home again, dag nabbit
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
As always, I had to come home again. I was lucky to have the day off, today (given that I started this job a mere six weeks ago), and I'm thankful for that. But with needing to have the car back for five, it meant leaving at eleven AM. Not ideal, but also not as bad as it would be if I left around 13:00 and got stuck in traffic all the way back.
As it was, the trip took only four hours.
Here's a tip for people travelling on highways 35 or 115 in Ontario. These highways, which connect the 401 to Lindsay and Peterborough, respectively, have two intersections. This can be a vital tip if, as happened to me today, you encounter a messy collission at the major intersection of those highways that has them both tied up. When I came down the 35 today, I saw to my dismay that the soutbound traffic was stopped at the major intersection. Fearing that I'd be stuck there for hours, I started to curse. It's sort of a thing I do. I accepted an unhappy spot among the stopped traffic across all lanes, and thought about my options. Turning around and going to the 7 would mean an hour delay, but at that point I was considering it.
Then I noticed a fire truck going away from the intersection with its lights and sirens going, and two utility trucks in close pursuit. Wondering where they might be going, I decided to pull away from the huge snarl of parked cars, did a notty U-turn, and beetled off after the three trucks. They'd turned west off of the highway onto a side road that for some reason had a sign saying "to 35 south". I've driven the 35 many (many) times over the years, and I'd always been under the impression that it terminated at the 115, so this sign confused me. Following the clouds of dust left by the trucks, I followed the road (seemingly a left-over rural route from before the highways's construction) left and saw to my amazement that this is a second intersection with the 115!
The utility vehicles pulled over at the side of the road, and the fire truck roared back toward the main intersection, where there was what looked like a fatal car accident being attended to by no fewer than three ambulances and an assortment of other cop cars and whatnot. Free to proceed, I charged onto the southbound 35/115, an otherwise empty road. Hooray for leftover rural routes! I imagined, when I pulled into the car rental lot two hours later, that I might well have been stuck there if I hadn't noticed those trucks scooting around the accident scene.
I hope everyone survived that accident. It's not the first that I've seen at that intersection, but it certainly was the one with the most EMS vehicles.