Here is a copy of Rich's first blog post on our Chesler Photography New England page. I'm so proud to call him my brother:
Sometimes it seems as though we are inexplicably drawn like
magnets toward the very things to which we least want to be
drawn.
Case in point. No wait....first an analogy. It is my
modus operandus to wax metaphorically via analogy. Though
sometimes esoteric, analogy is the Brett Favre of language
devices for conveying a simple idea in 12 different ways,
each one further and further from the original idea, usually
punctuated by an apology, and an attempt to get back on
topic, usually via anecdote or another analogy.
If there was a road through the desert (any desert...it
doesn't matter which) and there was a single tree, more
than 100 feet from the side of this road (either side, it
doesn't matter which, though it will in the next part of
this story) somehow, seemingly unrelated events would
transpire, and circumstances would align, to cause a single
car (mine of course), to somehow, find this tree, and
attempt to merge with it.
Ok...forget the whole desert thing....and the tree. Just
the car. Keep the car. I was driving along the Merritt
Parkway in southern central Connecticut last Sunday,
keeping with the flow of traffic at about (will my students
be reading this piece?).....highway speed. As we entered
the Fairfield, CT theoretical dome of unusual circumstances
(which actually exists (I have encountered multiple strange
events in this area)), the hood of the car inexplicably
popped open. Ghosts? Gremlins? You decide. With
hurricane force winds attempting to lift my hood and fold it
back over my windshield, I quickly stood on the brakes, and
moved the 6 foot-wide car immediately into the 5 foot-wide
breakdown lane to get out of the way of the rest of the pack
of cars traveling at (er...) highway speed. Naturally, in
the middle of the narrow breakdown lane was a 40 lb animal
carcass. I could neither stop in time, nor turn the car at
all given the guardrail to my right, and the speeding cars
to my left. I had to straddle it and hope to clear it. One
out of two ain't good. I successfully straddled the
animal, but the car was just about an inch too low. Bang!
Now what are the odds that I would find a reason to hit the
only animal on this 65 mile stretch of highway? Actually,
this animal wasn't on the highway. He was off to the
side. The odds of my encountering a reason or set of
reasons to savagely challenge this dead animal lying
peacefully on the side of the road, with my 3,000 lb car,
are approximately 1. Or 1:1 or 100%. I stay out of deserts
for this reason. Hitting this animal was an inevitability.
A certainty.
Fortunately, he missed the front air damn and hit something
very sturdy under the car. Nothing a wire brush and some
liquid hair remover couldn't fix. I still don't
know why the hood popped open. In 25 years of driving, this
has never happened before, and probably never will
again...unless there's another dead animal on the side
of the road needing a shave.
PS. So what else has happened in this dome of unusual
circumstances? I've encountered a 100 foot-wide
hailstorm (over my car of course), I've had a llama run
between my car and the car in front of me while traveling at
60mph only 10 car lengths apart. (Revisionist history now
calls it a deer. I was sure it was a llama at the time.)
I've gotten off the highway onto Black Rock Turnpike,
traveled 4 miles in a straight line and gotten back on the
highway at the same exit I got off. I could swear I'd
even passed myself going the other way. I didn't wave
at myself, but there was a llama in the passenger seat.
Strange place.
