Car-ventures

I like driving at night. The streets are empty and the stress of driving in traffic is gone. The sun isn't out making things overly bright and hard on the eyes. It's a very calming experience driving home at three in the morning.

In the past few weeks I've had some interesting experiences driving home at night. Two weeks ago, I drove home from my friend's house in the North side of town at 3:00 am. I attribute the night's weird activities to the weekend being the first weekend of the Fringe and everyone had a reason to be out. As I stopped on Calgary Trail at Whyte Ave, I noticed I was sitting across the intersection from another car ... that was facing me. Immediately, the cops walked up to the car and got the driver to get out. As I drove around the car I could see the driver arguing with the cop that nothing was wrong.

Down the road, I could see people stumbling home. Two guys, walking on the side of the road at the S-turn before you hit Superstore decided to race with my car. They didn't want the race to be fair so they decided to block me by running in front of my car. I really didn't know what to do so I just slow down until they got out of my way, which took a while.

Yesterday takes the cake. I was stopped on 99 Street heading South at 51 Avenue. I was in the right most lane and there was a mini-van on turning left onto 99 Street North. The man driving was a man, I would guess, in his early-50s. He had thinning white hair and a beard to match. He was a bigger man and it looked like he was in the car with his adult son. He didn't look intoxicated and he had a look of concern on his face. He drives up by my car, going down the wrong way, leans out the window and points while yelling, "You're going the wrong way!"

Immediately, I thought that there had been a detour because of construction and I had missed a sign. But then I remembered I was followed by another car just seconds earlier before I stopped at the light. Then I thought that perhaps I misheard the man and really my headlights were burnt out. I looked down on the road in front of me, nope. Or maybe that hard bump I took earlier on my trip caused a flat tire, nope. I can't apply advice if I don't understand it so I didn't sweat it and continued on my way.

Before I arrived home, my mind began to wander and I tried to fill in the blanks of what the man was trying to tell me. For some reason, my mind kept on reverting back to racial statements. Could he have been pointing back to China and telling me to head home? Was he angry that China cleaned up right behind America at the Olympics, while Canada barely got any medals? I realize my mind is just going overboard and it was nothing of the sort. But I'm still wondering what he was trying to tell me.