Speaking of Full Moon Crazy People

Well, as you know, a couple of blog posts ago, I wrote about the full moon and how Tuesday would be the day when the crazy people are on the road. Little did I know!

So, we're coming back from the Blue Grade on The Well Road--it's maybe a few minutes after 8 am. We know there's potential high speed Bubba Traffic so we follow the Forest Service Backroad Rule--"Drive at a speed where you can stop in half the distance you can see." This rule is especially important on blind curves. There are a lot of blind curves on The Well Road.

So, we're coming around one of the particularly troublesome curves and there is this HUGE cloud of dust in front of us. At first, I can't make anything out and then I see a car inside the cloud and it has just flown off the road into the south bar ditch. It's a small car and it's high centered on some really knarly rocks. We are the first on the scene and we are also very lucky the unguided missile didn't run smack into us!

So, I pull up and over and give the cell phone to Susun and say, "If I yell HELP, dial 911." So far, no one has stepped out of the vehicle. It's a late model Dodge Neon, one of those small things. I start to approach the car very cautiously. The driver's door opens and a 40-something Native American kind of unsteadiily gets out of the car. It was real easy to see he was impaired. I kept my distance.

I asked if everyone was OK. He said "yes" and talked about how the curve surprised him. "That curve came up out of nowhere," he said. Uh, huh. On that stretch of the northbound section of The Well Road, the curve is visible for a half mile. Coming southbound it's a blind curve but that's not the case going northbound. You can see that curve better than any other curve on the whole road.

I made a note of their license number and said they would need a tow truck and good luck. Meanwhile The Road Roach passed by and never even slowed down. Smart Man!
I backed gingerly away and got in the car and immediately started trying to call the Sheriff's Office. I gave Dispatch a full description.

This incident was a little too close for comfort. I looked at the tire tracks before the slide off. If we would have been slightly faster on our return from Blue Grade, I think there's a strong chance we would have been in a head on collision with a couple of Full Moon drunks. At the rate they were traveling and in their impaired mode, if they would have actually made that curve, then things would have got a lot worse. We just barely dodged another bullet on that one!

As I said in the previous Full Moon blog post W-H-E-W!

Cheers, jp