Life in the Fast/Slow Lane

Life in the fast/slow Lane

For those of you who didn't know.. I haven't been driving all that long.. never really NEEDED to back in the UK, and didn't get my license as soon as I got to the states.. anyway..

I work an hour from home, so I drive about 100 miles a day 5 days a week, which gets real old real quick.. so now I've clocked a lot of miles, but not for a long time.

So I thought I'd share a couple of my more memorable experiences while driving.

1) Smushed my car - this one that'll probably never get forgotten. I decided to run out at lunchtime and get a bottle of iced tea. This was a bad idea. I was sitting at the intersection of a divided highway.. a semi (I fuckin hate semi's.. and every bastard who drives one.. if you drive a semi, believe me.. I think you're a douche, just so you know.) Anyway this semi is waiting to turn down the road I want to come off.. but he wont move.. im sitting there for nearly a minute and he wont go.. uch.. theres nothing coming.. so I figure he wants me to go first.. this was my 2nd mistake (the first being to go out at lunch for an iced tea).. So I nip across half the highway and pass him by.. what I didn't see was the guy coming down the side of him.. I never did see him until my car was spinning.. he t-boned me almost perfectly in the middle of my passenger side. Airbag deployed in the passenger seat (goddam thing cost me like 1900 to get replaced, even though there was noone sitting there).. and his piece of shit toyota rust-a-lop-olis was smushed to all hell. It was my fault.. (i have the $97 ticket from the cops to prove it) and I hold my hands up.. it was a dumbass move on my part.. but gawd dammit.

Lesson(s) Learned: Don't go out for tea at lunchtime. Don't hurry across an intersection because some d-bag semi driver doesn't move. Airbags are LOUD.

2) Potential smushing - Almost got smushed again not long after my car got fixed.. I was following some jackass who was clearly not driving as fast as I was.. sure they were going over the speed limit, but hell, thats not my problem.. so I whip down the side of them.. I looked down there, there was a car in the distance but it was a ways off.. what I didn't see was the car in a dip just ahead.. I did see him.. just as he came to the top of the dip and I was about right on top of him.. he slammed on.. the guy i was passing (who by the way sped up when I went down the side of him.. i fuckin hate that.. if you speed up when someone goes around you, you deserve to die.. preferably buttfucked to death by a crystal meth tweaker) and I slid into a space not much bigger than my car. So yep.. that sucked.

Lesson(s) Learned: I often try to pass douchebags who speed up. Look before you pass, then look again.. and then look one more time. Playing chicken with oncoming traffic is not as glamorous as it sounds.

3) Given the finger by an old lady - This was fairly recent, and if I'm honest, still makes me angry to think about it, but I do see the funny side..
I was driving home and was back in town.. not far from home, just had to pull off the main road through town and get to the house.. but I got stuck behind some old lady doing 20-25 in a 30mph zone. I'd been at work all day, then I had been driving for nearly an hour. I wasn't in the mood for her bullshit old lady driving.. so I get right behind her and I see the lights up ahead go red.. then they go green, I figure we can make it so I'm pretty pissed shes driving so slow, but we can make it.. its all good.. she gets to the lights.. its still green.. yay.. then the dozy old bint slams her brakes on and slides to a stop.. on a green light.. I slammed my brakes on and stopped barely an inch behind her.. i.. lost.. my.. shit.. i was yelling.. screaming.. cursing.. waving my arms at the stupid old coot and I see her looking at me in her mirror.. the light turned red by now.. I was so fuckin angry.. the light goes green.. she looks forward, turns around.. looks at me and just sits there.. oh i was pissed.. i leaned on my horn for about 20 seconds before she takes off.. now it just so happens that my turn was right after the light on the left, so I swing into the turning lane and pull alongside her (shes doing like 10mph) and I yell at her, something along the lines of "are you fucking stupid or something?" (i never claimed to be a particulary nice guy.. and i was fuckin pissed :P) and she leans her arm out the window and flipped me the bird, and spun me into a whole level of pissed off I've never been in before in my life.. GRRRRRR.. then I had to turn.

Lesson(s) Learned: Old people do not belong in cars. 90 yr old women also have road rage, just slower than normal people.

So thats the 3 highpoints for me, driving-wise.. but I'm hopeful that things will calm down.. For the sake of the fuck-us and for my own sanity, I've taken to driving the speed limit. I've stopped passing people just because they're in front of me (a nasty habit that I picked up fairly quickly). And I'm trying to be much more zen about the whole driving thing.. sure there are many many goddam idiots out there.. maybe I'll be one less.

I do notice something though.. these years of driving behind slow people, who clearly were stupid and dont deserve to drive.. they're not smart enough to handle it, thats why they drive slow.. I now realize that its douchebags like me riding their ass and passing them in unsafe areas that causes it.

So I'm outta the fast lane and into the slow lane.. but I still fuckin hate semi's :)