Whither Fog?

(Lots of fog pictures like this one here.)

Before I moved to this part of the world, an acquaintance regaled me with stories about the epic fog that happened in the Appalachian Mountains, telling me that there were times that highway 64 was closed down because of so much fog.  It reminded me of a time when I was returning from Houston - this had to be in the 1990s - back to Austin, driving down highway 290, which was at the time basically a one-lane road, & which that night was covered in fog.  There was no light save the light from my control panel in the car, & the light from the headlights was basically stopped by a wall of white just a few feet away.  I couldn't see houses or businesses I was passing, I couldn't see streetlights.  I concentrated on the yellow lines, & I drove slowly - a car could easily come out of the fog right in front of me - or worse, someone could be driving faster than I was behind me, & ram me.  Texas drivers, like every other kind of American driver, are assholes.

Something was happening in my head, & I had turned off whatever I was listening to - or, since it was a cassette, I think it came to that point on the cassette where there was silence leading to end of the side - & suddenly it was just me, the car, the headlights, & the fog.  & I reached over & turned off the headlights.

To this day I have no idea what the fuck I was doing.  I was suddenly driving a car at around 45 miles per hour on a highway in the middle of Texas in a thick, thick fog, with no lights on.  I don't know how long I did this - probably just seconds - but I felt a pain behind my eyes & said, "Shit!"  I turned the lights back on, & changed the cassette - very carefully.

There's no explanation for what happened.  Certainly I had no death wish at the time, nor was I ever prone to daredevil thrills.  Later on I wondered if there were some kind of "fog sickness" that's just as insidious as seeing a mirage in the middle of a desert.  Or if I were just a dumbass.

Speaking of me being a dumbass, Self Help Radio is on from 4-6 today on 88.1 fm, wrfl dot fm online.  I'll have a dry ice machine in the studio!

No, no, I won't.