April 21--Think about how much of life's rich tapestry flitted by every day, unheralded and unsung, before we all carried little computer cameras in our pocket.
Ten years ago, the ridiculous sight that Loyola student Joe Bailey Jr. beheld Thursday morning would have been relegated, at best, to him trying to describe it to friends.
But words would fail to convey the absurdist hilarity of a motorized catering cart, driverless and stuck in reverse, circling endlessly for more than three minutes outside a university parking garage.
Thankfully, Bailey shot video as the cart manically circled clockwise, emitting occasional squeals, like some seizure-prone Transformer stuck in midtransformation.
Bailey, a 21-year-old biology junior, said the motorized Aramark cart was already in "full throttle" when he came upon it, so he does not know how it came to be.
"Where's the guy that did this?" one bystander asks in the video.
"He just ran off," another answers.
Aramark representatives did not return requests for comment, but a Loyola spokesman confirmed the incident took place on campus and that the vehicle was Aramark's.
"My first thought was to jump in front of it because I heard you get free tuition for a year if you get hit by a golf cart on campus," Bailey said. "My serious response is that I thought about how I couldn't believe what I was witnessing."
In the video, officers arrive after about a minute.
One stands, stoic, extendable baton deployed, as he sizes up his adversary. The cart remains oblivious and keeps spinning, its side door cupboard flapping fitfully with each rotation.
The cart gets winded at about the 1:50 mark and appears ready to die, then suddenly springs back to life to the delight of the crowd.
Stoic cop eventually shatters the cart's window and grabs it to slow it down.
The cart revs its displeasure.
Bailey said he was not concerned for the cops' welfare.
"The police know how to handle those who resist, especially when that someone is an unarmed golf cart," he said.
Officer No. 2 approaches and takes longer than you'd think to shut the vehicle down, while bystanders scream, "Turn it off! Turn it off!"
Life goes on. But with more than 292,000 YouTube views as of Tuesday afternoon, "Golf Cart With No Driver at Loyola U. Chicago Goes Rampant" has earned a spot, however modest, in our civilization's history.
"It put up a hell of a fight," Bailey said of the cart.
Despite the brief blip this video will occupy in our rapid, insatiable mastication of news, a bigger mystery remains: Who was the person who threw this hapless cart in reverse, jerked the steering wheel all the way to the left, then fled, leaving it to spin and spin and spin until two cops came and put it to rest, like some mechanized bucking bronco from days of yore?
Hit me up if you know.
geoffz@tribpub.com
