TUESDAY, JULY 5 A short and pleasant wait today. A beautiful morning, about 65 degrees at 7 a.m. This side of the bay area (Vallejo, Benicia)had a HOT 4th of July – high ’90s at least, with a spectacular fireworks finale last night in Benicia. Now it’s reluctantly back to the job and commute today. I and another rider climb into the spacious back seat of a Hyundai SUV. The driver wanted to keep the front seat for her purse and asked us to sit in the back. The lady next to me starts talking about ‘gangster drivers’, clearly excited about something. “I always take a picture of the license plate of the car I’m riding in, when it’s with a man”, she said. It sounded like she’d attempted that this very morning, “but the driver got mad when he saw me taking the picture, and drove off!” “I like to take that precaution, just in case. And I always send the photo to my husband”, she added. The driver agreed. “You never know.” But she then added, “it works both ways, though. Some riders can be pretty strange.”
I didn’t comment, mostly because I didn’t want to get into that conversation. The photographer seemed a little over the top with her concerns, not like most of the commuters I ride with. If I don’t feel comfortable about getting in a car, I don’t. I wait for another ride.
But the conversation changed abruptly when we saw traffic stopping in all 4 lanes and a big plume of black smoke up ahead. Thanks to the driver’s husband, who she got on speaker phone, we learned that there had been a multiple car accident on the 80 freeway, near Pinole Valley Road, resulting in a car fire. We slowly inched along and finally passed the car which was totally destroyed. Only a gray metal shell remained, still smoking and being hosed by firemen. Hot! As is often the case, I never found out what actually happened, in spite of all my Googling. But it looked like all the people involved were alive and intact, at least the 6 people I saw, who were sitting on the hood of another car, grimly watching the car go up in smoke.
Still waiting to hear about the first year report on all those tolls we’ve been dutifully paying since last July 1. I did find one hot bit of some unsettling news on Phil Matier’s blog (this from May 4, 2011) – “Extra Bay Area Bridge Toll Money Lost in Bad Credit Deal”. It looks like the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the agency that oversees Bay Area bridges, agreed to settle a contract with Ambac Financial Group for $120 million. The contract began in 2003 when the Commission started using Ambac to sell bonds to finance work on the Carquinez, Benicia and Bay Bridges at a much lower rate. Ambac sizzled and went bankrupt in 2008, and the contract said the Commission had to pay up. So there went about a year’s worth of the ‘extra’ tolls we’ve been paying. So glad we commuters could help out. Hot times indeed.
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Getting There 