Andrew and I are visiting San Francisco this week. Last night, I wanted enchiladas from the Mexican place across the street from the hotel. It was still warm out even though the sun had set hours ago, so we decided to walk over.
Our hotel is on a busy road with three lanes in both directions, but there are lights along the road so there are periods when no cars are coming. We waited until a wave of cars had passed and sprinted across the first three lanes. In the darkness, it looked like the median was flush with the pavement and I charged at it. It was actually raised and my foot hit it six inches before I had expected to encounter anything solid. I staggered and lost my balance but I was still running full-steam, so I tripped my way forward ending up in the middle of the road. I lay there on the highway, stunned, looking at three lanes of cars coming at me.
Get up! screamed my brain. It hadn’t even finished shouting when Andrew scooped me up and half-carried me off of the road. He had almost tripped over me as I fell, but managed to leap over and then turn and pick me up. He is my Batman!
My ankle is still pretty sore and I’m a bit banged up down the side I fell on, but other than that I’m fine. And the enchiladas were delicious.
Also: if you’re a subscriber and you’re only interested in MongoDB-related posts, I created a new RSS feed you can subscribe to for just those posts. The old feed will continue to have all MongoDB posts, plus stuff about my life and other technology.
Kristina Chodorow's Blog 
Glad you survived your jaywalking. Is traffic light a stock photo or near the area of this incident? It looks like the outer ring is some sort of count down to green and I’d like to know how it works.
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Just a stock photo. I’ve seen those lights before, though, and they’re pretty cool. It is a countdown, which is handy.
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Hey where did you buy this “stock” photo?
Very interesting, both that and the fact that you SAW it, if you consider the fact that this is just a concept, (that won the reddot award).
http://www.relogik.com/eko
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Hey, sorry about that! I’m not sure where I found it (it wasn’t your site) but I’ve added credit to you and a link back to your site. I thought I had seen it IRL, maybe I just saw it on Reddit?
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The interesting question is why the two apparently very intelligent people took, as a takeaway lesson, “this guy is Batman” as opposed to “May be there’s some wisdom to this whole ‘no jaywalking’ thing and next time we won’t endanger both ourselves AND poor innocent bystanders by recklessly breaking laws” (I wasn’t being funny – what if your landing on the traffic lane spooked an oncoming car’s driver who, in a frantic effort to avoid hitting you, swerved hell knows where and killed an innocent pedestrian or herself?)
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Why can’t one have both reactions? The author never said “I can’t wait to go run in traffic again. so my fiancée can save me from my own foolishness!!” These two apparently intelligent people might also be complex human beings capable of both enjoying the emotional high of escaping certain doom and saying “lets not do that again.”
Also, the story states the facts and the very intelligent readers of the blog can come to their own conclusions. Perhaps the author realizes some readers don’t like to be preached at and the best way to impart a lesson would be to let it teach itself.
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