Distraction #74

On Monday December 13th 2010 I find myself driving home from San Francisco at roughly 2:30AM. I’m driving home my friend Brian’s sister’s car home for him as a favor and in fear of police complications resulting from my license not matching the registration I’m locked in at 55MPH zoned out listening to music. As I drive through the dense fog of Highway 1 I completely forget to slow down, I figure that since I can still see another car’s taillights through the fog I don’t have to reduce my speed. And obviously I’m the only car on the road at this ungodly hour.

I’m relaxed, I’ve got my left hand casually placed at the top of the steering wheel and my right arm slung idly over the passenger seat headrest. At first, I almost can’t believe it’s actually there. It looks almost like a Disney cartoon but, no more than 30 feet in front of me and coming at no less than 55MPH is an enormous 6 foot deer. I don’t even have time to put both of my hands on the steering wheel before I have to react. With the deft precision of a veteran of Gran Turismo for Playstation, I push the mid nineties Toyota Camry into the most aggressive one handed turn I can execute while maintaining traction with all four tires and, there by avoiding the deer by an estimated margin of 6 inches.

As I find my spot back in my lane all of the adrenaline of the preceding 10 seconds hits me with the speed of freight train. Feeling easily twice as bad as seeing a flashing pair of red and blue police lights in your rear view mirror, I find myself yelling at the top of my lungs realizing that I could have just died. Maybe it’s because I’ve read The Alchemist a little to recently but I’m about to take the next step of my “destiny” and I think I may have just got a sign… and you gotta take those seriously.