There was rather too much of the near miss excitement in the commute yesterday morning. Had I been relieved as I usually am around ten minutes before six in the morning I'd have breezed through and missed it all. As it was day shift released me just before six in the morning so it seemed I was on the road when a couple of my neighbors lost their minds.
Before I even arrived at the crash scene on Ramrod Key in front of the Boondocks Bar I was nearly knocked off my motorcycle by the classic fuck you maneuver indulged in by some overly anxious car drivers. It rarely happens but yesterday a silver PT Cruiser pulled out of Bay Point next to Baby's Coffee at precisely the moment I would have run into their driver door at 60 miles an hour had I not been paying attention. I just got the feeling the car wasn't going to stop, it approached the junction with the Highway too fast and I could see it wasn't going to stop at the shoulder, so I started braking nice and early. I even had time to hit my high beam and give the driver, who knew precisely what they were doing and were miscalculating horribly the benefit of the piercing white beam of the Bonneville's headlight. I swerved and passed behind the numbnut in the car and got a nice little adrenaline rush as I pulled past and swooped onto the bridge toward Sugarloaf.
Usually I find at least once a week that some impatient soul stuck in a line of slow sleepy drivers heading to work in Key West, pulls out to pass, sees my lone headlight and says what the hell and goes for it anyway pushing me to the shoulder. In the picture above, taken from my car as I returned home with a well walked Cheyenne in the back, I was looking east toward Boondocks on Ramrod about where the wreck in the first picture took place. Forty minutes earlier I was completing my commute, and calculating I needed more fuel to get to work and home from my early morning shift to come I stopped at the Shell station at the end of my street. A pick up pulled in and the driver said"Did you see the wreck?" Huh? "A pick up ran into the railings over there..." and sure enough there it was, across from Boondocks. I had been checking out a black Mercedes parked on the street on the opposite side with no lights and fearing a repeat of the earlier maneuver I had been watching to see what it was going to do. So much so I missed the big truck half in the mangroves on my side of the street, where the Mercedes driver had apparently gone to render help. Silly me. 
How the truck, caught in the flashing-by-in-motion-in-the-half-light picture above managed to drive off a very straight chunk of highway I cannot begin to imagine. Unless he was still asleep, drunk, high, texting, suddenly taken ill, arguing with a passenger, or any of the hundred and one things people do as they drive.
Before I even arrived at the crash scene on Ramrod Key in front of the Boondocks Bar I was nearly knocked off my motorcycle by the classic fuck you maneuver indulged in by some overly anxious car drivers. It rarely happens but yesterday a silver PT Cruiser pulled out of Bay Point next to Baby's Coffee at precisely the moment I would have run into their driver door at 60 miles an hour had I not been paying attention. I just got the feeling the car wasn't going to stop, it approached the junction with the Highway too fast and I could see it wasn't going to stop at the shoulder, so I started braking nice and early. I even had time to hit my high beam and give the driver, who knew precisely what they were doing and were miscalculating horribly the benefit of the piercing white beam of the Bonneville's headlight. I swerved and passed behind the numbnut in the car and got a nice little adrenaline rush as I pulled past and swooped onto the bridge toward Sugarloaf.Usually I find at least once a week that some impatient soul stuck in a line of slow sleepy drivers heading to work in Key West, pulls out to pass, sees my lone headlight and says what the hell and goes for it anyway pushing me to the shoulder. In the picture above, taken from my car as I returned home with a well walked Cheyenne in the back, I was looking east toward Boondocks on Ramrod about where the wreck in the first picture took place. Forty minutes earlier I was completing my commute, and calculating I needed more fuel to get to work and home from my early morning shift to come I stopped at the Shell station at the end of my street. A pick up pulled in and the driver said"Did you see the wreck?" Huh? "A pick up ran into the railings over there..." and sure enough there it was, across from Boondocks. I had been checking out a black Mercedes parked on the street on the opposite side with no lights and fearing a repeat of the earlier maneuver I had been watching to see what it was going to do. So much so I missed the big truck half in the mangroves on my side of the street, where the Mercedes driver had apparently gone to render help. Silly me. How the truck, caught in the flashing-by-in-motion-in-the-half-light picture above managed to drive off a very straight chunk of highway I cannot begin to imagine. Unless he was still asleep, drunk, high, texting, suddenly taken ill, arguing with a passenger, or any of the hundred and one things people do as they drive. I went home to sleep. The rest of my day was entirely uneventful.
2 comments:
If one rides on two wheels, one has to drive for the cagers.
the process of driving has become so disconnected from the environment that drivers no longer associate the act of driving with travel - it's actually a distraction to texting, drinking, eating, reading, etc.
it seems the majority of drivers are busy doing everything BUT driving. Drives me nuts, as I have a no eating/drinking/texting/phoning rule when I'm behind the wheel.
Cars should not have drink holders, auxiliary ports for Icrappy thingies, cigarette lighters...I'm even averse to audio systems. One should concentrate on the task at hand.
Focused on Fleming,
Chuck.
Mr Conchscooter:
I am very thankful that you emerged, unscathed and alert for these circumstances
bob
Riding the Wet Coast
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