I spent a lovely holiday with Panda’s family having a BBQ, then going home to enjoy the night with my mom, but along the way, some strange things caught my attention.

It all started on my drive back home after spending the day at his family’s.  I noticed on the opposite side of the freeway, a silver/gray Honda type vehicle on the side of the road, left side tilted up and that front wheel still spinning.  Apparently it had hit a pole of some sort, which seemed to be the thing propping it up at that strange angle.  The front of the car had a dent in the middle, with smoke coming out of the hood.  It was a bizarre thing to see and I almost didn’t believe it, what with all the TV show crime and accident scenes I’ve been seeing.  As I passed by, the driver’s side door opened slowly (remember that the car was tilted on its side, so gravity was working against them) and I saw an arm or a leg push out.  As I contemplated whether or not I should exit and turn around, I noticed an SUV type vehicle pull over.  It looked like they were getting help, so I continued on my way, but puzzled about that incident the entire drive home.

Then when I exited from the freeway and began to drive through my town, I noticed groups of people camped out on the lawns of businesses.  It seems that they wanted to get a really good view of the fireworks that night, which I think were coming from the town center or the nearby amusement park.  A couple of lanes of the road had been blocked off, which made no sense to me, since there was nothing there.  The right-turn lane of the street I was on was blocked off, but traffic going in that direction wasn’t stopped, so I couldn’t figure out why coned it off!  How bizarre.  Were they saving room on the streets for patrol cars to use later?  Were they actually going to block off all the roads in that area closer to the time the fireworks were due to start?  Were they going to allow people to use the road to camp out too?  Or maybe they were getting ready to set up traffic stops and sobriety checkpoints?  Who knows.

Finally, I passed by our postal office and noticed that the flag was at half-mast.  Pondering the situation, I couldn’t come up with any explanation as to why that could be.  Independence Day is a holiday of celebrations, not commemoration, like Memorial Day would be.  So it couldn’t be due to that.  I figured someone must have died, but I wondered if it was a local thing or national thing.  When I made it home, I did some digging around and discovered that President Obama ordered flags at half-mast for a couple of days, to commemorate the late Senator Robert Byrd.  I hadn’t really heard of the man, so I wonder if they always lower the flag for Senators or if this man was a particularly special one.  Apparently it was supposed to be raised to full mast for today (after all, it is a happy holiday), but seeing as postal workers are all off, it’s no surprise they just left it.  Makes it easier, since it’s to be half-mast for Monday and Tuesday anyway.

And there you have it, a 50-minute drive full of peculiar things that I just about managed to figure out.  This is how my curious mind works.