Category: automobiles

Use ’em or lose ’em

Everyone has certain skills that exist within them like muscle memory. You know how to do a thing like the back of your hand, or more appropriately, like riding a bike.

You know, executed perfectly, without thinking.

And then there are some skills that you gotta keep using or your abilities will diminish.

Last week in New Mexico, I was faced with this problem.

Yes, I was disheartened to see my dexterity and skill in one particular area has deteriorated.

Here’s the story:

I had occasion to be down in Las Cruces to visit my best friend and my two goddaughters (and goddog and godcat too…I love those fuzzies!).

So Friday, we decided to go stay at the home of my best friend’s parents in El Paso. They are my adopted folks, and I love them like crazy, so I was thrilled to get to spend some time.

I had a rental car, and my best friend loaded her own car with her two kids and we caravanned along I-25 to I-10 and then, because it’s so much easier and quicker, we took the Anthony Gap to get over into El Paso.

Sure, easy peasy. Taken it a bunch of times. No problem. So off I went, following my best friend off the interstate and onto two-lane state road.

Two lanes. Just two. Yes.

Living in New Mexico, it’s not terribly hard to find two-lane roads. And on two lane roads, it’s not terribly hard to find someone driving slower than you’d like to go.

Which means you gotta either give up, or you gotta zip over into the oncoming lane and pass that other car.

And this is where I met my Californian laziness square in the eye.

As we approached a slow moving work truck, my friend, just ahead of me, drifted over slightly, assessed the scene, changed lanes, hit the gas and passed with ease.

You know, back in the day, I was *really* good at passing on two-lane roads. It was like an art and a challenge to me. I LOVED it because I was so g’darn good at it.

But on Friday…I balked. Yes, it’s true. I hesitated.

And then, mad at my hesitation, I just went for it, clumsily changing lanes, not stepping on the gas smoothly enough. The automatic transmission in my rental car scrambled to find an appropriate gear. It finally kicked in, gave me some speed and I made it, but not before I was staring down the headlights on an oncoming vehicle, trying to calculate how long until impact.

Ok, fine I made it safely, but passing didn’t feel as smooth and easy as it used to. I overthought it. I felt like a scaredy cat.

This is not me! I’m the girl who would careen down the two-lane road between El Paso and Carlsbad in a beat up ’79 Bobcat, passing people like they were standing still!

Ok, to be fair, the manual transmission in the Bobcat did help in that whole passing thang, but still.

Is it that I’ve been living in the Bay Area too long? Or that I’m getting old and tentative?

I don’t know. But it makes me wanna take the Jeep out on Highway 1 and pass every car I see, just because I can!

An ode to my truck

Finally, an idea from the blog idea generator that I can sink my teeth into.

“Write a rhyming poem about your car.”

Okay!

: clears throat, ready to recite :

_____________

Oooooh my Jeep, so shiny and black
At ninety three thousand miles, you still got my back.

When I slide you into wheels that drive four
Your engine drops an octave, more menacing than a roar.

You’ve got one blown speaker in the stereo
AM radio baseball. Homerun! “There we go!”

Your tires are getting a skosh toward worn
But your beautiful gray cloth seating, none of it torn.

Some parking lot craphead put a dent in your side
But your boxy lines, classic looks, no way they can slide.

You’ve always been my trusty steed on the road
I never worry that I can get where I need to go.

Together we’ve lasted almost ten years
I spent a little extra on you, despite all my fears.

Back in 2001, who would have thunk it
That in 2009 you’d narrowly escape being a cash for clunk it?

_____________

Yeah, I think that the word “craphead” makes this a classic bit of verse, don’t you?

Happy Friday! Have a great weekend!

There but for the grace of…

Every once in a while, you hear about a car accident where someone has managed to get onto a highway going the wrong way.

Generally, the driver is drunk and the consequences are pretty bad.

I’ve always wondered, honestly, how in the hell that could happen? I mean, even drunk, how could you take the wrong ramp for the highway? Isn’t it very, very obvious?

So, I’ve been a bit harsh on this topic. That is, until today.

Today, distracted, but perfectly sober, in broad daylight, I managed to swing onto the wrong side of an onramp/offramp for an expressway.

I’m still not exactly sure how I managed to do this. It is a weird intersection, but that is no excuse.

I’ve driven this intersection plenty of times. I’ve always navigated it fine, but today, I swung the left turn, picked the wrong side of the road, and found myself facing traffic coming head on.

Thankfully, I was able to take quick evasive action and no one was hurt, no accident happened, and I escaped shaken but fine.

But my mind is totally blown by this little event.

So maybe it’s not so hard to get going the wrong way on a major highway.

I’m not excusing the devastation caused by the people who were driving drunk and managed to cause a lot of injury by making this mistake.

But maybe I understand it a little better now.

Today, more than ever…

…I am convinced that the members of the human race are all nothing more than a truckload of clucking chickens wandering around the big cosmic coop.

Seriously.

Ok, so, backstory:

Over the Labor Day weekend, the people constructing a new eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge closed the bridge to traffic. During this closure, they removed one section of the lower deck of the bridge, and placed a temporary section in place to divert traffic and allow vital work to be completed.

This made big news all over the Bay Area. It was much ado about “The S Curve”

Ba-kah! An S curve!

So when the bridge re-opened to traffic the following week, all the traffic reporters reminded commuters that people would be getting used to the new S curve, so allow extra time.

Ok, fine. Right? It’s a new thing, we all get used to it and move on.

Oh but nooooooo.

No, today, I had a rare occasion to have to cross the Bay Bridge. (stop shuddering, my dear mother!)

So, first of all, the approach going in an eastern direction on a good day is a cluster of merges that has always made me nutty.

Fine, it is what it is.

Then there had been an accident an hour earlier that had still left traffic snarled. Fine.

But oh…the best part. Once traffic was flowing along, I came through the tunnel that goes through Treasure Island, and then I was confronted with…DA DA DUUUUM…

The S Curve.

And people hit the brakes! Oh did they hit the brakes.

Fer crimeny’s sakes, people! It isn’t a frappin’ Z curve! It is quite easy to navigate. You follow those fabulous little white lines they paint on the ground. You turn your steering wheel gently one way, and then gently the other way. This is not a step on the brake-able road hazard!

My god. The freak out. The pandemonium! The utter ba-kah!

The Bay Bridge carries some 270,000 cars every day. And this change was implemented TWO WEEKS AGO!

But nooooooo.

Ba-kah!

*sigh*

This, along with people on the southbound highway slowing down to look at an accident that occurred on the northbound side, you know, OVER that heavy concrete barrier?

Bah. Kah.

Fine. I’ll just peck at my grain and shake my tailfeathers and call it a day.

I. Am. Cranky.

I fought the law…

…and the law will probabaly win.

Ok, not me, but a man named Dave Vontesmar. Mr. Vontesmar lives in Arizona. Phoenix, to be exact.

And Mr. Vontesmar has to commute daily for his job at Sky Harbor airport.

Mr. Vontesmar is not a fan of the recently installed cameras that Phoenix has been using to catch speeders (and, let’s be clear, raise revenue).

It is, as this article describes, a “photo-enforcement gantlet (sic) on Interstate 17, Arizona 51 and Interstate 10.”

Mr. Vontesmar IS, however, a fan of going in excess of the speed limit.

And so the perfect solution is born.

Dave Vontesmar wears a monkey mask when driving. Sometimes a giraffe mask, but mostly a monkey mask.

And when the tickets, some 37 so far, totaling fines upward of $6,500, show up at his home, he says:

“‘Not one of them there is a picture where you can identify the driver,’ Vontesmar said. ‘The ball’s in their court. I sent back all these ones I got with a copy of my driver’s license and said, ‘It’s not me. I’m not paying them.””

Well ok. I guess they use the car registration and the driver’s license photo to id the drivers and issue the ticket.

So Vontesmar is working a loophole here.

Except…

“…officers sat outside Vontesmar’s home and watched him drive to work. ‘We watched him four different times put the monkey mask on and put the giraffe-style mask on,’ Officer Dave Porter said. ‘Based on surveillance, we were positive that Vontesmar was the driver.'”

So fine, he’s probably not going to get away with this, but damn…you gotta like his style!

File this under: hot desert sun does something funny to folks.

Photo from azcentral.com