driving

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Anti-Social RVing

The other day, I was behind an RV on the freeway.  You know the kind, the super-duper shiny house-on-wheels, towing the family car behind it.  My first thought was, “That is a great way to travel for those who are too lazy to pack.”  My second thought was, “Don’t these stupid things have any speeds faster than 45 mph?”  My third thought was, “I could totally get behind this way of traveling, because hey, I’m too lazy to pack.”

My mind immediately wandered to joyous days on the highway, spent with my family and pets.  Oh, the places we would go!  The adventures we would have!  The people we would meet! Just me, my loved ones, and the open road. Especially with the weather we’ve been experiencing here … dismal, cold, and just enough snow to be annoying but not enough to be fun… it would be awesome to just pick up and go someplace warmer and sunny and much less work-y.

Then, I remembered.

I hate driving.  I hate wearing anything that doesn’t involve fuzzy slippers.  I hate people. I’m not fond of adventures.  If I’m not tuned in to social media at least hourly, I go certifiably insane.  I cannot parallel park my bicycle, much less one of these behemoths.  I hate driving in the rain or snow and at night; heck I hate driving on clear days, for that matter.  Not to mention, my loved ones and I would potentially hurt each other if we were confined to a large tuna can on wheels for hours at a time.

Now, I’m not saying this whole idea is out the window; it still seems more appealing than say, getting bamboo shoots through my eyeballs while gargling Spam juice and listening to Polka Hits as performed by Hip Hop artists.  Barely.

If I am going to be stuck in a rolling trashcan for hours and days, I fully expect some concessions.

I would need unlimited access to WiFi wherever I am.  New York to the desert and everywhere in between, I need a specialized WiFi connection.  I need all my bars, all the time, wherever I am.  My RV will be a rolling WiFi receiver.

Speaking of bars, yes, please.  A nice fully stocked bar to keep me sane on my journeys.  I can think of no better way to drive down the freeway than with a glass of wine in my cup-holder.  Oh.  Wait, that’s not right.  How about, I can think of no better way to ride down the freeway than with a glass of wine in my cup-holder and a chauffeur driving me?  Not just any chauffeur, but a chauffeur who knows better than to speak to me, look at me, make eye contact, or ask questions, lest my breathtakingly introverted awkwardness come to the fore. Maybe my special RV will have the driver’s seat fully encased in sound-proof steel.  Or, hey!  The cone of silence!

The chauffeur’s wife will be the RV maid.  For a ridiculously high sum (I mean, come on, I’m nothing if not generous), she gets to stay in a closet and come out when I am asleep, silently cleaning up behind me and making a fresh batch of waffles before joining her husband in the driver’s compartment cone of silence. She can double as the “polite one,” and engage in conversations with strangers at gas stations while I peep through the curtains and silently hate on everyone.

I would require all roadways to be clear of cars and traffic so that we can zip effortlessly through the landscapes with little to no interaction with civilized society at all.  My RV will be equipped with rocket launchers to ensure my path will always be clear … and fast.  No slow lanes for me.

The main thing keeping me from my Anti-Social RV road trip is money.  I mean, right? I can’t help but think a fully stocked bar, unlimited WiFi or Hotspot capabilities, a well-paid maid and chauffeur, and a rocket launcher might set me back a few dollars.  Suggestions on getting capital for my adventures are certainly welcome.

In the meantime, I will continue to make mean faces at the young child looking back at me through the frilly curtain in the back of this slow-moving RV. Hmmm. It seems I can be just as anti-social without the RV, after all.

 

 

 

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Who You Gonna Call?

So.  I saw a sign on a bus I was following on my way to work this morning. It took up the entire back of the bus. I wasn’t able to take a picture of it because … you know … driving. Aren’t you proud of me? (I’m looking at YOU Lee!).  “Big surprise” you mutter to yourself, mass transit vehicles often have signs on them – marketing gurus routinely avail themselves of the moving real estate for product placement and advertisements for businesses. Yes, you’re right, of course. But this sign got me thinking and as we know, my mind does tend to wander.

“Feel like you got hit by a bus?”

That was the headline on the advertisement that filled my windshield with its smoggy glow this morning. Luckily … despite the question in front of me … the advertisement, and the bus, stayed firmly on the outside of my windshield, thank you very much.

The ad was for a doctor’s office, one of those urgent care clinics where they’re open late and cater to families whose children get sick at odd hours (don’t they all?) and late-night revelers who wear their beer goggles with pride, even though they couldn’t juggle those chainsaws as well as they thought they could, and well, they end up at the urgent care clinic advertised in front of me.

Presumably, the ad was directed at sick people, as in “I have the mother of all stomach flu,” or, “I have a head cold to beat all head colds and since I have to work every waking hour of my day and can’t take off to see a regular doctor, can you help me breathe through my nose, please?”  But …

It got me thinking. It’s clever marketing, there’s no doubt about that – got hit by a bus … on a bus … now, that’s funny.

Or is there a more sinister motive? Is it subliminal messaging?  Are they planting the seed with their ostensibly innocent headline? I mean, that’s how subliminal messaging works, after all. Do they want you to get hit by a bus? And if their prognostication should come to fruition, you know who to call. Seems like a twisted bit of cross-promotion symbiosis if you ask me.

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On the Road

Commuting to and from work is fun.  Said no one, ever.  We share the road with many drivers, each one completely unique and apparently, as I have come to find out, following their own set of traffic laws.  As a frequent traveler on a major highway system in my state, I am amazed at how my mere presence on an entrance ramp has a magical effect on the flow of traffic.  A car that was previously more than half a mile away in the middle lane spots me and speeds up, moving over to the lane I need, and cuts me off…or worse, keeps time with me so that I can’t get over.  This dastardly deed is known as “Don’t Let Him Over” and the game begins as soon as a trailing car sees your turn signal, indicating politely that you’d like to be somewhere else, anywhere else, really, as long as it is away from the grandmother doing 25 mph in the fast lane.

There was obviously a law passed about this, requiring you to speed up no matter how far away the car wishing to slide over and merge actually is.  The memo never reached me, though, and I continue to think there are nice drivers left out there.  Somewhere. Obviously far, far away. It could be that my language in traffic is too brutal for the delicate souls driving around me, so they purposefully excluded me from the mass mailings.  Sadly, this only increases my tirades and antics; not knowing the rules of the game, I’m run up onto the shoulder of the entrance ramp.  My oversized sunglasses hide my identity, though, and in my car I’m free to call you whatever I want. Sort of like those extreme-right trolls on Facebook.

Karma is sweet though, when I am cut off by someone speeding towards the light, only to be caught next to me in its web of eternal redness…that just makes my day. Yes, I know, obviously I live a pathetic existence for this to humor me as much as it does, but I try to get amusement when and where I can.  These people will always find a reason to fiddle with their radio, adjust their visors, or do anything that allows them to not make eye contact with my triumphant face as we sit in what, for them, has become the world’s longest light.

My personal favorite are the ones sitting, waiting to make a turn into my lane, seeing my lone car coming with no one else behind me or around me, only to turn directly in front of me …sometimes waiting — no, usually waiting, until I’m right up on them to do so.  The unwritten law here is that they must go no faster than 20 mph when they accomplish their feat.

Motorcyclists have laws all of their own.  I do love being on the back of a motorcycle, though I have never learned to drive one myself.  There is definitely something exhilarating about the freedom of being precariously perched on a motorized bicycle without the added security of metal surrounding you.  Every wheeled mode of transportation is supposed to adhere to the written laws of the road, from horse and buggy to tractor trailers.  Except, evidently, motorcyclists (okay fine, most some not all).  I have heard the announcements and I’ve seen the multitude of signs posted about looking twice and sharing the road with motorcycles, and I am saddened by accidents that are usually pretty brutal when a motorcyclist is involved.  That said, motorcyclists need to remember that they are not superheroes, impervious to the laws of nature, God, and man.  I see them riding down the white lines of the road, hurtling through time and space at the speed of sound, barely missing the mirrors on the sides of the cars they squeeze between as they seek to show off avoid the traffic jam the rest of us are just so deliriously happy to be sitting in.  I am not sure it was ever made clear to them that white lines are not designated motorcycle paths.  All joking aside, despite the immediate frustration that arises when I see these insane antics, I can’t help but cringe thinking of what might await them…and those they’re cutting off, down the road, and I keep my fingers crossed they make it home in one piece.

I hate driving … it’s a necessary evil. If I ever when I win the mega-million jackpot, the first thing I will do is get a driver on retainer. I mean, honestly, I have enough to worry about every day without trying to understand the unwritten games and laws that apparently govern our roads.  Most days, I am damned lucky I found the keys to my car to begin with.

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Green Means Go

I could be wrong (I have been before and will be again) but I honestly believe that 99% of the congested traffic I encounter on my way to work or home from work is due to that one asshole up front who is on his (or her) phone or otherwise generally not paying attention to the world around him. The other 1% is thanks to the people who have simply never heard of merging and therefore have no idea what to do when faced with such a novelty.

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Riding the Waze Wave

In the good old days, we had these things called maps.  I’m not saying I knew how to use them, just making light conversation.

I am both geographically and navigationally challenged.   When my daughter came in to the world, Mother Nature gave her looks, talent, and brains.  Then, looking down on me desperately trying to find the dairy aisle in a grocery store, Mother Nature decided to even the odds in my favor and give her an insanely accurate sense of direction.  My daughter could go someplace one time, and it is permanently ingrained on her brain map.  If, however, I am driving, and we end up three states away from our destination (due to my innate inability to follow directions), my daughter has fantastic technology in the palm of her hand to bring us back on track.  I was forbidden to touch the device, however, after that one time I tried to fold it back up and put it in the glove compartment.

With my daughter off to college and busy with her own life … too busy to help her old mother find that Starbucks two towns away that has that awesome white mocha latte that we’ve only been to 500 times (and I still can’t locate on my own), I figured I would never be able to find anything again.  I had visions of being lost in my own home, unable to find the bathroom or kitchen.  Luckily for me, she had an awesome solution called Waze. If you haven’t tried this app, you should. I swear by it now … and no, I don’t get paid to say that. It’s just as a person who routinely gets lost in my own hometown, I appreciate any little bit of help I can get to stay on track and on time.

Waze is more than just directions.  This amazing free app is powered by its users and allows them to enter alerts for police, traffic, accidents, road hazards, and so forth.  For some reason I do not understand, my car shows up on fellow Waze user’s screens as a blinking neon blip, with people regularly posting updates as to my whereabouts and adding absurd emoticons next to it. I’m sorry fellow travelers, but if it’s any consolation, I really don’t want to be doing what I’m doing either.

Waze has saved me time and frustration on more than one occasion by steering me away from traffic and into a smooth flow of backroads and little-known detours (at least little known to me).  I’ve been into neighborhoods I didn’t even know existed.  Every day driving is now an adventure!  At times, I like to feel in control and will deliberately ignore Waze instructions so that it realizes it is not the boss of me.  I mean, seriously, what the hell are you sending me this way for, you stupid app??  Needless to say, I’ve regretted it every time, because I’ve subsequently run into standstill traffic which has significantly delayed my road trip, not to mention added to my road-stress level…which, in all honesty, is about maxed out on a good day.

Waze doesn’t have the snark delightful repartee that accompanies my daughter’s route-finding directions, but it gets me where I need to be.

Now, speaking of lost, enjoy this news story about a family lost in corn maze who called 911 for rescue.   I may be a get lost in my own hometown kind of person, but I will never be the “lost in a corn maze calling 911 instead of cutting directly through the corn or flagging down the corn maze lifeguard” kind of lost.

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Dueling Radios on the Road

We all do goofy things with our car radios while we drive.  You’re lying if you tell me you’ve never inched up at a traffic light to get better reception during your favorite song.  I might have to call you out again if you claim you don’t turn the radio down while you look for an address.  And I know I’m not the only one who hears a song I love, then immediately searches all the other channels to find it again.

Don’t tell me that if your window is open and you are listening to an embarrassing song, say A-Ha’s Take on Me, while playing the air keyboard on your dashboard, that you don’t punch the button to change the station as soon as you hit a red light.  We all know the stations we can tune to for music while other stations are on commercial breaks, and we have at least one station programmed that we never even listen to, wonder why it’s saved, and still refuse to reprogram it.

We get embarrassed when we sing the wrong words to songs, even when we are alone, and play the “Who sings this, it’s right on the tip of my tongue, dang it” game to the point we may even Google it at the next stop light.

But there is a certain type of person who takes car music to a whole different level.

You are at the stoplight, waiting for it to turn green.  You feel it before you hear it.  Your teeth rattle and your car shakes as he pulls up beside you.  It’s Mr. Bass Man.  That’s bass, like the music, not bass like the fish; he is another post altogether, now, isn’t he?

He is wearing something darker, you think, you can’t really tell because his windows are tinted.  You peer through the tint and see a reflection of sunglasses, which makes no sense because it’s eleven at night. His music is so loud that birds are falling from their nests, dogs are howling in protest, house windows are shattering, and the lady in front of you just ran the stoplight to escape.

Not to be outdone – more importantly, to keep the lyrical insult to music Mr. Bass Man is playing at bay, you crank up your John Denver, but Country Roads is no competition for Mr. Bass Man.  Your head is swimming as you are trying to hear about those roads that will take John home, but John Denver has given up.  You crank your windows up; the bass still winds around you like a boa constrictor and won’t let go.

Mr. Bass Man appears to somehow be talking on a cell phone, his voice raised over his musical offerings.  Far be it from Mr. Bass Man to turn down his radio to have his conversation, he is kind enough that he doesn’t want to deprive you of this real music experience.

Thank you, Mr. Bass Man, for showing me that my tastes in music sucks. Thank you for sharing your obviously superior music with the world.  I appreciate the valuable life lesson I have learned here today.  If I had a clue what the hell you were actually listening to, I might even look it up online and continue this valuable education.

Off he goes, his bass fading into the velvety night.  You sit at the light for a moment more, letting your hearing correct itself, and watch him blow the next stoplight.  Mr. Bass Man has important places to go, and won’t let a pesky thing like traffic laws slow him down.

Thank you, again, Mr. Bass Man, for allowing your musical choices to wash over me, and the six city blocks surrounding us.  I feel all the better for having, if only for a brief moment, a glimpse into your life.

And I feel even better knowing that you are somewhere teaching others the error of their musical choices, and spreading the love.  Because at least you’re not next to me anymore.

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Meeting Your Freeway Neighbors

I ran into this truck the other day as I was driving.  Ok, not literally, but you know what I mean.  Check out the back doors…smoke, handprints…really unsettling.  I mean, what the hell!? Was there an exorcism going on back there?  I can see it now, the priest, clinging onto a side wall for dear life as the truck careened through traffic – with his Bible upside down, spilling Holy Water all over the back as the demonically challenged victim, restrained in an office chair, kept rolling just out of reach.

 

The truth is, every day we are surrounded by people on the road that we don’t know, will never meet, and never think about again.  What is going on in those cars?  Who are these people?

Let me enlighten you about your fellow drivers.

Bertha Katz:  Bertha is a sweet lady who embellishes her bumper with stickers that she doesn’t fully understand.  She has a PETA sticker next to the one reading, “Beef.  It’s what’s for dinner.”  She is blissfully unaware that the reason she gets rear-ended so many times is that people are trying to read that tiny, peeling one in the left corner that reads “Honk if you…” something.  Damn it, Bertha, we want to know if we should honk!

Hank Hughes:  Hank is driving that gigantic, 1970’s Air Stream in the right lane.  And the left lane.  And a little over into the far left lane as well.  His tags are from a state on the opposite side of the continent.  Just what the hell does he want to come here for anyway?? The RV looks ragged and well used.  He has actually hidden a fortune in slot machine tokens in the yellow polka dotted cushions of the bench seat in the back.  Hank is wearing sunglasses and propping his overly tanned left arm out his open window while singing along to Willie Nelson, his untanned right arm balancing a cup of cold coffee on his lap.

Henry McFadden:  Beware the Henry McFaddens of the highway.  You can spot them a mile away, wearing sporty caps on their grey heads.  He is in the fast lane, doing 25mph with his hazard lights on, cursing all “you young whippersnappers” that tailgate him, horns blaring in frustration before finally passing him in a final barrage of honking.  He thinks that 55 mph is a suggestion, and a gosh-darned dangerous one at that.

Ellen Fitzgerald:  She is the soccer mom in the over-sized, overly priced SUV in front of you.  Until now, you didn’t know that Lamborghini made an SUV. Considering your state has absolutely no mountainous areas whatsoever, and therefore no reason to kick it into 4-wheel drive to overcome treacherous terrain, the purpose of an SUV of this size is unclear.  Not that this SUV would ever see a mountain … or know what mud is. The otherwise pristine vehicle has a back window full of those stick figures…two adult men, three adult women, eight children, seven dogs, five cats, and what appears to be an iguana.  You will never know anything more about her, but you will obsess over who those stick figures represent the rest of the day.

Michael Mitchell:  Ah, Mr. Vanity Plate himself.  You can admire a clever plate when you understand it. “I M Gr8” or “2 GUD 4 U” are some of the classics that make you smile.  But Michael’s tag, proudly proclaiming “Y RST U” is an enigma.  You ponder it for miles, saying it out loud, trying it backwards and forwards, all thoughts of Ellen’s stick figure family gone from your head as the new obsession strikes.  You think you almost have it, the solution is so close!  Little do you know; Michael’s tag means nothing, and he only got it to mess around with his fellow drivers.  Well played, Michael. Well played indeed.

Mandy Smith:  As you drive up next to Mandy, you see her frantically shoving a candy bar into her mouth with the wrapper still on, chasing it with a Red Bull, death metal guitars screaming from inside her car.  You may initially judge Mandy’s unkempt pony tail and stained sweatshirt, but then you see the back seat lined with three car seats and the sullen teenager in the front passenger seat.  As you pass her, you realize that she isn’t listening to death metal at all; those screams are from her three toddlers in the back.  Her eyes are haunted as she shoots you a pleading glance; you give her the universally accepted grim lipped smile of the overwhelmed (and overworked) mother, and head nod as your eyes meet in understanding.

Bill Jones:  Bill’s bumper sticker proudly proclaims that he “brakes for turtles.”  Yay, Bill.  Unfortunately, he also brakes for nonexistent bumps, red cars on the opposite side of the road, commercials on the radio, trees, and just to see if his brakes still work or if he needs to use the gift certificate to the local brake repair shop his friends gave him for his birthday.

Lila Hirsch:  Lila is frantically arguing with her invisible friend.  Both of her hands are off the wheel, at inopportune times, gesticulating wildly to make her point as her car swerves into your lane.  You tell yourself she is probably on Blue Tooth…but can we really be sure?

Johnny Miller:  Johnny picks a car at random, then begins to target it for his own freeway fun.  He tailgates it, passes it, cuts it off, slows down, speeds up, lets it pass again, and so on in a game of cat and mouse with rules that only he knows and which he keeps changing as he goes along.  At some point, he apparently wins his game and will drive up casually next to you, looking over at you in distaste, shaking his head, before speeding off.  You will never understand Johnny’s game, but you feel sort of honored you were chosen to play, and thankful you survived.

Next time you are on the road, look out for these drivers.  Now you know a little more about them, so they are no longer random strangers in a car.  If I missed any, let me know; I’d love to hear who you “met” on the road today!

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Driver’s Ed

Okay, so, when navigating a parking lot, for how long must one be actually in a moving car, before the onus of accountability falls on those who suddenly zip into the previously clear aisle? Or, for that matter, how long does one’s car need to be in motion before it becomes acceptable to squash the pedestrian who clearly sees you from across the way, but in what can only be described as a desire to play chicken sullenly reinforce their right of way as a pedestrian, decides to significantly speed up their gait so as to walk in front of your car?

Just asking for a friend.