Red Light Dream
MapQuest Maps: Houston,TX
Uchenna and I walk into this big corporate headquarters of what i guess was Cingular or Sprint. Uchenna was trying to get some phone stuff squared away, maybe he was switching carriers from Sprint to someone else, I dunno, but we were here.
The building seems small, and concrete was an interesting choice for an exterior material. I'm guessing that there is a good deal of building that we can't see, although the building probably has two or three stories of regular glass-looking business building exterior. Although I'm not sure cus I never really looked up or around at the place.
We walk into what was the front, and soon make our way up a dimly lit portion of narrow stairs, not even really caring about our surroundings. Uchenna makes his way to an office that I guess he is familiar with having dealth with the company before. I don't expect to be there long so I don't really mind going in.
While uchenna does that, i start checking out these random wall fixtures that the place tried to decorate with to basically give folks like myself something to look at while they are just waiting around in the place. I don't exactly remember what I saw so lets imagine that there were things like pictures of the President of the company meeting astronauts or doing some kind of charity work, or some kind of ground-breaking ceremony for this headquarters. Anyway, I guess Uchenna got done and said he had to use the restroom and to meet him at the car. Basically i'm trying to reason out why i went a different way than Uchenna did to leave the building. Maybe i was just pulling a BrentMove and walked a different way for no reason at all.
On my way toward the stairs I passed between two large marble reception desks about 20 feet apart. An apparently snobby/stuck up receptionist said to me "Are you taking the bus?" As if it is a bad thing, or that I fit some Black stereotype. I'm thinking, "How do you have the nerve to be snobby as a receptionist?" I retorted "I'm not taking the bus!" with a subtle hint of Black attitude, but it wasn't noticable... except to Black folk. Had someone else, in my presence, said that to the guy, I would have easily instigated by saying "Oooooooo, I heard 'Bizl/B*tch'... he said it!"
I walk my way down the wide marble steps just barely in reach of the right wooden rails. I make my way out of a side entrance through fancy glass doors and down some dull concrete stairs and eventually walk about 100 feet down a well groomed sidewalk and hedges toward corner of the building. Uchenna comes around the corner and meets me at the 89 foot. I recount the "bus" part to him, and he chuckles and then says he wants to see this dude. So we go back in for a second. Uchenna sees him and nearly points and laughs at the guy. :-) Then we come back out and go to the car.
The car is a Honda accord, not the new ones, but the older smaller ones, and this one is a manual.
Why an accord? I don't know. Uchenna's driving, i'm the passanger, Pahi is in the back left, and Uchenna's sister is in the back right. I guess they were waiting in the car this whole time while we went into the building to take car of Uchenna's phone mess.
We pull up to the exit of the building lot and there are three lanes to exit from onto a three lane street itself. It looks like S. Gessner back in Houston, but has alot of aspects of Bellaire or Bissonnet. Though we started on the left side we pulled into the middle part between two other cars about to exit. A little red two seater and a larger red car similar to ours. So we zip out into the street before the next set of zooming cars come. And we're flying. I don't know why everyone is driving so fast, but they are, all doing like 50 on this regular street. Uchenna is driving. The car is maroon, but i keep wanting to believe it's hunter green like my Del Sol.
So we're driving and we must be trying to beat red lights or something, cus everyone around us is speeding too. We are weaving in and out passing sparse cars here and there. We get to this point where we are in the far left lane, and we are behind this sky blue truck. One of those old Nissan truck, or the Toyota ones, in which a letter of the TOYOTA is missing and thus ur looking at TOY-TA, before chipped sky blue paint. Also, inside the truck are landscaping tools.
We are right up on the truck, like if it stopped for any reason we would go accordian on the bed of the truck. Uchenna, fully aware of the situation, waits a slight moment while a minivan or some insignifigant vehicle that was bigger than us, like a sedan, falls behind the flow of this high speed traffic, allowing us to jump into the middle lane. Therein we speed past the TOY-TA and then see a larger truck with an old wooden bed and side rails ontop of which a handful of Mexicans (or "Messicans" as a southern drawl would slur it) hoot and holler at the action while holding onto the trucks pitiful attempt at a bed-rail. The last car we passed leading this sky blue caravan was actually a van that said some company name and signified that it was indeed a landscaping company. We're gonna say "Vatos Pottos Landscaping" or something like that.
We wind up cutting across all three lanes just barely missing another car ahead of us in the middle lane. Now we're in the far right lane. And we are driving. Uchenna's driving, i'm the passanger, Pahi is in the back left, and Uchenna's sister is in the back right. We all look at the car we just missed, in laughing amazement, when i look forward, and see this HUGE WHOLE in hour lane. Basically it's big enough for the entire car to fall down into and it goes on under the street in a tunnel fashion. An 6-8ft tunnel being dug under that land but still clearly under construction. Uchenna and the rest turn to see the same thing, before i can say anything and before he can react ... CRAP we're airborne over it, but before gravity can kick in we've cleared it. Wow, we must really be going fast. We all look back at the whole, and catch sight as a car about 40ft behind us that must have been going faster than us is launched about 20feet into the air over this whole. "DA-A-A-A-NG" the entire car exclaims and I turn around again to find that we have drifted into the middle lane and are not more than 3 inches from the bumper of a vehicle in front of us, and fortunately it is going just as fast as we are so we are SLOWLY about to hit it. I shout to Uchenna, "HEY, PAY ATTENTION, MAYN!" He swiftly darts into the right lane again around the vehicle passes it, then jumps back into the middle lane in front of it, and speeds on. Soon we are back into the right lane in attempt to pass another car than just isn't hip to this high-action race against the red. Just then we spot sight of it, some costumed dough-boy who just realized that he's in for some sh*t if he doesn't get out of his middle-of-the-street marketing position. I'd say his large foam head looked alot like the Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show, but barely different so as not to get sued. The costumed guy somehow dodges one car about four car -lengths ahead of us, and then hops clear across our lane just barely clipped by the right mirror. The contact with us somehow spun the guy around and he dizzly stepped back into on-coming traffic. Again we all turned around to see what became of him, and uchenna more consciously moved into the middle lane. The costumed-dork dove off the street again, we watched as the foam head bounced on the side walk as he landed in "safety".
Now there were cakes about 14ft away from each other in a single file line on the middle of the street. They make a soft tempo as each one passes beneath the car. Then i bust out laughing and said "Hell No, this must be a dream..." and of course woke up near-laughing right there. Whew. Part of the reason I woke up was that I wasn't sure I could take anymore of that there action, it was like back in the day when we all would ride with Jennifer. Wherein the elation at being driven somewhere was soon exchanged for a merciful plea to God that we make it out of her driving alive. Soon followed by one of us passangers shouting "Oh sh*t, we're gonna die!" Same thing, just a less intensely scary, but with a longer thrill. Yeah.
Peace & Blessings.