Two things I had never seen before

In the summer of 2006 I saw two things I had never seen before. I was running late for work so I am guessing it was about 10am.

When I got to the on-ramp of the east bound I-290 freeway I saw it but it was too late. Something I had seen many times before; stop-and-go traffic. Maybe it wont be too bad I hoped. Either way there was no turning back. Trying to make the best of it I slowly merged off the on-ramp and slowly made my way through the walls of thick traffic to the far left lane where I am most comfortable.

It didn't look like I was going to get lucky. The traffic would stay stopped for seconds at a time and then only move forward a few feet. That's when I noticed the first thing I had never seen before. The traffic on the other side of the freeway was gone. Not sparse, gone! Had it been gone the whole time I was in left lane? I think it had. There were NO CARS as far as I could see. None. Zero. Zip. I foolishly looked backwards, somehow there must be cars back there. Of course there were not.

I think it was the stark contrast of a full parking lot on one side of the freeway and NOTHING on the other that makes this such a strong memory for me. A few times I have been out on the road driving late at night and for moments there would be no one around until finally you would go over a hill or come around a curve and there would be another car. But this was not like that. It was minutes and there was three lanes of NOTHING.

Then I saw the second thing in one day that I had never seen before. Our side of the slow moving parking lot was slowly making its way through a shallow curve. When we were about half way through the curve I saw what was stopping the traffic on the other side. About one third of a mile down a helicopter was landing in the middle of the west-bound freeway.

I remember the whole thing in slow motion like it was yesterday. As my focus widened there were a couple firetrucks behind the helicopter, a couple of police cars, and several firemen standing about waiting for it to land. As soon as it was good and on the ground two men carrying a third strapped to a stretcher came from stage right and slid the stretcher on to the helicopter. Another fireman had been holding a hatch open for them. All the while the blades of the helicopter were still spinning causing everyone there to walk hunched over.

About now I was almost next to them. The fireman that was holding open the hatch closed it and then patted it hard a couple times and started to back straight back still hunched over. The helicopter engine started to whine and the spinning blades sped up lifting the craft off the ground. Straight up at first then up at an angle.

Our side of 290 was quickly breaking up now. The traffic was returning to normal. I was getting past the rubber-necking zone which of course was the only cause for the traffic on our side. The other side was backed up, stopped, as far as I could see. Even when I got back to 70 mph I was still passing stopped cars on the other side. I was just glad it wasn't me.

Since then I sometimes have wondered who it was that was evacuated like that. Where they important? More important than me? How bad were they? and did they live? I guess I will never know.