There have been times when my vehicle has been the fastest one on a given stretch of road. e.g. Late for something urgent, someone in the vehicle badly needs the bathroom, just in an aggressive mood, etc.
There have been times when my vehicle has been the slowest one on a given stretch of road. e.g. There’s something somewhat fragile in the back, & it’s not netted down. I’m towing a trailer with tiny wheels. I’m someplace unfamiliar and trying to read street signs. Just in an enjoy-the-drive mood, etc.
I took Friday and Monday off… definitely a mental health break thing, so I was very intentionally arm-twisting myself into an enjoy-the-drive mood. Some tricks to this:
- Head out after rush hour.
- Don’t go the same direction most people go.
- Take County Highways (i.e. get off the Interstate as much as reasonable).
- Use the cruise control (i.e. math and technology) to maintain your speed… not your emotions and your right foot.
An old friend – a guy I worked with way back in the ’90s – wrote a great article about Scenic State Park, and within it mentioned the Lost 40 Scientific and Natural Area. Once I learned that this spot existed, and in light of the drought and forest fires we’ve had up north, I figured I’d acutely regret it if I didn’t go see these majestic, towering beauties before they burned down. It was wonderful. If you factor in the difference in climate between Northern MN and Mill Valley, CA, I think the Lost 40 is as impressive as Muir Woods.
So – you can imagine my general travel attitude when I chose to leave the hotel at 6am on Sunday, and furthermore decided to take a route that avoided the most popular Highways. I wasn’t in a hurry. For much of this drive, I only saw other vehicles traveling the same direction as I was about 3% of the time. Otherwise I could see nobody ahead of me, and nobody behind. It was reasonably safe to stop, turn around, get out and take a photo, like this one…
Ergo, it wasn’t a problem to set the cruise within 2mph of the posted speed limit, like it usually is. No, I’m serious… you can literally get shot at, run off the road, or involved in some other form of road rage incident if you have the audacity to drive slower than 9mph over the speed limit here in MN. But I digress – as this story isn’t about rush hour.
The driver I’m about to describe is just one particular guy, but he shares several characteristics with many other non-commute drivers I’ve seen in the past few years. I was somewhere between MN 65 and I-35. I got on I-35 at Hinckley, so I was crossing Eastward somewhere probably on or near the map shown at the top of this page. I had the cruise set at approximately 54mph in a big, lumbering Chevy Tahoe, when someone in a little 2-door car come up behind me going 5-10mph faster than I was.
Then he hangs 2 car lengths behind me. I can see him gesturing. Nothing vulgar, but he clearly thinks I must be stupid.
We’re in a long passing zone. There are no other vehicles in sight ahead or behind. So I tap the “-Decel” on the Cruise a few times to slow down even further. If this guy has any clue at all, he should interpret this as “Please be my guest – pass me – I’ll make it as easy as possible for you. But no, I am not interested in going faster because you’re tailgating.”
The gesturing intensifies. A couple times, I see him swerve slightly left, as if to get a better view of the opposing lane, and judge whether or not he can pass. The latter of these times, it was just at the beginning of a No Passing Zone.
I figured this guy must be about as dumb as can be, though I should point out that in this area there are still many big blue flags and signs for an election which was lost over 9 months ago by someone stupid enough to own a casino and go bankrupt. So yeah – a lot of stupid around here. But again, I digress.
To get this guy to finally pass me, I picked a farm driveway ahead on the right, turned on my right blinker, and started slowing as if I was headed there. He finally zoomed around me.
But really – what an absolute chicken shit – and one of many. Why am I so often finding that people will not pass on a 2-lane county highway? They’ll tailgate, yell, gesture, and turn red in the face, but they won’t simply pass. It’s like they don’t even know that’s an option. This was never a problem in the 1970s to 1990s. Hell, I would regularly see people towing a boat trailer and still passing on a 2-lane. Not anymore.
It seems that our society started to lose the knowledge of the safe and legal 2-lane pass around the same time we started losing the knowledge of how to take a left turn at a semaphore when it doesn’t have a turn arrow.
