...
When it isn't pinheads plowing into you, the damn roadway seems to rejecting you out of hand. On the way down I found someone had just mowed down a drive up coffee kiosk at the edge of beautiful downtown Smith River, and on the way back I saw the mob of emergency vehicles and vexed firemen gazing down the slope on the other side of the highway. In both cases, it was, and still is, very hard to imagine how anyone got themselves into that sort of picklement.
I mean, the physics applicable to each disaster don't track. It seems to me both drivers would have had to be TRYING to get into that condition... or... as I say, 101 itself is bucking off motorists in sheer exasperation.
And it so IS exasperating. Very shortly after passing this travesty, I found myself needing to actively evade some asshole in a big pickup hauling a fifth wheel. The SOB was speeding in the fast lane half the time and then slowing down in either the fast or the slow lane, depending, I guess, on whim, but sticking in my vicinity for at least thirty miles, making me have to keep an eye on him all that way, sometimes from my windshield and sometimes from my rearview mirror.
If I weren't a codger, I'd've judged it an historically stupid attempt at car sex.
Finally, I decided to get florid on his ass. Every time he made one of his speed demon runs to pass me for the umpteenth time, I sped up to 85 in the slow lane to frighten him out of it. Had to do it three times before the stupid fuck pulled into the slow lane and kept it down to a dull roar back there.
I'm always wondering how vehicles get landed upside down on that stretch, and I think maybe this idiot just gave me a clue. The son of a bitch could've gotten a bunch of people killed, flying truck and trailer parts everywhere, with something as simple as a blowout... or just flat out going the wrong speed for a turn.
So maybe I convinced him I'm crazy and he ought to just stay back before I ran into him... or his wife started beating him with her purse.... Whatever. He eventually got the message.
And I made it home alive.
pipe up any time....
