I was driving home tonight, amidst intermittent downpours and lightning, and it reminded me of a memory flash from three years ago.

Some time in early 1998 I stayed working late at CKS. I was the last one in the office, and probably hadn't talked to a real person (other than myself) for a good 6 hours. When the office gets quiet, after everyone leaves, it's like the static is gone and I can hear my thoughts. At any rate, I'd done all the work I was going to do, took the elevator straight down to the parking garage, found my car (so much easier when the only cars left are yours and the two inexplicable porscha coverd in a veil of dust and document in the window stating they were reposessed by the DEA and are currently in the control of the Secret Service (which shared our building, oddly enough).

Get in the car, turn the ignition, all the bleeps and noises telling you exactly what you're doing, even if your eyes were shut. Pull out to the gate, wait for it to raise, pull on to Spear, deserted at 10pm on a weeknight, and drizzling. Take a right, go three blocks up Harrison, then hang a left onto the lower deck of the Bay Bridge for the zip back home.

The Bay Bridge is an interesting span. It's really two bridges, one beautiful 4-tower suspension, one a box-girder eyesore. Completely different, but if you're on the lower (eastbound) deck, both look pretty much the same. If it weren't for the bright yellow tunnel through Yerba Buena Island in the middle, you'd never know they were different at all.

Driving across the first span, I took my place in the pattern with the other cars, all going the exact same 72mph. Across the first span, through the tunnel, and starting on the second span. I don't remember what I was thinking about, but suddenly there was an earth-shattering boom, that went on and on. Booms aren't usually the sort of thing that last very long, but picture your favorite television explosion, the huge bang, and it just reverberates forever. Like looking into a mirror mounted directly across another mirror, sandwiched between the lower and upper deck of the Bay Bridge, sound waves had almost nowhere to go but back and forth.

Instantly I dove for the brake pedal, before I even registered the bright flash of light coming from both my left and right. In front of me I could see about 30 cars on the span and instantly, as if they were all wired together, 30 sets of brake lights flashed on. When I say instantly, that's exactly what I mean. There was no cascade, no reaction to other brake lights, not even the time required for sound to propogate from the first car to the last car. We couldn't have timed it better if we tried.

It took a few seconds to sink in that lightning had struck one of the towers we were driving beneath. The simultanacity of the thunderclap and the light, and the equal flash on both the left and right of the upper deck left no other possibility.

Okay, I've gone on for about 300 words, for what point? Yes, it's a memory that's been seared into my brain, but the interesting bit was the linkage created. The simultaneous experience bound the people on the bridge together. Cars began to pull up next to cars in adjacent lanes, just to look over to their fellow driver and give them a look that silently asked, "did that just happen?" Several dozen drivers, encased in their own worlds, listening to their own music, following their own trains of thought, were instantly shifted into an identical thought pattern, slamming the brake pedals and in so doing forming an instant affinity. Of course it dissapated after less than a minutes, and unless someone else who was there reads this and contacts me, the affinity is essentially gone, but nevertheless it was there, created by common experience.

So, thought for the day: What affinity groups do you have? Which were made by structured social or commercial interaction, and which were formed by random incident? Are your closer friends those who you likely would have met sooner or later, or the people who you happened to connect with in the most unlikely of ways?