4.769

At my current rate of driving, I will be paying $300 a month for gas when the price per gallon is 4.769.

Evil and Manipulative

I had passed an empty parking stall and went around to the left and immediately left again. A woman coming opposite me turned right down the same aisle in front of me. I didn’t want her to make a left and end up where I had just come from and take that parking spot. So I turned on my right turn signal hoping she would think that there were no parking stalls to the left an go right too. Well she did. Then I turned my signal off and went back around to the left and parked

}:-D A little misdirection is most gratifying…

Evil.

Crisis averted/avoided/didn’t happen

This morning’s prep session was useful. I am now ready if I have to camp out at the hotel for a couple of nights. Fortunately the freeze didn’t happen last night. I am going to keep the bag packed and stowed in my truck and I will schedule time every so often to take the stuff out of it and switch out the clothing for something clean. I may stick a dryer sheet in there as well. I am going to start keeping a food pack ready as well. I’ll take one of my lunch bags that I am not using and keep three or four ready to heat meals in there with some eating utensils. In addition to that I am going to add a half gallon’s worth of water bottles. That would mean 2 quart size bottles. The idea is to fill these up with ice and water and put them in a cooler to take with me. Even though we are more than half way through January there is still February and this has not been a town where we just drive all over the place in sleet. We’re getting better and the road crews are getting better at salting the road. But there are still people who zip down the road like nothing is out of the ordinary and then we have to wait like an hour while rescue vehicles try to extricate them out of their situation.

Austard

I was on Cesar Chavez approaching the Guadalupe intersection when the car in front of me made a motion like it was about to turn but stopped because there was a pedestrian crossing Guadalupe. Okay fine. My problem with this is that at this point no one was coming and there was no reason that the driver could not have moved into the center lane and kept going. The people were 4 feet from the curb. There was no threat to the safety of the pedestrian and this could have been executed without holding up traffic.

Stalled vehicle

Last Sat. night there was a stalled car at the light in the left most lane. People had been coming off the exit ramp and finally seeing it moving into the 2nd lane. There were no hazard flashers. At some point another car came up behind the stalled one, stopped, and turned on his blinkers. This probably saved that vehicle and the one that might have hit it as well as some lives. A little later some guy came running up from the freeway. He may have stopped to go pick up something off the freeway that fell off the car or blew out the window. The cars continued to exit the freeway and come up to the 2nd vehicle with the flashing hazard lights, then the driver would identify them as hazard lights and at that point he or she would move to go around them. This began to cause the 1st lane to fill up towards the exit ramp. I hope they got that vehicle going to get it out of the way because that was one hell of a place to stall.

Road Rage

A man was being tailgated by a stressed out woman on a busy boulevard. Suddenly, the light turned yellow just in front of him. He did the right thing, stopping at the crosswalk, even though he could have beaten the red light by accelerating through the intersection. The tailgating woman was furious and honked her horn, screaming in frustration as she missed her chance to get through the intersection, dropping her cell phone and makeup. As she was still in mid-rant, she heard a tap on her window and looked up into the face of a very serious police officer. The officer ordered her to exit her car with her hands up.

He took her to the police station where she was searched, fingerprinted, photographed, and placed in a Holding cell. After a couple of hours, a policeman approached the cell and opened the door. She was escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer was waiting with her personal effects.

He said, “I’m very sorry for this mistake. You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping off the guy in front of you, and cussing a blue streak at him. I noticed the ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ bumper sticker, the ‘Choose Life’ license plate holder, the ‘Follow Me to Sunday-School’ bumper sticker, and the chrome-plated Christian fish emblem on the trunk. Naturally I assumed you had stolen the car.”

Warning Citation

I’ve been pretty sleepy lately, especially when going home from work. I have a tendency to drift over to the right and sometimes cross the textured stripe. Well it happened again after 1:00 when I was on MoPac. I snapped to and kept driving. Problem is a cop was passing me when it happened. So they followed me all the way to my exit and I made another one of my regular mistakes. I didn’t signal when I got off the road. So two cops pulled me over. That has never happened before. Now I am right by the entrance into my neighborhood. So I pull over and gave them my ID and an expired insurance card. It expired on 1/2 and I hadn’t put the new one in my wallet. (That problem has been corrected). They ran my license and plates and came back and gave me a warning citation for failing to signal and strongly suggested I make sure I am rested when I get on the road. I don’t think I have received a warning citation since I was 18.

Whew…