An Inauspicious Start and End to the Day

I can't remember the last time I was "off the air" for more than 24 hours, but it's been that kind of trip. Let me recount it for you:

We wanted to get an early start on our way to Northern California. Our original plan had been to leave at 5am, but everybody's anxiety to see our college girl for the first time in a long time moved the start time to 4am. We actually pulled out of the garage at 4:04.

By 4:05 we were on the freeway zipping along at, shall we say, excessive speed and by 4:07 we were stopped dead on a freeway that had been closed for a fatal accident. We hadn't even gotten 2 miles from home. Some 20 year old had piled his Mitsubishi into the back of a semi truck, and before it was done, several other cars had joined the melee. This all happened 20 minutes before we left the house.

Back to the story - as we got up to speed I saw the dreaded highway sign that read "Major Accident, All Lanes Blocked, I-5 @ 405". Below the sign I could see brake lights ahead and a CHP cruiser swerving back and forth across all lanes to slow everybody down. He then brought us all to a stop about 100 yards short of the Lake Forest exit. A lousy 100 yards. I was going to jump off there and take surface streets around the accident but could get to the exit. For the next 25 minutes we sat there and watch the CHP lay out a flare pattern to reduce six lanes of traffic down to one. It wasn't until 4:30 that we were finally able to move and exit the freeway.

What I don't understand is how people manage to run into each other at 4:00 o'clock in the morning? You could land a 747 on the freeway between cars at that hour, and yet people still manage to hit each other. I guess it's like this (and I paraphrase): Where two or three are gathered, collisions shall be in the midst of them. (1 HolyCoast 3:16)

We did make good time heading north and actually arrived at the college in Rohnert Park at 11:15 am, making a couple of brief stops along the way. We had a great time giving our daughter her birthday presents (a few days early), and spent the afternoon shopping for some stuff she needed and getting some good food (it beats the school cafeteria, I am told).

As we headed through downtown Santa Rosa on the way to the mall, what to my wandering eyes should appear but a full blown moonbat convergence. An "Impeach Bush" rally was in full cry and 200 or so aging hippies and other malcontents were shouting their slogans and playing their protest songs. I thought to myself "Self, this would be a good time to get out the video camera and shoot stuff for a video blog". I left the ladies at the mall and hiked a few blocks back to the rally and spent some time wandering among the moonbats. Once I get back to my home computer I'll put some of the video together and put up a video blog - hopefully by Tuesday. It was quite an experience.

After getting back to the hotel last night I planned on spending some serious blogging time, but as feared, the wireless at the hotel is next to useless and thanks to problems I'm having with AOL and an apparent conflict with their latest MacAfee security software, I couldn't even get signed on to anything. I finally gave up and came into the hotel lobby early this morning to use their computer to post this. Consequently, posting will be a little light until I can get home.

Tonight we have the girl's concert, and we're looking forward to that after spending part of the day in old Sonoma. Hopefully the car will work better than the computer.

I'll try and check back in later.