Driving Down the Middle

My father is unlike any person I've ever known. I hope you get the pleasure of meeting him some day, and I guarantee you'll leave laughing. He's funny when he doesn't mean to be; he says random stuff that even makes us wonder where his train of thought is going. He's a great man, and I'm proud to call him my pops.

However, and I mean this in the nicest way possible, my dad is the worst driver I've ever been in a car with. We kids have never understood why my mom allows him to drive (especially when they come to Denver). Once they enter the city, one of us kids takes over the driving. He says he's never been in accident. We kids wonder, "How many accidents has he CAUSED that he doesn't even know about?" He gets lost in parking lots, and there have been many times when we have driven around in circles for over fifteen minutes just trying to find the main road. He's gone down a one way road in California only to see a giant Greyhound bus headed straight toward us. There was actually a man in ANOTHER car who literally shielded his face because he thought my dad was going to ram into him; we narrowly missed this man by inches. He doesn't check his blind spot until he's already changed lanes, and then he'll glance over his shoulder to see if anyone WAS there (by now, they are probably in a ditch because they had to swerve to avoid being hit by dad).

I originally started this post to tell you a story about a snowy day in Denver years ago, and for some reason my dad was the one driving (we hadn't learned our lesson yet). But as I started typing this story, I remembered another story that deserves attention, too. The snowy story will come later...

Eight years ago, I moved to Oregon to go to school for a year. Mom and dad drove me out there in September. It was a quick trip, as I had to get there for school, and they had to get back to NE for work. A two day drive there...A two day drive back (for them). A year later, it was time for me to move BACK to NE, but this time we were going to take a more leisurely trip home so we could experience the west coast. Shannon and Collin were able to come, and we had a great time touring through Oregon, California, Salt Lake City and Idaho. Our first part of the trip landed us in Portland, one of my favorite cities.

If you've never been to Portland, it is a city you MUST visit. It's gorgeous, as the river runs right through the main portion of the city. There are over a dozen bridges that take you from the east side of the city to the west side as you cross the river. Dad, of course, was drivingon this particular day, and all five of us were in the truck. None of us were familiar with the city, so we were just driving around enjoying this beautiful city. We crossed a bridge and were on the east side. We crossed another bridge and were back on the west side.

As we took our time driving through the city, dad saw a long bridge that he wanted to cross, so he began to make his way in that direction. As we started to drive up on the bridge, it was different than all the other ones we had crossed. There were two lanes headed east; there were two lanes headed west. BUT, right in the middle of the bridge, although wide enough to fit a truck through, was a brick partition that ran the entire length of the bridge. It looked like a single lane, but the only difference was it had a brick wall running along side it.

For whatever reason, dad, rather than driving in one of the two lanes heading east, decided to drive down the middle lane, instead. As we entered the lane (remember, there's a brick wall running along side, so once you start driving down the "road," there's no way to get out until you come to the end of the bridge), we all realized almost at once that it wasn't a "road" for cars. It was a "road" for trains. It was a railroad track!!!

Dad was barrelling down this track at 40 m.p.h. As you can imagine, the bumps on the track had us all bouncing in the truck and our teeth were clattering together. But most alarming was the fact that we were on a railroad track. And not only were we on a railroad track, but there was a brick wall on either side of us that was preventing us from getting OFF the railroad track. At this point, we had no other choice but to keep driving. Our main fear was that we were going to come head to head with a train. We were pretty sure the train would win that fight. In order to get off the track as quickly as possible, dad slammed on the pedal, lurching us forward at a speed of close to 50 m.p.h. Shannon ended up in my lap. Collin hit his head on the window. Mom was praying in the front seat. Dad was mumbling, "I don't know why they'd put a train track right in the middle of the bridge like this."

Obviously, the ending to my story is a little anti-climatic as we're all alive and safe today. We did NOT encounter a train that day on the tracks. We did NOT let dad keep driving. We did NOT stop laughing until hours later after the shock of what had happened wore off.

The rest of our family vacation was pretty "boring" after that. We had no more driving scares, and we were able to see the beautiful Redwood Forest in Cali and the amazing Salt Lake outside of Salt Lake City. We still get a laugh out of that story (dad doesn't think it's very funny) to this day.