Spring Drivers

I love to drive. I like the feeling of the road under me and the better the vehicle the better the experience. I notice a million things around me when I’m behind the wheel and sometimes I even notice the road. Lately, I’ve noticed something about other drivers. Drivers coming up behind me to be more specific.

As the frost starts to leave the earth in the cold weather states, it causes the ground to heave up in places and form some amazing bumps, or ramps, as I like to think of them. Hit one of those suckers just right and you’ll feel like you’re driving the General Lee and ‘Dixie’ is suddenly blaring from your horn. As much fun as driving that particular car would be, you don’t want to find yourself airborne over a Maine road in the spring, for two reasons. The first is that the next ‘ramp’ is flying toward your car at an unbelievable speed and the second is that there is always some animal just waiting to run out in front of you. In other words, late winter is a great time to slow down and just enjoy the free pounding you and your car are in for. This rule applies to most any vehicle and the smaller the car the slower one should travel. If you’re fortunate enough to own one of the old dinosaurs like a Cadillac or Town Car then none of what I’ve written before now applies to you. People aren’t kidding when they say the cars of the Seventies were like couches on wheels. They had all the handling capabilities of your average dairy cow (and almost as much leather) but they could handle any bump or rut the road threw at them. I think these cars were designed this way because it was mostly old people that were buying them, and besides liking big cars, old people needed cars that wouldn’t break their hips when they got into the potholes.

Now, I normally drive at or slightly above the posted speed limit unless I am in my gay van. People waste way too much money every year buying devices that will help them thwart the police’s use of radar and laser speed detection guns. All you need to do is get a minivan. As far as I can tell the cops don’t even turn their guns on when you’re driving one of those things, even though they are the homeliest, most ungainly things on the road. I bet I could take a minivan, stuff a thousand-horsepower engine in the back of it with no mufflers whatsoever, paint the thing hot yellow with bright red flames shooting down the side and I still wouldn’t get a sideways glance from the po-leece. No one expects anything from a family mover and that’s a hidden gift because if you need to motor down the interstate at a high rate of speed, you’re home free. When’s the last time you saw a minivan get pulled over for speeding? Most cops don’t want to even be seen that close to one of the damn things anyway for fear of its total gayness rubbing off on them.

Anyway, when late winter arrives and the road starts to look like it froze in the middle of an earthquake I start slowing down just enough to avoid destroying my car in some weird flying accident with a deer. This year my car has been under the weather so I had to start driving my truck and I found out that I needed to go even slower because of the truck’s stiffer suspension. The funny thing about a truck is that if you put a little weight in the back of it you will pre-load the rear springs and it will actually ride a lot better, but if you leave it empty, the thing will try its best to break your back as it skids all over the road. So, I just leave it in forth gear most of the time and plan on taking a little longer getting to, where it is, that I’m going.

Not everyone on the road wants to follow my ‘Late Winter Rule for Driving in Maine’ though. Some people are going drive ten miles an hour over the speed limit no matter what the weather or condition of the road may be. Usually these are the same people you see with a cell phone in one hand and a coffee or newspaper in the other, while they steer with their knees. I once saw a woman, in the local store, who had tried to put her makeup on while navigating a Maine road in the spring and it looked like she’d been on the losing end of a lipstick fight with Tammy Fay Baker. It was pretty scary. She had red streaks all over her face and some in her hair yet she managed to not get any on her lips at all. I was impressed.

“I bet the folks at Revlon would be happy to see you abusing their product like that”, I told her.

“Well” she said, “I didn’t think the road would be that rough when I started putting it on.”

I kind of screwed one eyebrow up and said, “Oh, so you’re not from around here huh?”

“Oh no, I’ve lived in Maine all my life”, she said.

“Lady, it’s March, what in Hell do you mean when you say you didn’t think the road was going to be rough? Jesus H., Mary and Joseph, I saw my neighbor out there this morning scrubbing her unmentionables on the washboard section of road in front of her house! How can you say you didn’t know? Are you retarded or just dumb?”

Her blondness wouldn’t let that last part penetrate as she just giggled a little went into the bathroom to wash the red nightmare from her fat little face.

The selected few out there who can’t drive a little slower on the rough roads always seem to end up behind me at this time of year. As I mentioned before I do drive a little slower because my back can’t take it and I don’t have any way to roll my truck back on its wheels should I flip it over. With all these people driving up behind me I’ve had a chance to observe something that seems very interesting to me, even though I can’t explain it.

When a man drives up on my bumper I know it will only be a matter of time before he goes around and leaves me in his dust. I don’t slow down anymore than I am already driving but I will make sure that I’m not taking my half of the road out of the middle so people can pass when the opportunity arises. Men will take any chance they get to go around even if it means leaving the ground in the process. I can’t say that I blame them because I am a man and if I had a better rough-road vehicle I’d probably be passing them instead of the other way around.

Women, on the other hand, take a different approach when driving behind someone who is going slower than they are. A woman will drive up on my rear bumper, just like a man, but for some reason they will not pass. I’ve seen it happen dozens of times this year alone and it has really started to pique my curiosity. When I look in the rear view mirror now and see a woman coming up behind me like she wants to give me a reach-around I do the same thing that I do when it’s a man closing in. I pull away from the center line a little bit and maintain an even speed so that they may pass when they get the chance. For some reason women simply will not pass. Even after miles of pavement have fallen beneath the wheels of our vehicles, and I’ve slowed to a snail’s pace, I know I can look behind me and still see them riding me like a cheap hooker. They don’t mind being about four inches away from my rear bumper as though they’re telling me to hurry the fuck up but they will not go around. I don’t understand it, but I refuse to actually pull over when there are many places to legally pass someone who isn’t going as fast as they are.
Maybe these gals look at it as a good time to put their makeup on despite the rough road conditions and the reduced reaction time they have by drafting me. In fact, maybe there would be less lipstick scarring if these ladies would just back up a little bit, or fucking pass already, because then they would be able to see the dips in the road instead of just the one in the mirror.