the heat is coming and tempers are flaring here. oh boy. today as i got off the highway on my regular commute and had half a mile to move leftward 4 lanes, i encountered my first road rager in months. it's well known that people get off the highway and have to move over quickly and that traffic is heavy. a 1.5-2 car length gap is usually merged into by someone coming in from the right, and traffic is slow enough to allow it. would be nice if there was more room, but that's city planning for ya. so i found a gap in a wall of traffic, got right next to it, popped on my blinker, and as i merged in... the prick stomped on the gas to close the gap! i shrugged my shoulders and forced my way in anyway, which yielded a lot of horn blowing and one finger saluting. ok, i shouldn't have shouted obscenities out the window at him and his girly suv as i moved to the next lane over and he pulled up next to me. i admit. :lol: i've got a bad temper. but you know it's time to take advantage of the dark tint when someone yells sexist names at you. had the windows been up, the mystery driver usually shuts people right up. guess i'm doing the a/c and windows up thing now. did i ever mention i hate this place?
Time for a holiday, galaxee? How does a week or two of cycling along abandoned rail beds sound? Cool shady tunnels, high wooden trestles, mountain waterfalls... Yeah, that air conditioning really helps. This is the first car we've had with it, and after our first long summer drive, I thought of it as a safety feature. Shields up, air on.
I hate it when people do that. It's not so bad around here fortunately unless you have the awful luck of being stuck on 880 which is the most evil highway in the nation. 880 eats puppy souls and angel wings for breakfast.
y'know, normally people understand that traffic through that stretch just sucks. wow, 880 does sound pretty evil.
I've never had to drive a car in places like that. I moved to Minnesota before getting a car, and then to North Dakota soon after. Once I drove to Fargo (from my home in rural N.D.) and did not pass another car in either direction until I'd gone 20 miles and gotten onto the freeway. My own road typically averaged a car every five minutes during the day. A traffic jam in Fargo is when the light cycles all the way through before you get to it. That happened to me probably 3 or 4 times in the 4 years I lived in town. Spokane is not as nice as N.D., but it's nothing like the booby hatches we use for big cities in this country. I'll admit that those places have a few good points, but they're not worth it. If you put too many rats in a cage, they'll eat each other. Psychologists study rats because they're just like us. If they had opposable thumbs they'd probably invent nuclear weapons and use them on each other, just like us.
Galaxee, I think I have a mod you might light. Its the replace the fog lights with rocket launchers mod. You can also swap them out for machine guns too if you prefer.. Were still in the testing phase though Once things are finalized, I'll let you know. Of course I'm just kidding... I haven't dealt with too much road rage - just some people that are jerks and probably would be that way regardless of what I was driving. I usually shrug it off.
Ha I own rats and must agree. I do think they are more intelligent than the average run of the mill person. Scary? Yes it is. I have a joke with friends about my smartest one building an aircraft in the "igloo" that he's very secretive about. But yes it's definitely AC time! 100+ degrees I have a huge temper as well but express my road rage solely to myself. Typically byacting crazy and punching the roof of the car while I'm driving... High temps = high tempers!
normally i can't complain too much about the traffic- it's navigable. normally people are fairly reasonable because we have to suffer through it together. it's the kooks that make me want to go back to a town of 60k people. till then, i'm liking the rocket launcher mod idea at the very least, paintball guns... i've dealt with enough rats to know the gross things they do. blech. since we have rat lovers here, i won't share gross stories. but i will say they're smart little suckers and great for all kinds of psych study. and i like them better than mice.
Carl Sagan was all fired up about trying to find intelligent life in outer space. I figure that's because he knew he'd never find any intelligent life here on earth.
N I think you may want to consider this mod: http://www.dillonaero.com/docs/DillonTacticalVehicle-1.wmv Gotta love the sound of 3,000 rounds a minute j
I know what your talking about. A guy in a dodge today was laughing at me and saying something out his window..and looked really pissed off about something his life, he nearly crashed into me, then cut me off..and nearly crashed into 3 other cars. All his windows were down! I have noticed alot of people leaving windows down because of fuel cost on the freeway, but little do they know maybe that the extra drag isnt worth it! I only run the A/C on the hwy..on city streets i will crack both windows until july..when its over 110 outside
No A/C in the Snail. But rolling the windows down does not take any electricity. And at 35 mph there's no significant drag. Once in a while someone laughs at me. Maybe once a month. But I've never had road rage. People who react at all give me the high sign, or the thumbs up. Nobody wants to drive electric, but everybody loves that I'm driving electric and not buying my fuel from terrorists. Let's see: Galaxee, Darell, Nate, Dave, and me. Anybody else buying fuel that does not come from terrorists?
I've wanted paintball guns on my car for a long time. And to carry one when I'm walking so I can nail the idiots who try to run me over in the crosswalk when I've got the walk signal.
You really want to shoot paint balls at a car whose driver may become extremely violent at having his car defaced? Especially when the behavior that angered you in the first place probably is a sign that he is mentally unstable? How about this idea instead: A video camera mounted on your car that can document the infraction when you press a button on the steering wheel. You then email the video to the police.
Especially if the road-raging nut behind the wheel really flips out after you paintball his truck, and whips out a *real* gun. True enough, he'd probably - eventually - be charged with 1st degree murder and spend a long time in jail. A nice epitath on your tombstone would then be "At least the other guy is in jail"
That's been in my plans for some time. 1 or more video cams, constantly recording to digital video, and available if and when some idiot does a Hit and Run or I want to prove some incident was the other guys' fault. In my younger days I would think about "James Bond Style" rotten-egg launchers. As a pedestrian, I've pulled my keys out of my pocket more than once. Hey, if you bump me and I have keys in my hand, it's YOUR fault you have a "keyed" car now. Do you want to report your hitting a pedestrian to the police ? Never had to use this trick yet, thankfully, but came awful close a few times.
