I'm not promoting drinking, BUT . . .

*** continued from previous post  ***


Mom immediately wanted to pull over and kill the nice young lady. I felt it was too early in the trip for assault, plenty of time for that later. So I hit the throttle. The truck behind us followed suit. We were now cruising a good 10 mph over the posted speed limit. (Shhhh. . .don't tell the boys in blue.) Then it hit me; it was then I realized the girl behind us was an "obstacle driver". What is that you may ask? Why an 'obstacle driver' is a person that gets on the road, and drives until they encounter another car. That car then becomes an "obstacle" for them. You are in their way. If you pull over, or wave them around you, they will drive up and tailgate the next car in line. We are all just window dressing to their lives. We are all obstacles to their goals.

Which didn't matter to me - I couldn't care less about her day-to-day habits. Right now she was tailgating and putting our lives at risk. Mom was twisting in her seat, turning around and giving her the 'stink eye'. Your Mother's 'stink-eye' normally causes strong men to crumble like greasy street-punks on the witness stand. There was a problem here though, the girl would have had to been paying attention to SEE the stink-eye.

Mom leaned forward and shouted, "I'm going to throw pennies at her windshield in about 2 seconds!"

You know your Mom. She would do it. I suppose I should have found some joy in that she wanted to throw pennies instead of spark plugs. Or a chair. But I didn't. It's a wonder I've kept her out of prison as long as I have.

"No you're not," I said, with what I hoped was an appropriate amount of authority in my voice.

"She's going to run into the back of us! She can't be more than 3 feet away!"

I looked for a place to pull over, but the Washington State Department of Transportation, in their far-sighted wisdom, had decided that the shoulders of the road were terribly, terribly passe', and replaced them with a bare six inches of tarmac and huge guard rails. Really huge. Really huge and really shiny guard rails that screamed 'Don't touch me our I will fudge you up!'. So I couldn't have pulled over had I wanted. And, as the hip-cats on the Netz say, do want! There was simply no where to go even if I found that we had spontaneously combusted and figured it was a fine time for a wienie roast.

I was fast running out of options. Speeding up hadn't helped. There were no side roads on this stretch of highway, nothing but aforementioned wavy strips of aluminum death.

What to do? Well, I did the only thing I could do - I became drunk.

I've hinted at the maneuverability of the Vision, buy you have no idea. You can swerve and swoop the beast like a fighter jet, and snap her back in a straight line before you can say . . . you can say. . . well, something very short and very witty. So that's what I did. I sped up, and began to weave my baby around in the lane, then slowed, sped up, weaved. Sort of like the directions on a bottle of shampoo. Weave. Speed. Repeat. It wasn't dangerous, but it LOOKED dangerous and that was the point. Oddly enough, the girl backed off. Way off. Mission accomplished. No doubt she was now dialing 911, reporting the 'dangerous maniac' on the bike. I hoped so. Those field tests on a cane are a hoot.

"Thank you," Mom said as she leaned forward with her face-shield raised.

"No problem sweetie," I replied craning my neck but keeping my eyes on the road.

*** the journey continues tomorrow