Catching Fog

Disasters arrive without warning. And they often arrive gently, like the merest tap on your shoulder. It’s only when you turn around, that you realize just how bad it is.

On the twentieth of June at 12:02 PM I got an odd text from my oldest daughter: “I broke the car.” My first thought was that something had gone wrong with it, such as a warning light popping on, or maybe a flat tire.

But soon, I discovered just what her text meant. About a mile from our house, as my daughter was driving along at about 45 miles per hour (which was the speed limit) she entered an intersection. The light was green.

But at the moment my daughter entered the intersection, a woman in another car decided to turn left right in front of her. The other driver failed to notice that someone—my daughter—was coming the other way.

My daughter stepped on her brake and swerved in a desperate attempt to miss the inattentive driver, doing exactly what she’d been taught to do in her driver’s education class. Unfortunately, despite her best effort, my daughter could not miss the other car completely, given the laws of physics.

Had my daughter not reacted as quickly as she had—remarkable given how little time she had—she would have slammed straight into the side of that woman’s car. As it was, she smacked its back end, taking out the right front end of her own car, putting it into a spin, and deploying her airbag.

Thankfully, neither my daughter nor the other driver were injured significantly in the accident. My daughter sustained a small bruise on her right knee and strained the muscles in her abdomen. That was probably from her seatbelt locking up as it was designed to do.

The police arrived relatively quickly, along with other emergency vehicles. Neither my daughter’s car nor the other driver’s car were in drivable conditions.

The police officer who helped my daughter let her know that the other driver was the one that was at fault. He expressed surprise at how calm and collected my daughter was. She didn’t panic at all.

My daughter’s boyfriend picked her up and brought her home. I contacted our insurance company immediately and let them know what had happened.

And so the process of recovering from the accident began.

Most thankfully, the other driver had insurance. In fact, we were in contact with the other driver’s insurance within an hour—long before the other driver. In fact, for the next three days, the other insurance company could not get hold of their client. Despite that, and despite our description of the accident, and despite our insurance company’s efforts, the other insurance company was initially reluctant to accept any responsibility. However, once they got the police report—about a week after the accident—their reluctance evaporated. They accepted full liability.

Even when things go smoothly—and things did go remarkably smoothly—there are still annoyances when an accident happens.

There was the complexity of getting a rental car.

Despite the fact that our insurance company was paying for the rental car, we still had to put down a deposit of fifty dollars. Then, after my daughter went back to her grandmother’s house (where she is staying, since her college is near there) the rental car started having rather significant mechanical problems: the steering was wonky and it shimmied weirdly at freeway speeds. So my wife had to go down to Orange County and help my daughter exchange it for a different rental car; my daughter couldn’t do that on her own, since the insurance is in our names.

Thankfully, there was no additional expense in replacing the rental car, beyond that involved in my wife making a hundred mile round trip.

Then there was the complexity of our deductible. Since the other driver was at fault, we had been led to believe that we would not have to pay a deductible. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Instead, we had to pay it first. Then we got to wait for the other insurance company to pay our insurance company for everything that our insurance company was initially forking out, and the deductible we were forking out. Once the other insurance company paid up, then, and only then, would our deductible be reimbursed.

Still, that was mostly just an annoyance, since it took barely a month from the time we paid the deductible until the time it was reimbursed. Thus, in the end, we were out no money at all. Nevertheless, it was an unanticipated and unplanned expense that wrought havoc with our cash flow.

All in all, the process couldn’t have gone much smoother than it did. Certainly it would have been preferable had there been no accident at all. But our health insurance took care of my daughter’s examination after the accident and the pain killers that were prescribed to her. The other insurance company paid off on all of that. And happily, my daughter was essentially undamaged. Though she remains a bit nervous as she approaches intersections.

Her car was repaired perfectly within only two weeks’ time. One would never know, looking at her vehicle, that it ever sustained 7100 dollars’ worth of damage.
In the end, the only consequence of an accident that could have been far, far worse, was the temporary disruption: the attention it required, the time it required, the stress, and the temporary outlay of money, since recovered. Our insurance took care of things just as insurance companies are supposed to. Insurance is well worth the cost.

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One of my favorite hiking spots is Vasquez Rocks, a 905 acre state park about half-way between Lancaster and Santa Clarita, just off the Antelope Valley Freeway. Crisscrossed with trails, the park sits right on top of the San Adreas Fault. The rocks of the name are gigantic jagged plates of sedimentary rock thrusting upward at about a 45 degree angle, like the sails of old clipper ships rising from the desert floor. Eroded by years of rains and sand, the rocks are made of multi-hued bands of parallel browns, yellows and reds. People climbing them look like ants scrambling upon their anthills.

My wife and I, sometimes alone, sometimes with our children and sometimes with our friends, will spend a few hours hiking around the park. We’ll pause at the babbling creek that runs in the gully, where we’ll sit beneath a shady tree and to eat our lunch. In the spring, the grass is green and flowers bloom; there are pepper trees, yucca bushes, and juniper trees everywhere. The aroma of flower and greenery fills the air, while birds twitter and butterflies flit.

On occasion, we’ll hike up to the top of those perilous rock outcroppings. One doesn’t need to know how to climb mountains to reach their peaks. No ropes or special shoes are required. It can be a bit intimidating for novices, but the view from the top is magnificent. It isn’t a spot for toddlers; there are no guardrails or fences to keep someone from falling.

In two weeks or so, we’re planning on hiking there again.

The Vasquez Rocks were named not for a famous explorer or politician. Instead, they were named after a notorious outlaw: Tiburcio Vasquez. He used the rocks to elude capture by the police—at least for a while—back around 1874.

Born in 1835, by 1852 Vasquez had fallen under the influence of Anastacio Garcia, one of California’s most dangerous bandits. He was there when Garcia killed the Monterey Constable, William Hardmount. And Hardmount would not be the last person Vasquez had something to do with killing.

Though Vasquez liked to claim he was a defender of Mexican-American rights, he was, in fact, far more of a bandit than a revolutionary. By 1856 he had been convicted as a horse rustler and spent five years behind bars at San Quentin, where he participated in four prison breaks that left twenty other convicts dead.

After his release from San Quentin, he soon returned to crime, committing numerous burglaries, cattle thefts, and highway robberies. At the same time, he was a notorious womanizer, having multiple affairs with women regardless of their marital status. After he and his gang stole 2200 dollars from Snyder’s Store in San Benito County—and after killing three bystanders in the process—his days were numbered. Posses began seriously hunting for him after a reward of a thousand dollar was posted for his capture. He continued robbing stores on a regular basis. He and his gang sacked the town of Kingston in Fresno County and robbed all the businesses there, making off without 2500 dollars in cash and jewelry. The governor of California, Newton Booth, was authorized by the California State Legislature to spend up to 15,000 dollars to bring Vasquez to justice. In January, 1874 Booth offered 3000 dollars if he was brought in alive and 2000 dollars if he was brought in dead. The rewards were increased to 8000 dollars and 6000 dollars respectively by February.

Vasquez was finally captured in late 1874. After a four day trial in January, 1875 he was sentenced to be hanged. Visitors flocked to his jail cell after his conviction, many of them women. He signed autographs and posed for photographs while he awaited his execution which took place barely three months later, in March 1875. He was only 39 years old.

Even if you haven’t visited Southern California, you’ve seen Vasquez Rocks—assuming you’ve watched any TV or movies during the last seventy years. Some of the better-known movies in which the Vasquez Rocks have made an appearance include the film Dracula in 1931, Blazing Saddles in 1974, Star Trek IV in 1986, the Flinstones in 1994, and the latest Star Trek movie of 2009. Some of the television series that have used Vasquez Rocks as a set includes CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, The Twilight Zone, Mission Impossible, Have Gun—Will Travel, Maverick. And perhaps most frequently, the rocks have been used for alien planets in episodes from all the various versions of Star Trek: from the original series in the 1960s to Enterprise in the 2000s. In fact, the rocks have appeared in over seventy television series and over forty movies, serving as backdrops for various westerns, for the town of Bedrock in the Flintstone movies, and for Vulcan, the homeworld of Mr. Spock from Star Trek. Captain Kirk fought a lizard-like Gorn there, defeating him with a well-placed blast from a homemade gun.

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