kids (and a couple of fun-loving grown-ups).  As I recall, my friend Cheri and I were the only two humans over 42 inches tall who rode the elephant.  I recommend that more adults ride elephants.  It’s a great stress-reducer!

The Universoul Circus is an amazing African-American influenced circus that still travels under a Big Top.  Being a circus fan, the Big Top is what takes the circus-going experience to a whole new level. Seeing the big orange and blue tent from a distance in the Military Mall shopping center parking lot made my pulse race.  Experiencing a circus in a tent isn’t all “nice and neat” like seeing it in an arena.  There are smells.  Unusual smells.  Unusual smells emanating from unusual animals.  There’s a certain immediacy to watching acrobats and daredevils perform right in front of you.  What might seem dangerous 40 yards away suddenly becomes death-defying a mere 10 feet away.  You come away with a whole new respect for the performers who do this every single day. 

Universoul Circus, having been in existence now for over 15 years, has grown and expanded its schedule to include some 500 shows during its cross-country tour.  With 75 performers, it has all the trademark circus elements: animals, acrobats, and clowns.  But it’s different.  There’s an intensity, a love of life that overwhelms all those inside the tent.  It’s billed as “Hip Hop under the Big Top.”  It’s alive.  You fall under its spell and forget where you’re from and what color you are.  You’re not just a spectator.  You feel like a PART of the show.

As soon as I saw that they were giving elephant rides during intermission, I knew I had to ride.  How many opportunities do you get to RIDE an actual elephant?  My friend Cheri needed no coaxing.  We sheepishly got up out of our seats and made our way to the line.  Naturally, the line was forming on the OPPOSITE side of the ring.  So, everyone in the entire tent, young and old, saw two grown circus nerds inching their way to the head of the line to plop down $10 each to ride a real live elephant.  We dutifully stood behind a line of excited, squirming children.  When our time came, we climbed up the steps to the loading platform. 

Cheri “climbed on board” first.  Fortunately I am fairly limber because it seemed like I had to stretch my legs EXTREMELY far apart to straddle that elephant.  It was a gigantic elephant as far as elephants go.  They strapped us in (well, sort of) and we began our slow and deliberate saunter around the circus ring.  We both started waving at people we didn’t even know, like complete idiots.  We were consumed by fame.  Here we were, riding around on an elephant in front of a thousand people like actual circus stars.

That’s when it occurred to me that I had never touched an elephant’s bare skin.  Would it be slimy?  Hairy?  Dry?  Thick?  As nonchalantly as possible, I reached my hand around and touched the elephant’s butt.  Just a quick rub.  When there was no reaction from the elephant, I became bolder and rubbed my hand all over the elephant’s rump.  It felt sort of like rubbing my mom’s leather purse.  But with wiry hair.  The more I rubbed the more I noticed the elephant’s tail swishing me.  Cheri deduced that the elephant thought I was an insect that he/she was trying to swat away.  I think the elephant just got annoyed with me and wanted me to get my hand off its rear end.  All the same, it felt weird, foreign, alive.

All too soon our ride seemed over before it even began.  It was time to say goodbye to my new friend.  I gave her one more swat on the rump.  She gave me one more swat with her tail, and even turned her head to stare at me with an evil eye.  I think she was glad to get rid of me.

As we walked back to our seats, I could sense that other audience members were whispering about us.  Okay, we were a little old to be riding the elephant.  But honestly, life is about experiencing new things.  And in the end I felt vindicated.  Cheri’s husband, Alfred (who is about as white a white boy as it gets) was selected to compete in the “Soul Train” dance-off later in the show.  He out-danced everyone else (male AND female), and was an instant star.  People were talking about how funny Alfred was as we left the Big Top.  They even came up to us and congratulated him!  Where I once felt mocked for indulging in a little childish fun by riding the elephant, I now felt empowered because I was with the new star of Universoul Circus. 

I highly recommend Universoul Circus if it comes to your town.  Even ride the elephant.  You’ll be glad you did.

The Day I Survived an Earthquake

The whole idea that everything around you unfolds in slow motion during a traumatic life event really is true.  I had arrived at my hotel room about fifteen minutes earlier and was standing by the over-sized window, searching for visible signs that I was in truly in California for the first time in my life.  The cross-country pilgrimage to an educator’s convention in San Francisco had left its toll on me.  I was tired, grouchy, and waiting for my luggage to be delivered to my room (there were hundreds of conventioneers staying at this particular hotel, and the bellmen were running behind, trying to play catch-up). 

My first clue that something odd was going on was when I looked down at the bottom of the curtains hanging on each side of the large window.  They were shaking.  More than just shaking, they were literally dancing - jumping up-and-down frenetically – as if being assaulted by a ghost.  I heard a roaring noise before I felt anything.  It sounded like a 747 was landing on the roof of the hotel.  I was convinced at first it WAS an airplane because the hotel was, after all, located only a few minutes away from San Francisco International Airport.  Then, what can only be described as the sensation of a giant jackhammer pummeling the very floor beneath me set in motion a violent chain of events that rocked an entire city.

For a good 30 seconds or more I was confused.  Granted, I am easily confused.  I doubted that a plane (even one flying directly above my hotel) would cause such a deafening noise and dramatic vibration.  This was before 9-11, so nobody was really thinking about terrorists back then.  All at once I realized what it was.  I had never experienced one before.  Oh sure, I had heard about them.  I’d seen them in movies.  Read about them.  I was in California.  And there was no confusion now.  This was an earthquake!

It was 5:04pm (Pacific Standard Time) on October 17, 1989.  I was smack in the middle of the 7.1 magnitude now-famous Loma Prieta earthquake that rattled the Bay area, killing dozens and injuring and displacing thousands.

 Not being an expert in “earthquake management,” I did what any normal, East coast-bred earthquake virgin would do: I ran for my life.  All I knew was that I was on the third floor of a hotel that was about six or seven stories tall, and I didn’t want to get smashed like a pancake.  The only thing I could picture in my mind was the upper floors crashing down on top of me, and it didn’t matter how I was going to get out of that hotel.  I had to escape.

Naturally, this is the point where everything around me started happening in slow motion.  I spun around to head for the door of my hotel room.  As I did, I saw large cracks snaking up the plaster wall to my left.  At the same time, the TV rocked, then tumbled out of the armoire and crashed onto the floor.  I ran full-steam toward the door, and as I turned and looked into the bathroom, was amazed to see individual tiles popping out of the wall and falling onto the counter and into the sink.  The door to the room was somehow already opened, and as I looked into the hallway, saw nothing but the glow of emergency lights and water streaming from the ceiling.  The water, I later learned, was from the broken sprinkler system, where pipes snapped during the quake.  It was dark and there was dripping water, but I sprinted into the hall where I was met by three guys running toward the exit door at the end of the hallway.  One guy was still pulling up his pants as he ran.  Let’s just hope he wasn’t in the bathroom when this thing hit.  I guess I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t thrilled with the idea of being flattened by four floors of concrete.

As we were running down the hall, ceiling tiles were falling and I became overwhelmed with the dreadful feeling that I was going to die then and there.  It seemed to take an eternity to reach the end of the hallway.  And it IS true that events in your life are played on the movie screen of your mind and you wish you had done some things differently.  You wish you had been kinder to someone.  You wonder what would have happened if you had taken a different path.  You question your contribution to the world and whether you had taken advantage of every opportunity granted to you from above.  OK, well I maybe I WASN’T thinking all those things.  I did wonder if I was going to get out alive.

For all my faulty reasoning and naiveté when it came to earthquakes, I couldn’t imagine anything but being squished in a pile of rubble.  Never mind the fact that in California there are stringent building codes for quake-proof construction.  Or, that it’s recommended you crawl under heavy furniture or stand in a doorway to avoid the whole “being squashed like a bug” possibility.  When the four of us finally reached the door at the end of the hallway, it was stuck.  The door jamb was slightly askew, and one of my new friends stepped back and hurled himself into the door, forcing it to fly open.  To that point, I don’t think I had EVER moved as fast in my life.  Literally jumping down three flights of stairs, I reached the bottom and sprung into the light outside, tasting freedom and realizing that I had made it out alive.

And then it was over.  What seemed like an eternity lasted only about fifteen seconds.  Fifteen seconds.  Once outside, the distinct odor of gas was everywhere.  The first priority of the hotel staff was to shut off the natural gas.  Hotel patrons gathered in the parking lot, where I recall looking up at the light poles swaying back and forth from the aftershocks.  As some hotel guests played the radios in their cars, we began to realize the severity of the quake.  In San Francisco’s Marina District, homes were destroyed by fire and several buildings collapsed.  Most of the quake’s victims were killed on the Cypress Street Viaduct of Interstate 880 where what I feared the most actually happened: the upper deck of the roadway collapsed onto the cars below, crushing many.

At the hotel, we gathered around cars, mesmerized by continuous coverage of the disaster by local radio stations.  As the hotel was inspected by staff, we waited outside in the increasingly cool October night.  After several hours we were allowed to go back inside, but only in the ground floor lobby.  We were given a pillow and blanket and it was made clear that we should sleep on the floor.  I sprawled out only a few feet from the front door, ready to make my escape the middle of the night, if needed.  When I looked over toward the bell captain’s desk, I saw my luggage sitting on a cart with some other luggage.  I had completely forgotten about my bags.  I retrieved them and tried to sleep.  Of course I never went to sleep, convinced I was feeling aftershock upon aftershock all night long.  At around five in the morning we were allowed to return to our rooms, where I found my forlorn TV in pieces on the floor and everything strewn about like a tornado had blown through.

The next day an older couple told me the story of how they had driven to San Francisco for a vacation from somewhere in the Midwest.  After the long drive, they settled into their room and were having dinner in the hotel’s restaurant.  After being served their food, the husband exclaimed “Well, we’ve had a great trip.  Everything has gone perfectly.  The only thing that could spoil it now would be an earthquake.”  At that very moment, the quake rolled through.  A giant neon sign hanging in the restaurant crashed onto the bar below, breaking glasses and spewing alcohol everywhere.  The couple stared at each other for an instant, jumped up from their table, and ran out the front door!

A friend, Lynn, who was to attend the same convention I was, had an unusual experience as well.  Her plane was landing at the instant the earthquake was rattling the Bay area.  The pilots were directed by the control tower to abort the landing and proceed to San Diego.  Travelers were told nothing at the time, and were frightened and baffled by the abrupt change in direction.  Once back in the air and in route to San Diego, they were made aware of the unfolding drama on the ground.  Lynn, who by the time she met up with me in San Francisco was a nervous wreck, rented a car in San Diego and made her way up to where I was.  The night after the earthquake (even though there was a curfew in the city), we drove down to the Marina District to explore the aftermath.  There was no power in the city.  No stoplights.  No public transportation.  Everything was closed.  There were no people walking around.  Complete silence.  And the smell of the smoldering fires along the waterfront where people had lost their cherished homes and businesses.

The first sign across the U.S. that something catastrophic had occurred in San Francisco came when baseball fans watching game three of the World Series at Candlestick Park heard commentator Al Michaels exclaim “I’ll tell you what, we’re having an earth…” and saw the picture break up on their screens.  When the quake struck, fewer than half the 62,000 fans had taken their seats in the stadium.  There were reports that the upper deck of the stadium “undulated like a wave” and that lights poles were swaying many feet from side to side.  Because power to the park was knocked out, the game was postponed, then eventually rescheduled for ten days later.

My conference in San Francisco was cancelled.  Due to damage at the airport, flights didn’t resume until three days after the earthquake.  There was one consolation, though.  On the morning I checked out of the hotel, there was a letter from the Marriot’s staff tucked under my door: “Dear Mr. Hilton, due to the earthquake experienced by our guests on October 17, 1989, you will NOT be charged for that night’s stay…”