Horses or Horsepower: Who Taught Texans to Drive?!

Unhappily, I had to drive to another one of my company's locations to pick up a film. It's about a fifty mile drive, round trip on the craziness called the interstate.

I have not been happy with Texas drivers since I moved here. My first experience was that home finding trip during fourth of July weekend. My flight had arrived at night so driving to L'ville did not rank high on the great orgasmometer (i.e....it sucked). I had to go into the high places of the sky and in the middle of one of the one ramps to the high places of the sky was the carcass of a dead moose or whale or something huge like that. Scared the shit out of me. On the trip to the hotel I was staying at on my last night in town, I broke down crying on the phone to my boss because I got stuck in traffic and ended up going to the airport.

Little secret...I'm afraid of heights and I hate driving so maneuvering the overpasses and high levels of the interstate are death defying feats for me. I will be the old senior citizen who will gleefully give up her driver's license at a good retirement age and who will bother every one of her grandchildren to drive her everywhere because my ability to drive gets crippled by many things. I manage it but I'm usually on pins and needles when I have to drive for extended periods of time....like five minutes....because I feel the road is too narrow, the trucks are too big, and the morons are too likely to have a license, which leads me back to Texas drivers.

They have no mercy for you. NONE whatsoever. Here's a favorite pastime of theirs or so it seems. Drive really, really fast whilst staying on front car's ass. Don't pass. Oh no. You won't get bonus points for that EVEN though the lane to your left OR right are clear and free of any other motorized vehicle. The faster you go and the closer you are to the back bumper, the better the day.

Seriously, what the fuck kind of driving is that?!

I've seen many an automotive accident on the interstate since I've been here. They seem to always involve a massive vehicle like the semi-truck. One evening as I was coming home from the theater, I was in traffic for nearly an hour because a semi had flipped and burned on the interstate. On another day a semi hauling a double-wide motor home was traveling in front of me at approximately eighty miles an hour. Its tire was shredding as it was driving down the road. It continued to drive until all that was left was the tire wheel and then it slowed down and stopped. Scary moment for Em and me. I had slowed down until I was a safe distance behind it. There was no way in hell I was going to drive beside it and risk the fucking tire wheel falling off and come flying into my path of traffic, but every other maniacal driver didn't mind being near it.

I generally end up cussing when I drive. I've tried to curb it because it's not a healthy way to die....having a brain aneurysm from the screaming fit at an inept driver during rush hour traffic. No. Rather not.

Friend Steph gave me advice when I first moved here. Use your turn signals not as permission to come into the next lane but as warning as if to say, "Bitches! You better move or you stupidly deserve what I give you!"