Missing Time!

So, the Causeway bridge is marked every 1/10 of a mile with a sign and is 24 miles across. For me coming across in the morning, the distance counts down from 24 to 0. At around 16 miles the bridge rises dramatically and there is a drawbridge that allows big boats to pass through from one side of the lake to the other. Normally, the drawbridge is down of course, as it was this morning.

The drawbridge itself is a metal grid that can be raised. It’s very different from the concrete that makes up the rest of the bridge and is very noticeable in both appearance and in the sound and sensation you get crossing it. Somehow, this morning, I missed it. In fact, I experienced about a 7 minute time-gap. I remember noticing that I was at 19.4 miles on the bridge countdown. Then suddenly I was at 12.3 miles. I’d passed 7 miles and roughly 7 minutes in the blink of the eye.

One possible answer to the missing time is that I was abducted by aliens. They obviously released me very quickly and I can understand why given all the spicy food I ate yesterday. They must also have released me before any actual probing because I don’t seem to have any residual effects from such an experience.

Another possible answer, far more prosaic, is that I was so focused on my thoughts that I simply blanked out the outside world. I was going over my lecture notes for classes this morning so I would have something of an excuse for such deep cogitation. The thing that is a bit scary about this, though, is that I seem to have been essentially “unconscious” for 7 minutes while operating a very large and potentially dangerous piece of vehicular equipment. What’s more scary to me, is that there were probably other folks on the road with me who were doing the same thing.

I’d say be careful out there but from my experience this morning it looks like being mindless didn’t hurt anything. There were no wrecked cars or blue lights in my wake when I “woke” up at 12.3 miles. Perhaps the mind is not such a terrible thing to waste after all.