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December 27, 2002
The Strange Case of Dr. Safedrive and M. Piedlourde (Mr. Heavyfoot)
Monday and Thursday this week, I engaged in the longest road trips I had ever made. The drive was from Hoboken, NJ, USA, to Ottawa, ON, Canada. On the way up, my route took me up through Montreal and then west to Ottawa. On the way back, I was aiming to avoid the large snowstorms up and down the Northeast, so I went west to the Thousand Islands and came down through Scranton, then east to Hoboken. Both legs were roughly seven to eight hours long and gave me plenty of time to make a few observations:
- I drive much safer speeds in the middle of the night, when there is no one else around. Why? I'll set the cruise control and just let it ride. When surrounded by cars, I want to keep passing them. I kept my speed down and stuck mainly with the flow this time, though.
- Thank <insert deity here> for credit card acceptance at the pumps. I was down to a quarter tank in the Adirondacks and the exits were getting sparse. Stopped at one and it was closed. Went to the next exit and found another closed station. Not wanting to keep up the pattern in the hope that someone was open shortly before midnight, I tried the card in a pump and it worked! Woo!
- Crossing the border into Canada is still easy. No name, no passport. Just where are you from, where are you going, and are you bringing in alcohol or tobacco?
- Crossing the border into the US was almost just as easy, except I had a mission to accomplish to change my visa status.
- People can be morons sometimes, especially on highways. It's great that they went through the trouble of scraping the snow off their windshields. Some were even swift enough to scrape the snow off the back window. No... the people that didn't scrape the snow off their roofs and hoods? Don't people realise that once they bring their cars up to speed that the crap flying off their cars is a hazard to other drivers?
- To the person in the green Chevrolet Cavalier on southbound I-81 between Binghamton and Scranton shortly after noon on the 26th, I know it can be frustrating being behind a truck and two RV's moving at 62.5 mph, but pulling out into the passing lane and then barely broaching 65 mph and often slowing down to 50 mph to negotiate the wide curves is hardly smart or courteous driving.
- To the lady in the black Toyota RAV4 on eastbound Rte. 3 around 3 p.m. on the 26th that pulled into a spot recently vacated by a quickly moving beige Cadillac Escalade, that was me that had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting your vastly slower SUV because you couldn't bother to put down the stupid cellphone and actually check your blind spot before changing lanes.
Posted by KinCross at December 27, 2002 12:39 PM