1/21/10

While driving home from Monroe yesterday after a Craigslist purchase of a desk for Alex (which filled the back of my Jeep because there was also a hutch, which I balanced on top of the desk) I came one car away from being smashed: it was just before the Hilton towers on Route 18, where the road divides, and a white four door car raced by me on the right, rolled onto two wheels, spun out to the left, parallel to the oncoming traffic, smacked the side of a pick-up and then crashed into the divider . . . and by the time I stopped my car and took a breath, the lunatic driver extricated himself from the airbag, leaped from car, ran back across Route 18 and jumped off the edge of the bridge to whatever lay below, and, in the meantime, a police car pulled beside me on the right and a cop jumped out and pursued the insane driver/bridge leaper, and the guy who was clipped by him in the pick-up also pursued him, but when they reached the edge of the bridge they just stood there and looked down, so I'm assuming it must have been a steep, rocky, impenetrable drop that only someone who was wanted by the law would chance; I took the scene in for a moment and then slowly rolled past, feeling sorry for the people farther behind, who would be stuck on the exitless stretch of 18 for the long time it would take to sort out the mess.