fancy footwork

i had two harbingers for the hell i dealt with on the roads today.

the first was my intructor in a chemical hygiene officer certification course, who warned us that according to AAA, more people get in accidents this week than any other of the year, supposedly due to daylight savings and lack of sleep.

the second was this dream i had last night, where i rolled into a very haffners-esque tuning shop and as my car rolled through the carwash, somehow the body was just lifted off from the chassis by machines like in that chemical brothers music video. it was sanded and hit with touch-up paint, given new wipers and such; the chassis emerged carrying a steam-cleaned engine bay with all sorts of new tubing coming off my intake, which was all color-coded and labeled and stuff. it looked very fast. then they totally rolled my fenders and did some other crazy shit that i remember made me anxious about the bill. i think some recaro seats were going in when i woke up, and hot girls in bikinis were washing old muscle cars, and i was thinking that my friends would like this place.

so i felt a little forlorn when i walked up to my frost-coated ride, noting that the 1.5 FOOT long crack in the center of my windshield grows each day. today i decided to wear my new dyke shoes, thinking it was a safe day to get used to heel-toeing in the first new shoes i've driven in for a year, it finally being dry out and all.

natch i encountered some real winners. first this morning, some punk in an old riced out civic, as low as a roomba vacuum, buzzing his way up the onramp to 495 going maybe 30 mph due to the frost on his rear window and the sun behind him. i came around the corner at 55 or so and cut left into the second lane to pass with ample room, but apparently my performance exhaust leak proffered an audible challenge, because he suddenly floored it and matched my speed so well, i didn't hear him over said exhaust leak and was paying attention to merging onto the right lane of 495 when i noticed his pimply stubble (the only "pimp" thing about him) and backwards cap cruise even with me. he tried to force me into the traffic on the right and i didn't even dignify him with a downshift, i just pulled away in 4th and made sure he got to tangle with merging trucks. a sore middle finger is bad enough for 1 day, how random is that crap?

it gets better. on the way home, i admit to being a douchebag and avoiding all the stopped traffic in the right lane of the offramp of 495, but there's this whole other lane which i have a legal right to use, so i did. the problem was accelerating around 80 and then seeing a pickup go from a dead stop on the right to directly in front of me without even looking at oncoming traffic, several carlengths ahead. new shoes be damned, i slowed that train down from 80 to 30 in ~3 heartbeats (i could feel them in my teeth and ears. time stood still). no lockup, no fade, and a whole 6" to spare between his bumper and mine. good horn test, too.

so holy crap, i am totally driving about 5-10 mph slower tomorrow and i am making it through this perilous travel week unscathed, i tell you, disturbed dreams and dyke shoes be damned.