Some of you already know that I have a long commute to work. On a good day, I drive an hour to work and an hour home every day. It’s all highway travel, and mostly without more than 5 other cars in sight. Traffic leaving town, and for the first 25 miles, can easily make this hour take 2 hours. If it snows, fuhgetaboutit. A couple of years back, it actually took me 9 hours to get home, due to ice on the highways. It’s super lame.
Since the tender age of 16, my driving record has been a mess of scratches and blemishes like a penny you find under a vending machine. I’ve had upwards of 15 speeding tickets, appeared in court for “disregarding a traffic signal” and taken the online Defensive Driving course 4 times now.
I like to go fast.
I won’t ride your ass, or honk or flash my lights. I’ll try to go around you safely if possible, and if you move to let me in, I’ll flash my hazards or wave to say thanks. I try to be decent. Sometimes people are jerks, which we all know, and we’ll not discuss that. After all, this isn’t a bitch session regarding my driving. I just like to go fast, if possible, and get more enjoyment from my necessary travels. This is me rationalizing it. That’s how I roll. Unless I’m driving, and then that’s how I roll.
A few months back, I was the tail of a long line of cars that were going approximately 65mph in a 45mph contraction zone. The last car in a group, in the fast lane, is the easiest to pull over. I argued and bitched and complained. For some reason, I still got a $450 ticket. Of course I paid it late. Of course they suspended my license.
That’s bad news right? Oh yeah, my plates expired a few days later. I’m batting a million.
Better late than never, I signed up for another online Defensive Driving course. The course was supposed to take 8 hours, but a guy on a review website said it took him 12 hours. I copied all the content, page by page to another document, searched for any answers I didn’t know on the quiz and completed it in 1.5 hours.
After that, I played Angry Birds on my phone the entire drive home. Maybe I should get my pilot’s license.