More Thoughts On Driving In North Carolina

by LF (10/97)

I used to work from 7am to 3pm (no lunch). This had two overwhelming advantages. First, it usually meant that I could go at least two full hours before anyone blew me any shit. Second, the drive to and from the office was downright tolerable.

Then the bosses started enforcing my corporation's "core hours" of 9 to 4, which meant that (given an eight-hour day) I had to be there from either 8 to 4 or 9 to 5. I started working the former, and my usually sunny disposition immediately went down the crapper. The more rush-hour traffic gets snarled, the bigger the snarling bastard I become.

I began to tire of arriving at my destinations with the veins standing out on my forehead, so I've initiated a Casper Milquetoast campaign, forcing myself to drift along with traffic, stopping the jockeying for position, and ignoring grievous insults.

On the third day of this program, I was driving home at a sedate (and legal) 55mph on Raleigh's 440 Beltline when I noticed a red sports car with a NCSU sticker approaching on the on-ramp to my right. I planned to change lanes to accommodate the fella, looked into my driver's side mirror, and saw that there was a State Trooper about nine car-lengths behind me in the left lane, coming up at about 65. So I could either be polite to the kid by dodging in front of a civil servant who could double my insurance rates for three years (if I sped up he could've popped me for speeding, if I didn't, he could've gotten me for Failure to Maintain Assured Clear Distance), jam on my brakes, or hold steady and hope that the youngster would turn his head and see the big black logo and rack of lights on the silver cruiser. I stayed the course, the kid did not look, and worse yet, jumped on the gas at the last second to hop ahead of me by about five feet. The Trooper pulled him over. So I try to start acting like a nice guy, and still end up feeling like an asshole!

Two days later I'm calmly heading out to the range to shoot on a fine morning, and decide to stop in at the Biscuitville in Mebane. This coot in a conversion van in front of me had the same idea, but barely made it into the entrance (blocking both the incoming and outgoing lanes, of course) before grinding to a complete halt, apparently flummoxed by the sight of over twenty empty parking spots to choose from. I was up to "Seven-Mississippi" before I checked my rear-view and noticed a really large truck carrying construction equipment tear-assing up the rise towards my bumper. I laid on my horn to get the old rat-bastard's attention, and just managed to squeeze past him before the truck -- it's own horn blatting now to join in on the fun -- raced by. I was shaking so bad that I couldn't even trust myself in the drive-thru lane, so I skipped breakfast.

But the good news is that the more-leisurely trips that I'm now taking have permitted me to dwell on more of the fun things to expect while driving in NC:

• Uncovered Dump Trucks! The best thing about these babies is that they carry disclaimer signs that read something like "Not Liable For Damage To Windshields: Stay 200 Feet Back," a real knee-slapper since they're so filthy you have to be within five yards to read 'em. Calling in to demand reparations after you catch a missile the size of a croquet ball is a bit tough due to the fact that most of the lumbering lobbers don't carry any sort of outward sign of their affiliation, and their license plates are either missing or completely covered in muck.

• Ah, Sweet Mysteries of Changing Lanes! Up North changing lanes are usually viewed as all-purpose first-come-first-served bonus traffic lanes. Here you'd think that the NC-DOT crews line them with foot-popper anti-personnel mines. It is unnerving to be bopping along behind someone in the left lane who suddenly locks 'em up before gingerly mincing over into the center lane like a Vatican curator parking a pushcart loaded down with Mason jars full of newly-pickled Mother Teresa relics. And then they put on their turn signals.

• My Lane! Mine! Last Tuesday I was going down 64, the last major four-lane stretch to work, following behind this broad in a black Accord in the left lane. A truck hauling a major section of a pre-fab home was traveling slowly in the right lane, struggling to pick up speed. The wind was kicking hard, and its way-oversized load was swaying unpredictably. Ms. Accord jumped on the accelerator to pass this piece of nasty business. As soon as she pulled even with the hauler's cab (and thus out of harm's way), she slowed down, trapping my car and the Bonneville on my tail alongside the major-tonnage potential whipcracker. This went on for over a mile until she tortoised out ahead enough for us to escape.
  
  Today, while making the trip back from work, I saw a variation on this theme. A dude in an Intrepid was right up on a truck's ass in the fast lane. The trucker obligingly moved right when he had the chance. Did Mr. Intrepid shoot past the rig when given the opportunity? No. Rather, the prick pulled amidships of the truck and then matched its speed, forcing the trucker to brake when the next slow car came up on the right.

• Hulk Ho! Abandoned vehicles are a real treat, because they set down roots wherever they land. My favorite recent one was a red Toyota Tercel with a "Mean People Suck" bumper sticker that was six inches off the yellow line on the inside shoulder of the Beltline. To make this even better, the car was just around a fairly sharp turn, so that unsuspecting leadfooting motorists were surprised (and reacted accordingly) for thirteen full days before the bloody thing was towed. As long as our state legislature has to meet anyway, I'd like to see them pass a law permitting salvage teams to glom onto anything that has been left around for 72 hours. Hell, I'd be for letting them strip and then torch the offender's property as long as they also dragged the carcasses out of road hazard range.

• Sport Utility Hell! I realize that this isn't specifically a North Carolina thing, but the high-tech Research Triangle area where I live has enough highly-paid keyboard-punching Yuppies that we've got to be sucking SUVs in from the rest of this SUV-laden country. Every time I try to pull out of a parking space I've got to turn off my radio and creep s-l-o-w-l-y out, because I can't see around the fucking things while in my car. Same thing goes for streets that permit parking. Might as well be bumper-to-bumper billboards. Shit, it's not as if the 4X4's serve some useful purpose by helping their owners drive any better in the rough -- every time we have an ice storm here, the drainage ditches are quickly choked with newly-scarred Family Trucksters.

I'm gonna start pounding on my manager to let me telecommute. Then I could get a shack on a big chunk of land in the middle of nowhere and cut my driving down to short hops to pick up food and beer. And the occasional longer run to pick up pallet-loads of ammo from the UPS substation.