Home again

I'm back from the Nebula Awards in Austin. Another 15 seconds and I wouldn't be.

I'm driving down I-35 just a few miles out of Austin, whipping through the concrete-lined "Death Star trench" on the north side of Buda where a lot of construction is taking place to add some impressive-looking overpasses. This is about a mile or so north of the huge Cabella's store there. Which isn't relevant to this story, but something I feel compelled to include.

So I'm driving along, taking a swig from a bottle of Diet Dr Pepper as I'm wont to do, when motion in my rear view mirror catches my eye. Not 20 yards behind me, I see a red pickup (maybe an older model Ford F-150. Maybe not. I wasn't focused on branding at the time, mind you) move from the right lane into the left. Which is no big deal, except for the fact that I watched it do this in profile. The truck rotated from a head-on perspective to a full 90-degree right angle profile. In front of a monster tractor-trailer rig. The pickup rode up into the big rig's front bumper, and the rig veered left into the concrete barrier lining that side of the highway. The trailer went right, blotting out the cluster of cars coming up behind.

You know how those kinds of wrecks take place in slow-motion in Hollywood films? They do the exact same thing in real life as well. I have no idea how many cars crashed into the pileup, but there must've been several. With the concrete barriers in place, there was no place for anyone to go, and with traffic moving at around 70 mph, there was no time to slow down.

The highway was instantly empty--just myself and one other car made it through before the interstate was utterly blocked off.

I was instantly on the cell phone dialing 9-1-1. I gave the dispatcher the exit number where it happened, the sequence of events and vehicles involved. More construction equipment and a slight bend in the road took me beyond sight of the wreck. It then started to sink in that if I'd delayed my departure from the Nebula Awards even a few seconds more--I saw Geoffrey Landis as I was leaving, and exchanged a few words with him before reluctantly pulling myself away--I'd have either been caught up in the ensuing traffic jam, or worse, caught up in the pileup itself. I consider myself very lucky indeed.

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