My Saturday Morning

So, I got off work Saturday morning after 10 hours on the South Asia desk, writing about fanatics in Afghanistan, Nepal, and India doing cruel and stupid things to each other. This job can be really depressing. I decided since it was a top down day, I'd drive about five miles south of where I live and visit my favorite Safeway. Suddenly, I saw flashing blue lights all over the highway. I started seeing vehicles in various states of demolition down a one-mile stretch of I-395. It looked like one of those multi-car pileups, but they were spread too far apart. There were cops and firemen all over the place. One thing the DC metro area has no shortage of is cops. It's not unusual to see a car pulled over with 3-4 police cars parked behind it. But I digress. The last vehicle I passed was a big tour bus on the center guardrail. On my way back about half an hour later, I saw there was a big white sheet draped over the bus driver's seat. That's never a good thing. When I got to work last night, I checked the wires and found this story.

ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) -- A charter bus driver who apparently blacked out behind the wheel and slumped out his window Saturday died as the vehicle traveled past a bridge column and smashed the man's head, officials said. Witnesses reported seeing the man hanging out the driver's side window when his empty bus veered onto the shoulder of Interstate 395 and his head hit a concrete barrier and the column, said state police Sgt. Terry Licklider. The bus continued down the road for more than a half mile, traveling about 5 mph, before two emergency workers running alongside could jump in to apply the brakes.

The odd thing is that it was just a year ago that I came upon another fatal bus accident, when an Arlington school bus collided with a garbage truck, killing two small children. On that day, I was also driving home from work and decided to take a detour to go to a different Safeway. In both cases, I arrived only about five minutes after the accident happened. There's no point or moral to this story. Just goes to show that sometimes interesting things happen even in my life.