Driving Me Crazy

I don’t know what to think about drivers. I was taking someone home tonight and had to get back on the freeway. I’m rounding the curve on the entrance ramp, sandwiched between two other vehicles like we were boxcars in a train – all going equal speed.

Don’t worry, this isn’t an algebra problem (if three cars are on the freeway, and they’re all going the same speed, which car has a driver picking his nose, which driver had chili for lunch, and which one is illegally talking on her cell phone?) No, don’t you worry that I’m giving you a problem for you to solve, though I’ll give you a hint. The third driver rolls down the windows.

I might have written about drivers recently, though I’m pretty sure I was bitching about some other automobile behavior that annoys me. This is a vast and endless category for consternation.

So here we are swinging around that curve on the entrance ramp, and we get to the opening where we can actually get on the freeway. Wouldn’t you think that we would all merge gracefully like one synchronized unit onto the freeway? I would too. But the guy behind me whipped out of formation and buzzed up right beside me so I couldn’t get on the freeway. I had to either slow way down until he got past or do something else.

Granted, this guy may have been trying to get all the ventilation in the car he possibly could (see hint above), but what did he think I was going to do? Just drive in the grass when the ramp ran out? Was he in that big of a hurry?

I was miffed and annoyed. I yelled out, “What? You got a hemi in that Kia?” His windows were open but mine weren’t so I guess it didn’t do much good, but still it made me feel like I’d stood up to him, and I live for those moments.

After I finally got on the freeway, my nerves were shot, I was cruising toward the bridge that spans the mighty Willamette River (which is not pronounced Willa-met), when along comes a man walking toward me. Staggering really. I clutched my steering wheel like it was the armrests on an airplane getting ready to take off, hoping he wouldn’t stagger into my path. I would have nightmares the rest of my life if my car had gone “thump thump.”

I whished by him but in that glimpse I saw that he was a 40ish looking guy and a fine specimen at that. As I crossed the bridge I marveled that he’d walked all that way because he would have to come from the other side – there were no parked cars.

Once I walked across the Ross Island Bridge and it was terrifying. There isn’t much of a shoulder and the cars are just roaring. It’s deafening. Plus the bridge shakes up and down. That guy walking across the Markham Bridge tonight might not have been drunk after all – the wind from the semi’s could have been tossing him around. I wonder if semi’s have hemi’s?