It has been a little over a week since I was almost destroyed in a massive fireball wreck...

I know this sounds a little nuts, but I swear this is all true.

I was up in SF (San Francisco) helping a friend move into his new 1.5M house last week.

Nice guy, good heart. He's got some problems, but all of us have some problems. He's a chef. In exchange for me helping him move, he took me out to some of the restaurants where he knows the chef and sommelier, where we had great 7-course meals.

Just a note to all the faithful out there: I admire you. I've been brought up around lots of people who don't have much faith in their lives, and let me tell you, it's Hemmingway-esque crazy to not believe, especially if your family is abusive or you have no significant other. I've been picking up on a theme lately with many of my family and friends: they fill up what I feel like is a big void in their lives with something else. Too much wine. Vodka. Adrenalene. Pot. Cocaine. (quick note to everyone: I drink rarely and socially, and I don't do the other stuff with the exception of natural adrenaline e.g. being an M1 Tanker or jumping out of a perfectly good airplane).

Anyway, last Monday night, up in SF, we're in my friend's car. Here's an example of his car, the Subaru STI:

http://www.rsportscars.com/foto/07/imprezawrxsti06_01_1024.jpg

His isn't even factory any more--it's been modified further and does 0-60 mph in under 4 seconds. It's 2AM. We're on the Bay Bridge in SF. Here's what that looks like on the map:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=bay+bridge,+san+francisco&ie=UTF8&om=1&z=13&ll=37.809513,-122.348557&spn=0.072422,0.137672

And then, the following takes place really fast:

We're talking. I'm a little buzzed from all the wine that was so wonderfully paired with our courses, and I'm a little tired from moving all day and it's 2AM. I realize that we're going pretty fast. We're going faster. Much faster. He says: "let's see how fast we can go." In maybe 3 seconds, we've sped up from 90 MPH to 150 MPH. I glanced at the racing speedometer. Literally, without exaggeration, 150MPH.

There's a small bump in the bridge bed on the curve. It's curving to the right, and you know where bridge plates meet, they're not always perfectly smooth on the pavement? There's a little bump there.

The car un-weights just *slightly*.

The back end comes around just a few degrees into a power slide at 150 mph on the f***ing bay bridge at 2AM. Driver's side now rotated slightly forward.

Luckily, adrenaline is just dumped into my friend's blood and his racing training makes him expertly cut into the turn as we skid in triple digit mph on a narrow bridge. We turn and slide the other way. I'm slightly in front. I'm hoping to slow down enough to not be pulped when we slam into the wall or possibly way, way over it. We tack AGAIN, back to driver. And one more time, the fourth tack, spinning 270 degrees and simply, lightly backing into the wall at 6 mph, leaving a little ding in his racing exhaust.

We scream because we CANNOT BELIEVE we're alive, high-five, and get the hell out of there.

I have a little chat with him the next morning. That might have been amazing, but that was so, so stupid, and we really should both be dead. He agrees and apologizes.

A few more degrees on that first turn and we would have easily flipped a dozen times to our deaths in a wreck on the bridge or just clear off of it. A hair off on the corrections and we would have slammed into the wall at well over 100 mph. Luckily, there was that racing foil for added ground pressure and racing tires, racing suspension, racing everything, and a racing driver. Luckily, there were almost no other cars on the bridge just then.

It makes for good stories the next night, and there's a little tiny scratch on his car that we both understand should have been our deaths, which is sickly thrilling.

Why am I saying this? Faith, folks. Good family. When you don't have too much of either, it's thrilling, shocking, sad, and amazing what good people will do to fill up that space that I don't think can really be filled by something else.

Anyway, I'm wary of hanging around people who are dear to me, but are downright dangerous. And I'm glad to be here.

Buckle up.