07.09.07

Woke up late this morning.

Usually have the cell phone start talking to me at 0515.

A very un-sexy robot lady voice tells me

"It's 0515, time to wake up!"

By hitting any number on the pad I gain another 10 minutes on the snooze function.

"It's 0525, time to wake up!"

Etc, until close to 0600 hours when I fall out of bed.

Apparently there is a button you can press to shut the alarm completely off.

And so I fell into the shower at 0620 thinking about the building traffic and cursing the robot lady voice who at that stage I believed had decided to just shut up and watch me sleep, or that perhaps I had put her to sleep with the alcohol vapours emitting from my person.

But the traffic was not heavy. The traffic was not slow - the traffic flow was at such a rate I made it to work in 25 minutes when by all laws of physics it should have taken 45 minutes.

I realised when I was in the flow that I had stumbled onto the mythical gap in traffic that is legend.

Where no car is directly in front of you or behind you. Yes there are cars but they are in the distance in front and back, they never come closer to you and you never get closer to them. There is no change in the flow or distribution, no need to break and you see no other car break, there are no new cars that enter the equation and the pattern continues until your destination is reached.

The drive becomes a pure experience of what driving should be in the absence of cars whilst being amongst them.

I felt I would be able to stop in the fast lane and nothing would change, nothing would come closer or go further away.

It was a strange experience and being so I checked but no albatross was hanging around my neck and the thousand thousand slimy things on the floor of my car are normally there so I was sure opium was not the influencing factor, of course having the rotting remains of Coleridge in the trunk may have something to do with all this.

As I pondered on water being everywhere but apparently not consumable I wondered whether since I had experienced the mythical traffic gap, I might be visited by a nautical myth, the White Squall.

A wall of water 50mtrs high that arises out of the sea in the absence of storm with no warning.

There have been many reputed incidents off the dangerous coast of South Africa.

Though nothing surfaced (hahahahaha) and I made it to work, mind you Vicki soaked me with saline (completely unprovoked attack on me may I add, I never agitate a situation) and I work around many South African's so I remain concerned the wave may find me on the return trip home tonight.

Which is where I need to head now, though will stop at the local as alcohol is reputed to ward off unpleasant mythical things and should counter South African seawater.




The Grey Madness, Gollum, his 6000 year old dog and the 6ft White Wabbit.