Today's episode of tales of the slothI'm riding home in the rain today and pull up behind the last car in the queue. The light goes green and vehicles up ahead start crawling. Dufus in front of me is on the...
Travelling through central PA a few days ago . . .
Light traffic, 65MPH Interstate, doing about 70 in the right lane. A little ways ahead of me in the left lane, older Jeep (late-80s Grand Cherokee?, maybe?)
I'm just cruisin', middle of the day, good weather, good visibility . . . when . . .
INSTANTLY, the ENTIRE roadway (median to ditch) is covered with smoke so thick you couldn't see past the end of your hood. I wasn't sure where the frickin' Jeep was (couldn't see a damn thing), so I hit the brakes and cranked the wheel right until I felt the wheels drop off the pavement, and stopped there, off the road.
Sat there several seconds, off the road, until the smoke started to clear. Eventually, through the smoke, I saw the Jeep pulled over on the breakdown lane ahead of me. Three people had jumped out of the Jeep and were trying to look UNDER the Jeep. Not sure what they were looking for. Jeep was no longer smoking.
As I could see again, I eased back up onto the roadway and continued on my way. As I pbutted the Jeep, I noticed all four tires on the Jeep appeared to be intact. (my first thought was that there had been some kind of spectacular tire failure and spin-out, with lots of smoke being generated by burning rubber from the tires, but I guess not)
Obviously a mechanical failure of some kind, but what would cause enough smoke in a matter of a second or two (at MOST) to suddenly obliterate all visibility in all areas of one side of an interstate highway? -Dave
