Mon, 9 Jun 2008
It is good to allow space between you and the one in front of you. Absolutely. Definitely.
I always hate being behind the person on the rush-hour interstate that allows enough space in front of them so everyone who wants out of their lane can merge easily. Two cars at a time. Yeah, that’s a little much.
Thu, 5 Jun 2008
Acquiring a stupid-looking, ten-year-old Neon to motor down the highway with… $6k.
Paving a webbed-toe-like space with white lines across it to mark the area between the right lane of the interstate and the entrance ramp… $60k.
Creating a public education system capable of putting out college graduates (hey, he was wearing a tie ~ associate degree, perhaps?) who don’t know you’re not supposed to merge across white lines just to get on the entrance ramp and pass people in the right lane (particularly while you’re going as slow as the folks in said right lane)… $60 billion and counting.
Watching the look of utterly dumbfounded amazement on your face as you aimlessly meander along those webbed white lines while I honk and drive around you so I can merge into traffic… priceless.
There are some things money can’t buy. Brains for driving is one of them.
Fri, 25 Apr 2008
Did you ever have a little brother or somebody in school that was really just not quite faster than you, but almost… and then you’d race and you could never get ahead because just as you were ready to pull even he’d move over and cut you off… and you knew it was entirely unintentional, but it was still really annoying… and then it happened again?
It’s the same feeling you get when the 10-15 miles-per-hour-under-limit red Mustang is ahead of you and keeps making the same turns you have to make so you follow it all the way home from the library. And stop at all the red lights. And have many vehicles pull out in front of her and impede you even more.
<Sigh> That feels better.
Tue, 22 Apr 2008
There is nothing (or at least, not many things – at least, not on the road) worse than driving up the interstate in the middle lane and it starts to slow down and so you merge into the empty left lane, and umpteen cars in front of you merge right after you do, and then the long line of traffic that was behind you in the middle lane cruises past you at speed while you sit completely still in the left lane for no apparent reason.
I’m still recovering.
Fri, 28 Mar 2008
The Queen and I were on our way back from a doctor visit, and were proceeding merrily along a two-lane, one-way street. At several successive stoplights, I shared front-row seating with a white Mazda6 (complete with spoiler), myself in the left lane. After making our journey for several blocks without incident, the ebb and flow of traffic found me in the right lane, following our friend.
We were two blocks away from a major intersection, when he decelerated significantly, activating his left blinker and swerving slightly to the left. A very (excessively?) courteous Liberty paused to let him in, coming almost to a standstill as his lunatic driving precepts apparently did not allow him to assume anyone would actually let such a one as him into the lane in front of them. He definitely did not leave it to assumption. He began to enter the left lane, and I began to accelerate, assuming this brief idiocy was over.
It wasn’t. He immediately turned left. He wasn’t merging, he was catching an empty side street. Why he didn’t just wait a block and behave like a normal human being is beyond me.
He definitely retarded the flow of traffic.
Thu, 27 Mar 2008
This morning, I’m leaving the main road for the entrance ramp to the interstate, when Malibu buzzes in from the other direction, and instead of doing his yielding duty, whips onto the ramp in front of me. Wouldn’t be so bad if he wasn’t going half the appropriate speed (which is, of course, what I was doing).
So I gave him the high-beam treatment. All the way down the ramp. Figured it’d do him good.
We get to the actual interstate and, having learned from his previous success, he earns high-beams and loud horns from a first-lane semi cab. As I was merging in behind the cab at the time, I didn’t witness the full effect of Malibu’s actions, but that horn was loud. And the trucker laid on it for awhile. Having thus seen strike one and strike two, I can only hope Malibu made it to work alive.
I have no hope of increased sanity for him.
Fri, 7 Mar 2008
As my readers worldwide have no doubt deduced, I am located somewhere in the vicinity of the Midwestern USA—a region that was knocked senseless today by a good dosage of tiny flying hexagons. As this blanket of snow began to severely threaten our mobilities, I made my way home.
Fortunately, I selected a route that was not particularly difficult, with one exception. I was following a couple transit buses as we turned left through an intersection, and the foremost bus stopped, while the latter began to pull around it. Naturally, I fell in line with the moving behemoth rather than the stationary one.
But apparently it was just for a chat, as they both rested on their haunches and began happily chinning away our time. This left me straddling the line between the right lane and the snow-covered nebulous center area. Alas, my straddle wasn’t good enough, though, as a large 4×4 decided to pull in beside me in the right lane. Fortunately, I recognized this sinister scheme in time to ease myself to the right and put a stop to his passing fancy.
Soon the rightward bus began to move again, and our 4×4 friend was good enough to sit still and let the other bus merge over in front of him. I buzzed on along behind the front bus and never saw the others in my mirror again after the first bend.
Mon, 3 Mar 2008
We were almost home. Life was good. We were approaching a traffic light and some stopped traffic, so when the gray Avalanche pulled away from Shell to embark on our road, I went from slowing to stopped, and waved him in.
He looked directly at me (I know he did), and then turned to plug in his cell phone, drink some coffee, change the station, polish his shift knob, and tie his shoe before looking back to see that I really wasn’t waiting for him anymore.
So he pulled out in front of me.
Wed, 27 Feb 2008
Why is it that traffic, between 5:15 and 6pm on my particular little stretch of the interstate, always slows down? Yeah, I know it’s rush hour traffic, but before and after those times, as I’m driving through, there seems to be just as much traffic, but it’s going twice or thrice the speed. I’m not sure if it’s a higher IQ of driver, or just that everyone gets along better after six, or what.
