With a Little Bit of Luck, When Temptation Comes You'll Give Right In

If you had been heading south on Highway 101 towards Monterey yesterday evening, you would have seen the strangest sight. You would have seen cars using an on-ramp to get off the freeway.

A rollover accident in Morgan Hill had caused a six-mile backup during the evening rush hour. Eighty-mile-an-hour traffic had come to a halt under the Bailey Avenue over crossing. All four lanes were at a standstill.

I was in the slow lane, softly cursing myself for not taking the back roads home like I normally would. I kept thinking to myself, "If I had only taken the Bailey Avenue exit a few hundred yards back, I could've avoided this mess."

As I inched past the Bailey on-ramp, my mind's eye envisioned a daring stunt car move. I would veer to the shoulder, yank the car into reverse, peel up the ramp, and drive off into the sunset at 55 mph on a parallel road.

This refreshing image was playing through my head while "With a Little Bit of Luck" from My Fair Lady played on the car's tape deck. Just then, three vehicles ahead of me, a silver sports car pulled over to the shoulder.

It sat there for ten seconds before the rear lights came on and the car started rolling up the on-ramp. The driver was a man in his twenties with short spiky hair, wrap around sunglasses, and a tan that would make George Hamilton proud. A blonde woman, two shades lighter and around the same age, sat in the passenger seat.

In the time it took for my car to crawl a hundred feet forward, the sports car had backed halfway up the three-hundred-yard-long ramp and three other cars had found the courage to embark on the same backward journey.

After another hundred feet of progress, I looked in my rearview mirror to see the reverse procession had grown to eight cars. More were lining up as bravery found a foothold in numbers.

Luckily for all of them, Bailey isn't a busy street. For every three cars using the on-ramp to get off, one car used it for its intended purpose and that was only until the driver of that vehicle realized he or she was heading into a traffic jam.

Soon, there were two lines of vehicles driving in reverse up the on-ramp. I swear I've never seen anything like it before.

If this were a karmic universe, there would have been a highway patrolman sitting at the top of the ramp, handing out tickets to his heart's content, but since it isn't, I have a feeling every car that went up the ramp, drove off into the sunset, on a parallel road, well above the speed limit.