but officer, i only slammed an 18 pack...

travelling the twisty, hairpin-turned roads 300 feet above the raging river through kern canyon every other week is generally a fun, exciting experience in driving - especially when i take Adalwolf the BMW.  this last weekend, however...not so much.

the main problem in driving this canyon isn't necessarily all of the psychological crap you are bombarded with along the way.  things such as narrow, winding roads or the fact that the south side of the road has, in some cases, a shoulder no greater than 6 inches of dirt up against a sheer wall of rock rising hundreds of feet above, while the north side has some serious free fall areas with no guardrails and a river, flanked by plenty of giant boulders, thrashing hundreds of feet below.  it's not even the unnerving sight of various crosses erected for those people who haven't made it safely through the canyon in the past; although this has never failed to bother me in the 4 years i've been driving it.  the main problem in driving this canyon is simply other drivers.

some people, known affectionately - and sometimes not - as flatlanders, are either unfamiliar with or simply terrified by the road and crawl up it, hugging the center line, occasionally threatening to (albeit, slowly) remove your side view mirror upon passing you. these people generally respond to a flash of bright lights behind them and pull over into one of the many turnouts designed for people that just want to enjoy the scenery (of which there is plenty and it is stunning).  some flatlanders - generally older ones that are just stubborn, or those that  caravan with 5 other cars and - how do i say this without offending anyone - might not be able to read and/or understand the language of the signs along the road that read "slower vehicles use turnouts" - refuse to pull over and have been known to pull a train of 15 cars all the way up the mountain, warranting road rage and dangerous passing maneuvers, to say the least.

even worse than these people, though, is the guy (or gal) leaving a bar somewhere on a friday night, 15 sheets to the wind and needing to get to the other side of the canyon. i have suspected drunk drivers only a couple of times in my travels along ANY road and only once before in this particular canyon. the guy i came up behind last friday night had to have been so completely plowed that the fact he had been able to recognize his car in the parking lot, start it, put it into drive and make it to the mouth of the canyon, was simply amazing.

when i first came up behind the blue minivan, i had just entered the canyon, heading east and was cursing my luck to have gotten stuck behind a slowby right off the bat.  it was just dusk and this guy was driving no more than 15 mph and hugging the right side of the road.  weird, but i just figured he was more terrified of going over the cliff to the north than he was of sheering off the right side of his van against the wall of rock to the south.  i held back patiently - yea, i know...whoa - and gave him the opportunity to find a turnout and pull over before i got all up in his grill to let me by.  while behind him, i had seen him cross the center line a couple of times, but just figured he was cutting a corner here and there - no biggie i do it all the time.  he passed by two turnouts with no indication of pulling over so i flashed him with my brights to let him know i wasn't exactly patient by nature and i expected to be able to fully experience the beauty that is driving Adalwolf on a road like this.  sometimes if i flash someone they get all pissy and slow down even further - whatever, i really have no time for the passive-agressiveness of others, i'm generally too consumed with my own...this guy, however, took off like a shot.  he left me in the dust, which i generally take as a personal slap, but as he took off i noticed that he was swerving back and forth, alternating driving in the dirt and miraculously missing the rock wall on the right with crossing over the center line to the left. i immediately started chanting his license plate number out loud to myself while looking for a cell signal to find that i had absolutely none.  i kept redialing 911, thinking i would eventually hit an emergency-calls-only pocket and i sped up a bit, trying to keep this guy in my sights, but also keeping enough distance that i wouldn't slam into him around some blind turn if he decided to stop in the middle of the road.

at this point i had two other cars behind me that i'm sure were putting skin-eating curses on me because i wouldn't pull over to let them go by.  hey, maybe they hadn't seen this dirtbag up there and didn't know what they would run into, so good-samaritan shawna took it upon herself to save the world and did something that average shawna would NEVER do and hogged the road.  having gone about 8 or 9 miles up the road, still with no cell signal, i came up on this guy doing 15 miles an hour again.  this time i fell back because i didn't want to make him take off again.  it didn't matter, he punched it again, veered off the shoulder to his right spewing gravel and dirt, as i watched him take these turns with absolutely no indication that he even owned brakes, let alone knew how to use them.  a total of about 10 cars had passed me going the opposite direction by this time and i kept thinking "THANKYOUGOD" every time i saw one pass safely...at this point there was really no doubt in my mind that this guy would not make it all the way through the canyon without driving off the edge himself or sending another car in that same direction.

by the time my 911 call went through i had probably traveled 15 of the 20 or so miles that make up the really dangerous stretch of this road...i pulled over when i had the signal and told the operator what i had seen.  i gave her my info and the info of the blue van and she said they would broadcast it to the CHP on either end of the canyon and take care of the problem.  i started slowly up the road again, drove about a half of a mile and came around a blind curve to see a huge suburban sprawled across both sides of the road, completely crushed along it's entire left side. oh shit. bad yes, but people were getting out and standing in the road and no one was screaming - i'm thinking at this point they probably weren't fully aware that if they had been driving a smaller, lighter car they would have been shot off the the cliff to the north, but my guess is that it came to them before too much time had passed.

i pulled up to them, asked if everyone was ok and if it had been the blue van...they weren't sure if they were hurt, but thought not and said the van had taken off after crossing over the center line and sideswiping them them.  i pulled off to the right and called 911 again to report the accident.  still talking to the 911 operator, i started up the road again, turned two corners and almost hit the blue van.  it had obviously stopped of it's own accord and was just left where it died - half on the road, half off.  i stopped behind it and told the operator what i saw and she wanted me to look and see if anyone was still in there...uhhh no, not gonna do it - wouldn't be prudent.  i told her that the tires were blown, the windows were shattered, the entire left side was crushed in and the right was up against the mountain.  i told her that i couldn't see anyone in it, but also didn't see how he could have gotten out, and then informed her that i was a complete wiener and was definitely not getting out to check for sure. she very politely thanked me anyway and let me go about my shaken, needing a shot of crown way.  thankfully i was only about 20 miles from my destination and that shot of crown would be more than likely waiting for me when i got there.

i found out the next day that the driver had fled his vehicle after it crashed and that they called in helicopters to try to find him, but that it was too dark and they'd had no luck.  i still don't know anything else about whether they found him yet or not - what i do know is that i had dodged a bullet myself and i was extremely thankful for that.