Driving to work
My drive to work this morning, gentle readers, had all of the precision and order of a cavalry charge mounted on drunken elephants.
It seemed as if other drivers were out to crash into me today. I was nearly run over as I entered the freeway for a starter. This was clearly a sign of things to come for me.
I had gotten on the freeway in good order and was trying to change lanes as the traffic flow slowed down. A driver in a pickup truck was speeding and almost hit me . I saw the truck coming and swerved back into my lane.
The clown in the truck was weaving between lanes like a rug maker. Each effort was but an infantile, pathetic, futile attempt to advance his position in traffic. In the end, the truck was behind me at my exit. The exit is a one lane roadway because of construction. You can be sure I took my sweet time getting off of the freeway.
Just before I managed to safely reach the exit, I was nearly run out of my lane by a maniac who was driving with absolutely no regard for the law. The maniac was merging into my roadway so, under the law and common sense, I had the right of way. I guess I was not driving fast enough for the maniac who had to roar past me on the right hand side, driving over the emergency parking in the process. I think we had less than 12 inches between the two vehicles and one error would have been a disaster for both of us.
Now, I was in, what I thought would be, the relative safety of the surface streets with their much lower speed limits and traffic lights. As usual today, I was wrong again.
The traffic signal had changed to green so we could move forward. I was in one lane and moving out nicely when a large lunch truck pulled out of a side street and cut right in front of me. The truck wallowed through the turn like a wounded whale. I was almost tempted to look for Captan Ahab since it was a large white truck.
The woman driving the lunch truck had no clue how to safely operate the truck or even the barest understanding of the rules of the road and traffic laws of the great state of California. This woman drove as if she owned the road and that I was there at her sufferance.
I have no objection to those that drive fast on the freeways, the Princess and the Girl Friend drive fast all of the time, so long as they drive by the rules. By this, I mean signaling a lane change, or driving with the speed of the traffic flow and not slower or faster, or passing when there is room for both cars and it is safe to do so.
The object lesson from these three events was to make me wish I had a weapon with me. For an instance, I felt like blowing their vehicles to kingdom come. I would have been doing society a major favor by doing so.
My weapon of choice would have been a .50 caliber machine gun with a full nine yards of ammunition in the box. The .50 caliber is an old weapon system from before World War II but it is very effective and would serve my needs completely.
Blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam. And people wonder why there is road rage and car to car shootings on the roads in Southern California.
Work was nice today.
A vendor called this morning and invited me to go to a breakfast meeting tomorrow. The free food is yummy in the morning but the drive to get to the meeting site is ugly. The subject matter, business process improvement through technology, sounded interesting for me.
Normally, I would have blown off the meeting because of the short notice. I am going because one of my big bosses thought I should go. Always a compelling point. The other reason is that I can use some of the information in my doctoral dissertation. I can make a connection with another subject matter expert who can probably show me other highly useful data.
Now, is that slick or what?
Anyway, I need to get on with some other things tonight before I make it an early call for lights out.
Be well and stay happy.
It seemed as if other drivers were out to crash into me today. I was nearly run over as I entered the freeway for a starter. This was clearly a sign of things to come for me.
I had gotten on the freeway in good order and was trying to change lanes as the traffic flow slowed down. A driver in a pickup truck was speeding and almost hit me . I saw the truck coming and swerved back into my lane.
The clown in the truck was weaving between lanes like a rug maker. Each effort was but an infantile, pathetic, futile attempt to advance his position in traffic. In the end, the truck was behind me at my exit. The exit is a one lane roadway because of construction. You can be sure I took my sweet time getting off of the freeway.
Just before I managed to safely reach the exit, I was nearly run out of my lane by a maniac who was driving with absolutely no regard for the law. The maniac was merging into my roadway so, under the law and common sense, I had the right of way. I guess I was not driving fast enough for the maniac who had to roar past me on the right hand side, driving over the emergency parking in the process. I think we had less than 12 inches between the two vehicles and one error would have been a disaster for both of us.
Now, I was in, what I thought would be, the relative safety of the surface streets with their much lower speed limits and traffic lights. As usual today, I was wrong again.
The traffic signal had changed to green so we could move forward. I was in one lane and moving out nicely when a large lunch truck pulled out of a side street and cut right in front of me. The truck wallowed through the turn like a wounded whale. I was almost tempted to look for Captan Ahab since it was a large white truck.
The woman driving the lunch truck had no clue how to safely operate the truck or even the barest understanding of the rules of the road and traffic laws of the great state of California. This woman drove as if she owned the road and that I was there at her sufferance.
I have no objection to those that drive fast on the freeways, the Princess and the Girl Friend drive fast all of the time, so long as they drive by the rules. By this, I mean signaling a lane change, or driving with the speed of the traffic flow and not slower or faster, or passing when there is room for both cars and it is safe to do so.
The object lesson from these three events was to make me wish I had a weapon with me. For an instance, I felt like blowing their vehicles to kingdom come. I would have been doing society a major favor by doing so.
My weapon of choice would have been a .50 caliber machine gun with a full nine yards of ammunition in the box. The .50 caliber is an old weapon system from before World War II but it is very effective and would serve my needs completely.
Blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam. And people wonder why there is road rage and car to car shootings on the roads in Southern California.
Work was nice today.
A vendor called this morning and invited me to go to a breakfast meeting tomorrow. The free food is yummy in the morning but the drive to get to the meeting site is ugly. The subject matter, business process improvement through technology, sounded interesting for me.
Normally, I would have blown off the meeting because of the short notice. I am going because one of my big bosses thought I should go. Always a compelling point. The other reason is that I can use some of the information in my doctoral dissertation. I can make a connection with another subject matter expert who can probably show me other highly useful data.
Now, is that slick or what?
Anyway, I need to get on with some other things tonight before I make it an early call for lights out.
Be well and stay happy.
posted by Chuck Reinhardt at 7:40 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home