{pub_blog_excerpt}

Nothing makes me crazier than those jackasses who are coming right up on you, then pass you, get in front of you, and slow down.  What is that?  It’s like the goal was just to get ahead of me, not to get wherever they are going.  And it happens more frequently now because I live at the end of a 15 mile straight, mind-numbingly boring drive.  I make this drive with the cruise control on 65.  There’s always the guy who starts out at 55, speeds up to 70 for a mile or so and then gets distracted picking his nose or whatever and starts slowing down until he’s going 63… never fails, whatever the speed it’s about 2 miles short of whatever my cruise control is set on.

But that’s a whole different rant.  I speed, I admit it.  On the 3 lane sections of I-94 or I-69 or I-75, if I’m out there alone, I’m doing 85 and I’m taking the inside lanes on the curves.  Unless, of course, it’s raining.

Hydroplaning is one of my biggest fears.  I don’t like wet roads, I’ve seen too many defensive driving movies in the Army with the car careening off the road, sailing along on a quarter inch of water.  That freaks me out - that the whole car actually leaves the road - rises above it and instead is rolling along on the water, not the pavement.  So in the rain, I slow down.

But days like today, frozen, snowy, icy mess… I’m lucky to get to the speed limit.  I white-knuckle it all the way home.  That 15 miles of boring ass road is dark, lonely farm road; and you don’t know what dark is until you’re out in it.  The road to my tiny town looks like this:

Farm… farm… farm… bar… farm… farm…farm… bar…

My already overactive imagination slides into overdrive.  I see myself sliding off every curve, resting in every ditch.  I can feel every pebble, every shard of ice, every flaw in the road.  I can feel every millimeter I veer left or right, and I wonder it that will be the one I won’t be able to correct for.  The road curves right and I see myself drifting left, then over-correcting and going into a spin.

I think it’s a holdover from my youth.  I was driving a 72 camaro once, in the snow, on a beer run.  I came up an on-ramp to get back on the expressway, and it was one of those tight circle ones where you practically turn a 360 to get on the highway.  I came out of that turn to the straightaway, but the Camaro didn’t, and I did a doughnut right on the on-ramp before slamming into the guardrail, once again facing the right way.  I was so freaked out, I jumped out of the car and ran 6 blocks to the 7-11 to use the payphone, not even realizing the car was still idling.

It was still idling a half hour later when we got back to it.  Duh.