Category: commuting

What is this strange ritualistic dance?

This morning, driving to work, I saw many of my fellow Californians doing something odd…strange…weird….and yet, it felt vaguely familiar.

Yes, I passed the residential roads of my neighborhood and saw my fellow citizens by their cars…behaving oddly.

Some were using credit cards.

Others slapping with a newspaper.

One using just his bare hands.

All looked out of place.

Seems we had some low temps last night and these poor Californians were having to actually scrape the frost off their windshields.

I was never so happy for being able to park my car in the garage!

Oh I have scraped many a windshield in my day. Oh yes indeed.

I *hate* it.

Living in mile high Albuquerque, it was even worse when it snowed. So you’d brush off the snow, and THEN have to tackle the frost. Usually in my nice work clothes and high heels…in the wet and the mud. Boo!

Here, I don’t even own an ice scraper. I threw it away somewhere around year 2 post move. Don’t need it.

Clearly, no one else around here owns one either. The guy slapping his window with a newspaper gave me the most giggles. Beating the ice into submission? That is SO not going to work.

Thankfully it was a light frost and really, just starting up the car and getting the defroster going for several minutes would probably clear it up.

But the perplexed looks and utter consternation. That was good comedy as I sailed by in my warm, garage parked Jeep.

A public service announcement.

From eHow.com, the appropriate way to handle a four way stop. Emphasis added is mine.

  1. Slow your vehicle when approaching a 4-way stop. As you stop at the stop sign or red light, notice if there are any cars at any of the other stops, or if there are any approaching at the same time.

  2. Stop your vehicle completely. This means that your tires are completely stopped and not rolling at all. If there are cross walk lines or painted indicators on the road, stop at the appropriate lines. If it is a stop sign and there are no lines on the road, stop when the front of your car is even with the stop sign. If there is something blocking your view of the other stops signs, you may move forward only after stopping completely at your own stop sign.

  3. Look at the other stops to see if there are any other vehicles stopped or moving. The vehicles leave the stop signs in the same order in which they arrived. The first vehicle to arrive at a complete stop is the first vehicle allowed to leave the stop sign.

  4. Know that if there is more than one vehicle arriving at the same time at the 4-way stop, the vehicle furthest to the right is allowed to leave first. Always allow at least a few seconds to make sure no one else takes off even if it is your turn to leave first. Many people do not follow this rule, even though it is the legal way to leave a 4-way stop.

Note that nowhere in that discussion does it say that if you drive a big Mercedes SUV, that means you get ahead of anyone, anytime.

It also doesn’t say that if you come screaming up to the four-way stop at an excessive speed, barely touch the brakes, and then hit the gas, you get to go first.

I don’t care how busy you are. Or rich. Or good-looking. Or that your car is nicer than mine. Mine is paid off. And I don’t mind rolling that hoopty patched up with bailing wire and duct tape. Bite me.

This message brought to you by my frustrating morning commute.

(no, I didn’t get in an accident, but it was close. Thank goodness for that brake job I got last week.)

They never promised life would be fair

Today was a particularly tough day for me to roll out of bed with the alarm and come to work.

I didn’t sleep well last night due mainly to the crazed feline. I have a friend who has a theory that occasionally the cat brain will release some hormone that is akin to kitty crack, which then is the reason for the dilated eyes and tendency to gallop around the house making crazed movements.

If that is true, then my personal feline got deep into the kitty crack at about 3:30 in the ayem, and is, today, my least favorite person in the world.

Sleepy eyed, I ventured out onto the highway to make my way into my place of employment. I was heartened to see the sun slanting over the hills with the promise of a really warm day. This never fails to cheer me.

But that smile turned into a snarl when I made the merge and found myself rolling behind this.

Click for full size if you can’t make it out. If you can make it out, what you see there is a Forerunner with two surfboards sticking out the back.

Dude driving and his long-haired blond lady in the passenger seat are headed, I assume, to Pacifica for a nice day of surfing.

While I drive to work to sit under florescent lights all day and literally watch my muscles lose their elasticity. In a building located in what is considered one of the most foggy and windy areas of the Bay Area.

And this is fair how?

Just one little thing…

Last night, after coming home late, and looking for something to accompany my dinner of hot soup, I watched some throwaway episode of some throwaway show in syndication.

The premise of the episode was that just one little thing can change the outcome of your whole day. It was a riff on the Butterfly Effect complete with a CG butterfly.

I actually thought it was a clever bit of television writing, and it was highly satisfying, along with my chicken soup.

This morning, I had occasion to revisit this bit of chaos theory as I made my way into work.

I left the house a skosh later than I’d wanted to, and when I fired up the Jeep, the gas indicator began making noises at me. I had to stop for gas, making me run even later.

The closest gas station is located on a road out of town that I don’t usually take, because along that road there are three schools. The parents dropping off their kids always backs up traffic, so I avoid it.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. In addition to running later than usual, and running into school traffic by taking a road I normally don’t take, it turns out there was a traffic light blinking at the most critical intersection (right before the highway entrance). So traffic on that road was backed up for about five miles.

And because I sat for an hour on a road that should normally take ten minutes to traverse, I got to work much later than usual, meaning I had a hard time finding a parking spot. The one I did find was a tight squeeze by a wall in the parking garage, and so I dinged my own door on the way out.

It also means the work cafeteria was out of orange juice by the time I got there.

And my staff gave me an arched eyebrow when I did finally roll into my office.

All this really bodes for a great day, right? Ugh.

So as I sit here at my desk drinking coffee instead of OJ, I got to thinking about how just one little thing had ruined my whole good day.

At first I blamed the traffic light. That damn light! If not for the flapping butterfly wing of that stupid busted stoplight I would have made it to work on time!

But that’s not really true, is it?

It’s that I rolled out of the house late. Had I had my you-know-what together and left earlier, there would have been less traffic.

But that’s also not really true, is it? Because even leaving late, I would have taken a different road and been fine…if I had a full tank of gas.

The crux of this whole thing was my empty gas tank.

See, last night when I was driving home, my near empty gas tank was already beeping at me. I could have stopped for gas on the route home, but feeling lazy and tired, I chose not to.

So the flapping wing, really, was my decision not to stop and get petrol last night.

That one decision has blown my whole Wednesday morning.

And unlike the television show, I can’t do a second act on this day and show what would have happened if the decisions had gone differently.

I have to, as The Good Man says, “just play through”.

That there is chaos theory, Karen style.

What’s in a name?

The Good Man, being the very good man that he is, agreed to run my car into the shop today. So as such, he drove me to work this morning.

As we careened down the Bay Area highways, we were cut off by a Mercury Mountaineer.

I said to TGM, “The Mountaineer…that was never really a big hit, was it?”

TGM said, “No, it’s essentially a Ford Explorer anyway.”

Then I replied, “I always thought Mountaineer was a stupid car name anyway.”

Which tipped off a whole conversation about absurd car names…TGM was on a ROLL. I laughed my head off and in the middle of his rant, I said, “I foresee a blog entry.”

So here it is. The content below is mostly stolen from the brilliant mind of TGM.

Without further ado, my top five most absurd names of cars you’ll see rolling on the roads today:

5. Nissan Armada. “What, is the main feature that it sinks off the coast of England?” said TGM (A comment that had me laughing so hard I got a stitch in my side.)

4. Dodge Durango. What a wimpy SUV name. Have these people ever actually BEEN to Durango. I have. And what is it about the sleepy Colorado town that the car should evoke? Am I supposed to think snow? And mountains? No, I think tourist trap. Look at me in my rolling tourist trap.

3. Chevy Avalanche. “Now that name is appropriate, it is a disaster rolling down a hill.” (TGM was on fire this morning.)

2. Toyota Echo. “It’s bears a faint resemblance to a car, but isn’t actually a car.”

1. The winner and still the King: Ford Probe. “I sure as hell don’t want something made by Ford up in space,” said TGM. To which I replied “or up my butt”.

Yes, childish as I am…the Ford Probe makes me think of something more…medical. I don’t want to think of uncomfortable medical situations while driving to work every morning.

Or maybe that’s just me.

Anyhow…there were plenty more, but I was laughing so hard, I couldn’t make notes.

Special thanks to TGM for both his brilliance and for making the ride to work more fun.

If you drive any of the above automobiles, I’m sure it’s a *fine* car…just has a dorkish name! :)