Well...
I must say I was drawn to this site after what happend to us the day after HSMF 2004.
Being a live music fan + a traveler will always bring you the best... and will eventually witness or become the worst...
For us, Daina and I, Richie, will NEVER forget.
Her name was Ellen S. Payne.
How do I say it? She was a human being. Just like all of us. She died in a tragic accident witnessed by myself in the rear view mirror of my car. Happening just outside of Lassen National Volcanic Park, heading east on Hwy 44 toward Redding, CA @ 1pm.
We were heading home after such a wonderful High Sierra Music Festival. Me in my brand new HSMF T-shirt, thinking I can't wait to tell my friends back in Canada what a brilliant festival we had just experienced for the 1st time.
I saw the white mini-van swerve once then a second time, going out of control into the oncomming lane, and then iratically swerve back like she just woke up, or went out of control, and then off the highway, over a 10 foot ditch into 2 large redwood trees.
After witnessing a cloud of dust, and pulling our car safely off the road already in contact with 911, we ran toward the so-called vehicle.
We tried, we insisted on trying. But she was just too banged up. Too pinned. We couldn't free her. She was still alive... trying to breathe every 20 seconds... you try it... she was dying... I saw the assficiation settle in.. we cut the seatbelt that had been holding her head up, and everything in her neck was crushed... so there was nothing to even try and make her breathe with... In my belief, she died of assficiation from tramma to the neck in my precense...
I'll never be the same.
I'll never drive the same.
I never want to see what I witnessed again. However, it happens all the time. As the deputy told me.
Fuck him.
Being Canadian makes no difference either. We do what we do because we do it. I was on auto pilot. You would be too. It sinks in afterward.
This woman, Ellen, was 51yrs old and traveling alone with her dog Daisy, whom also was killed instantly, to go and water her flowers before she went back to camp-out with her loved ones. She traveled the road often with nothing on her mind other than getting to where she needed to be...
So this is the point.
BE CAREFUL...
Thus, this webpage, and Jen's tragic accident, along with many others that will be posted along the way as we all learn as a whole.
Richie |