SuperSatellite ||

What is it about holidays that seems to bring the stupid out in people?  Explain it to me.  Or is it just that people have no concept of how to drive anymore?  Michaele and I left Friday morning to go be with family over the weekend and look at places for the wedding.  On the way down, we got trapped in behind an oversized semi that slowed us way down.  The problem with that is that Michaele’s little Sentra has no balls.  No balls.  That makes it terribly difficult to pass.  But, to all those drivers that felt it necessary to pass both us and the semi at once, you win a gold star for being brilliant.  That’s me being sarcastic, in case you couldn’t tell.

I seem to recall that passing two vehicles at once is illegal.  Though, now, I can’t find evidence to support that actually.  If it’s not, it should be.  Regardless, that doesn’t make it any less stupid.  Especially when one of the two cars you are passing is an oversized semi, which may or may not have a vehicle in front of it you have no way of seeing.  Eventually, we did get around them, by being patient and finding a proper opportunity.

Coming back was even worse.  I recently convinced Michaele that it is perfectly safe and reasonable to do 5 MPH over the speed limit (she tends to err on the side of caution a bit too much while driving, even for me).  You’d be hard pressed to find a cop anywhere, outside maybe a school zone, that would actually pull you over for that (violations under 10MPH don’t actually count as moving violations anyway).  If the limit is 65, I usually do 69, if it’s 70, I’ll do 74.  I’m comfortable with that, and I’ve never been stopped for speeding because of it.  But, I lost count of the number of people that passed us while we were doing 70.  Technically, it is illegal to speed while passing someone (though blah, blah, blah, we all do it).  But, to do so blatantly, when we are already going over the speed limit…  Again, I defer to my earlier comment re: stupid.  There isn’t anywhere you need to get that you need to get there that fast.  If so, leave earlier.  We got passed by people that continued on down the road doing easily 75 and 80 MPH.  Out of sight within minutes.  And what really set me off, was the number of people that did it.  I’m not sure I’ve ever been passed quite so many times on that stretch of highway.  Keeping in mind that we were already going over the speed limit.

My main reason for ranting about this is one - you make my travel more unsafe, you farking idiots.  Plus, it pisses me the hell off when I go to pass someone, and a person takes it upon themselves to pass me and the person in front of me at that same moment.  You’re just asking to cause an accident.  Two, I seriously worry about where we will be in a generation or two.  I know that in the grand scheme, this is a dumb one to worry about.  But, it is symptomatic of all the other crap we’re dealing with these days.  If you drive like an idiot, how does that reflect to your kids?  What lesson do they learn?  That it’s okay to drive how you want and tell the ones that are trying to be remotely safe to fark off?  Keep riding my ass on the highway, and one day I might just snap and slam on my brakes.  That’d suck for Mr. Idiot Driver Behind Me Who Needs a Crash Course In Traffic Protocols.  And if you need evidence, stop and really watch how kids drive these days.  I never even had a driver’s ed course, and I knew better than these kids do how to act in a car.

And now, for no reason, a video of my parents’ idiot dog attacking light:

Man, I don’t know what it is lately, but apparently I have become a magnet for red lights.  I’ve been driving back and forth to the college a lot for the play and such, so my travel has been about double the normal rate.  But for some reason I cannot hit green lights between here and there to save my life.

My normal route has 6 lights going and 7 coming back.  To be fair, one of those lights (on both legs) is never red.  It’s just there for the school kiddies to get across a busy street when they push da button.  But, between the 11 other passes, over the past 4 or so days, my red light percentage is running about 80%.  I made it a point to count coming home yesterday, of the 6 lights which actually run normally, 5 were red on me.  I don’t get it.  Same story this morning.  My trips to and from work are taking almost twice as long as normal because I’m constantly sitting at lights.  Everyone knows Pittsburg’s downtown lights are notorious for this behavior, except that I don’t go through the downtown.

Don’t even get me started on the stop signs.  Those bastards get me every time.

Yesterday, someone dumped a mountain bike at the curb of my house.  Being the good samaritan that I am, I made Michaele pull it out of the street so that it wouldn’t get hit.  I figured maybe it broke down on someone or something, and they might come back for it.  When I got home from work (after fighting the red lights), the bike was still there, so I pulled it up closer to the house and called the cops.  After all, that’s their job, right?  I remember when my last bike got stolen here, someone dumped a POS in its place, also stolen (they basically traded up), so I ran with the assumption that someone might be looking for it.

Now, don’t get me wrong, this was no great find.  It was a Wal-Mart Mt. Fury Roadmaster Steel Beast of Crap purple woman’s mountain bike.  Replacement value $3.27 at a rummage sale.  But hey, someone might want it back.  So I call the 5-0 to let them know.  They tell me not only will they not pick it up, but they won’t even send someone to look at it.  Now that’s really encouraging.  Sure, I can understand not picking it up.  They only have so much room to store abandoned bikes.  But to not even look at it to see if it matches a description someone might have submitted?  That’s just lazy and sloppy.

Imagine it was your $2000 Trek Fuel EX 7 or something.  You called it in, gave a description, etc, etc, and the police assure you they’ll do their best.  I just happened to find it dumped at my house.  Knowing a good bike from a cheap bike, I call the police.  They tell me:
5-0: “…sorry, we are out of room to store bikes.”
Me: “So, what should I do with it then?” 
5-0: “Well, hold on to it for a while and see if anyone claims it, otherwise…” 
Me: “Otherwise?  Just do what I want with it?” 
5-0: “Basically, yeah.”

That’s paraphrased, but pretty much the exact phone conversation I had.  Given the fantasy bike, you’re out, and I just hit jackpot, and the police didn’t do an ounce of followup on your report.  Sadly, the actual bike really is a piece of junk, and was more than likely left for trash.  The moral?  Don’t let your bike get stolen in Pittsburg.  (I never did get mine back that got stolen a few years ago, I think I know why now.)