Not as a terrorist act, though. Instead he won a contest as to who has the worst commute over the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, a part of Washington, D.C.’s infamous Beltway:
Now, here’s your chance – to bring the end to your bridge of misery. Tell us why your Wilson Bridge commute deserves to win the Woodrow Wilson Bridge Project’s Toughest Bridge Commute Contest. The winner of the contest will personally demolish the old bridge by triggering charges that will cut a nearly half-mile stretch of the old bridge’s steel girders, causing them to drop to the ground.
Just to show you how tough the competition was, this guy did not win:
Then there was Stuart Roy’s confrontation with a pitchfork in 2003. Roy was enjoying a Sunday afternoon drive when a landscaping truck traveling in the opposite direction hit one of the bridge’s many rough patches. A pitchfork dislodged itself from the truck’s roof and launched skyward.
“It just made this perfect arc, tines pointed right at me,” said Roy, an Alexandria resident.
Roy slammed on the brakes. Then, he started picking grit and windshield glass from his hair and face. He looked up to see tines pointed at him — only a few inches from his face.
“I thought I had a good chance to win the contest,” Roy said.
Ya’ think? Alas, no. The winner was instead Dan Ruefly of Accokeek, MD.
Ruefly, who was nominated by his daughter, has been a five-day-a-week commuter for more than 28 years. He faces a two-hour drive in the morning and another 90-minute drive at the end of the day.
His toughest commute came in September 1999 when he switched lanes and slammed into a stopped tractor-trailer straddling the right lane and the bridge’s four-foot-wide shoulder.
What, not even a stray spork through an open window? Maybe Diebold was responsible for counting the votes. But wait, there’s more!
That means he’s been in his car in the neighborhood of 1,350,000 minutes. Which is about 22,500 hours. Which is like 937 days. Which is 2.56 years.Which is a lot.
As if that’s not enough, it’s painful for Ruefly to sit still for so long, because driving aggravates the hip injury he suffered when his pickup truck slammed into the back of an illegally parked tractor-trailer on the bridge in 1999.
Want more? The injury was made worse when the ambulance taking him to the hospital was stuck for more than 30 minutes waiting for the drawbridge to lower.
Fine. That story is pretty bad. Still, a pitchfork through the windshield? That’s gotta win you something, right? Not if you are a former employee of evil incarnate:
Stuart Roy, an aide to then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), was selected as one of five finalists because he was almost speared by an errant pitchfork that fell off a dump truck in 2003, shattering his windshield. He escaped without a scratch.
So I guess the pitchfork was more or less a job hazard. No wonder, he didn’t win.