Getting to work today was all kinds of not fun. Seems like everyone decided today was the day to get into some kind of fender bender, and of course these had to happen right before the causeway in Davis, which means traffic was backed up for miles. I called Richard (dutifully using my hands-free device, which never fits well enough in my ear that I maintain any sort of confidence it will not go leaping out of its own volition one of these days. But I digress) to see if he could dig up any traffic incident report, just so I would know how much longer I was going to have to be inching along at the oh-so-swift speed of five miles per hour, but he couldn’t find anything. It wasn’t until I got to work today that I found out what had happened. Two or three-car pile up shortly before the causeway, apparently, timed just right so that by the time I would have passed the accident, it was already gone. As it was, it took me nearly an hour to make a trip that usually takes only half that long to drive. Yet another reason I am looking forward to moving to Sacramento – at least when we are there, I’ll have more than one route to get to work. Right now, I’ve got my choice of two highways, both of which have a tendency to have inexplicable slow-downs because they include hills and apparently to the drivers in Solano County, hills are so unnerving that everyone had to hit their brakes and, just for kicks and giggles, plow into each other from time to time because sometimes slowing down for a slight incline isn’t fun enough.

I suppose if it hadn’t been for the traffic, I wouldn’t have seen that one car though. As I was inching my way along the freeway, singing along to my Abba CD (because I defy anyone to listen to Abba and *not* sing along), a highway patrol car came screaming by on the shoulder. I saw it later, stopped by yet another accident – this one on the opposite side of the freeway, though – but as it was passing, it drew my eyes toward the road that runs slightly parallel beside the freeway. There’s this one building there that cannot ever seem to be successful, no matter who goes in there. It’s been a succession of diners – it’s even been a Dennys twice since I’ve lived around here – but the last diner gave up a month or three ago and now it’s just this boarded up building with a big empty parking lot in front, waiting for the next enthusiastically delusional young diner owner to fall in love with it and give it a go. Anyway. Right in front of this was a white car, pulled off to the side of the road, surrounded by more police cars than I’ve ever seen in one location for a simple traffic stop. The thing that struck me, however, was that for all the cars, there wasn’t a soul to be seen. Just a lot of patrol cars and a lot of flashing lights and the little white car sitting there by the side of the road with no one inside.