Thursday, December 18, 2008

This is not how I want to die

It's rush hour in Jacksonville and I'm heading northbound on 9A. Florida 9A is the eastern portion of I-295 which is the western portion of 9A. Basically, it's the same road. Kind of like when you tell someone to turn onto Alta Drive and keep driving until they pass Alta Drive. Yes - it's retarded.

Wanna see something else that's retarded? The good old folks in Jacksonville's city government thought this was a good idea:

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What. The. Shit? How did that ship not hit the bridge? The bridge that I'm currently stranded on because all the dumbasses ahead of me are too busy gawking/taking pictures/crapping their pants? Or, as in my case, nearly peeing all over themselves. When you're not expecting something this big to come into view, under the bridge on which you are driving, your mind tends to go into the Holy Shit! Am I going to die? mode of thinking.

I remember reading that the JaxPort Terminal for Carnival Cruise Lines was engineered in such a way that any ships returning to port in Jacksonville had to arrive at low tide so that the clearance between the highest point of the ship and the highest point of the bridge would be...(gulp!)...SIX FEET!!!!

Six feet? That is all the buffer I have and the only thing that keeps the cruise ship from barreling into the Dames Point Bridge, slicing it in half, and sending hundreds of cars into the St. Johns River. It's a long drop at almost 200 feet.

High tide? Low tide? Whatever! Just don't do this at rush hour. Please!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ok I see your point. Unlike the bridge that colapsed between Wisconsin and Minnesota, now that bridge fell for no good reason, just plain ungy, and not cruise because of some fancy cruise ships of happy people!

But this on looks so scenic even with the impending danger.

PS We have a foot of SNOW today. I would love to be stuck on you bridge today and not stuck at home, shoveling!!! <3

Anonymous said...

It's a beautiful bridge - my favorite bridge! I even wrote about it for a local paper. Maybe I spent too much time watching coverage of the Minnesota bridge collapse. I'm weird, anyway.

Snow?? It's 76 degrees today :)