At 2:45 a.m., the word “earthquake” cut through my sleep-filled brain like a hot spoon in pudding. The sofa I was on was solid enough that I didn’t feel anything, but it had been a humid October night when Liz and Lisa and I all turned in for bed and Liz had left the windows open in the small living room.
Two people outside on the sidewalk were calmly discussing whether something was an earthquake, and suddenly I was upright on the sofa. Nothing was moving from where I sat, but I heard whispering in the next room. As I stood up, the room swayed a little, like it was gently shifting across metal rollers. As Liz soon explained, that was just the aftershocks - I had slept through the actual earthquake itself, a 7.0 Richter Scale tremor about 100 miles east of the North Hollywood apartment we were visiting, originating in the scantily-populated Mojave Desert.
She came out of the bedroom, noticed I was awake, and pulled me in to step up on her bed. “Watch!” she directed, and the three of us peered out of the window up high over the head of the bed. At first I didn’t know what I was staring into the dark for - and then I saw little choppy waves leaping into the air.
But not from the ocean - from the apartment complex’s inground swimming pool. The large blobs of water hung in the air, then came down on the concrete rim of the pool, rivulets rolling along the asphalt parking lot next to it.
For most people, that might have been the end of their flirtation with disaster. It was just a start for me. Shortly after Lisa and I left L.A. around 10 a.m. later that Saturday, we heard on the radio that the city or county had shut down one of the bridges we drove across because engineers suspected structural damage. As we rolled through the Mojave a couple or so hours later, we saw the same train out our window that we had seen on CNN earlier, derailed by the quake. And as we drove through a largely quiet Albuquerque at midnight, large, fluffy flakes of snow began to hit my windshield - followed by one of the heaviest blizzards I’ve ever driven through.
Yes, in New Mexico - and Arizona, and Texas. In October. You know it’s true because it’s so ridiculous.
For six hours, as I crossed the Rockies, I managed a grand total of 180 miles because the snow slanted across the windshield, making visibility a nightmare. Other cars and pickup trucks were off on the side of the road, snow stacking up around their tires, but semi trucks thundered along the road like it was almost nothing - which I’m sure no other regular driver reading this will find at all surprising. After all, rarely have a car and I limped through any highway-related disaster in 25 years that didn’t somehow involve semi drivers with a disregard for physics and precipitation.
This also includes the Great Interstate Ice Sheet of 2004, when another giant blizzard forced me off I-24 in southern Kentucky near Christmas Eve. Traffic was backed up for at least 40 miles in both directions as snow turned to icy rain, trapping me in a Super 8 near Cadiz for two days while I waited for roads to clear. When I finally checked out and continued my drive toward Missouri, us cars couldn’t manage more than about 30 mph along highways still so icy that the only traction was in how jagged and choppy the surface was from - as well as I can guess - semis rolling over it at approximately 268 mph. Every time I saw one of them rolling up alongside in the left lane, I would grip the wheel, brace myself, and hope the ambulances in the vicinity were also housed in big rigs.
I think it was after I returned from Hong Kong in late April 2001 that Mom told me I should arrive in any destination I was headed with a warning label attached, to give the residents a fair chance. This was about three weeks after a U.S. spy plane collided with a Chinese fighter plane and went down on Hainan island (about an hour’s flight from where I was) and the American crew was detained by the Chinese government until President Dubya wrote a letter of apology.**
Of course, it appears all this really only worked for a while, and I no longer exercise unwitting dominion over space and weather like some latter-day Poseidon. Which is a shame for my bank account, since I could make a pretty penny “predicting” disasters and accept tribute doing nothing more than staying out of the way.
Me (calling travel agency): Hola, Angela.
Angela: Uh-oh. I mean, hello! How can I help you?
Me: Well, I’ve got some time off coming up.
Angela: Mm-hmm …
Me: I was thinking about Hawaii. Maybe Ireland. But I see China is looking particularly flush- er, ah, touristy, these days.
Angela (after long pause): The usual offer, then?
Me: Ten grand and I stay home. Twenty grand and I won’t even tweet about the place.
Ah, if only …
September 14, 2018
**Can you imagine if one of our planes struck and killed a pilot of any other country in 2018 in their airspace, and their government demanded an apology from this White House for prisoner release? Dear tiny Baby Jesus; Edward Snowden would make it back here first.