Bridges are designed to take you up and over things, and this one did that as well as any. Problem is, although it ascended smoothly, the crest held a nasty surprise. The down side was steep beyond imagining. Who knew motorways were built like this? Anyway, having reached sufficient height to cross over several roads below, the freeway bridge dropped like a cliff. It didn’t so much descend as plummet, turning my car into a sort of dive bomber. I went silently screaming downhill, and in the way of such things, straightened out at the bottom of the slope. Now driving along as though nothing of a savage highway engineering nature had occurred. Until the next overpass loomed. Magnificent, these freeway flyovers. And this one would have been magnificent too, except that I couldn’t quite steer my car straight enough to make an inevitable turn. So I went blasting through the guard rail and into space…. Which fortunately jolted me awake. Who needs driving nightmares…the actual roads being scary enough.

And scarier than anything is the human capacity for generating anxiety. The real scary driving experience…and I know it sounds like a blogger’s obsession, boring and repetitive…was quite uninteresting. First, imagine the scene. Daly City. For anyone familiar with the San Francisco area, this is the most mundane of suburbs. Daily City is where San Franciscans go to get their cars repaired. To buy garden supplies. Or get a deal on carpets. It’s where I had just been to shop at Trader Joe’s. Why there? Doesn’t the Trader have shops in San Francisco? Yes. But I hadn’t driven on a motorway in, well, a long time. I wanted to break the anxious pattern. Get out on the freeway, get up to freeway speed, become a real Californian again.

I have read about the death of the American mall, the contracture of shopping centers built around parking and big “anchor” retailers. They must be dying somewhere else. Around San Francisco, malls are places to drive to early in the day before every shopper in creation beats you to the parking spaces. Daly City’s Westlake Shopping Center is no exception. At 9:30 AM the place was full up. I got one of the last disabled slots. Never mind, there I was.

I made a preemptive strike on Pets Unleashed. Nothing like dried chicken scraps to amuse the doggies. No lettuce seedlings at Home Depot, of course. The store’s garden center had very few vegetable plants. Still, it seemed worth asking. It wasn’t. The shop assistant, inches away from a bedraggled assortment of tomato plants, interspersed with aubergine and courgettes, picked up the phone to ask.

With the answer blowing in the wind, I left. Finally, Trader Joe’s for a lamb rack, scallops and shrimp. Oh, yes, some red wine blends. Couple of tins of fire roasted tomatoes. And, no, just can’t leave without a few lentils curls. Then back out to the van and back on the motorway.

Gentle Reader, do understand that we are talking 2.5 miles of freeway. But that was sufficient to defeat and deflate me. My foot kept getting stuck on the accelerator. Well, not exactly stuck, but dragging. The effect being just enough to unnerve me. I kept gratuitously shifting from accelerator to brake to reassure myself that the car was more or less under control. Anyway, it was enough to shatter one’s nerves. And engender some most unpleasant dreams.

There’s a happy ending. He’s my physical therapist. He has been for more than 30 years. We had a chat today. What was happening with my foot? Beats me, he said. Then he brought the discussion back to where it has been for a while. Neuromuscular fatigue. And this condition doesn’t make a spinal-court-injured person feel tired…which I must remember. It’s a weakness that creeps up invisibly. Which may be why driving to Daly City seemed relatively easy. Then on the way home I didn’t have the same neuromuscular wherewithal. Something like that.

It’s bad news. It’s not a bad dream, however. Those come from somewhere else.