Highway Karma

Miles of pounding the highway gives me plenty of time to think.

Thinking can be dangerous if you're given to flights of fancy as I am. Mostly I think about the other drivers; what kind of person is driving that Cadillac Coupe de Ville at twenty below the limit in the middle lane up ahead? Or is the driver of that Nissan Sentra drunk or texting?

Drawing up beside them, I take a surreptitious glance to confirm or deny my choice. I'm at about 90% correct for this game now.

Or I do arithmetic in my head. I like to figure out my passing time at various checkpoints along the way, and our ETA at the destination to the nearest half a minute. Figuring traffic as well (a dark art if ever there is one) I'm not bad at that game either.

My latest cogitation concerns the Karma of Driving, or Highway Karma if you prefer. The short version is that if I drive for two hours at or below the speed limit, I get points towards driving faster than the limit. Because I have been unwittingly driving like this for a while without earning a speeding ticket, I'm thinking I might be on to something. There is likely some kind of ratio involved, such that, say, two hours of legal driving entitles me to thirty minutes of illegal driving.

An extension of this is the Karma of Traffic Politeness. Allowing others to cut in front without reacting - calm, patient, no resentment - builds up the bank. I'm thinking that a full day of that gives me three cut-ins and one standing on the horn, flashing headlights hands in air verbal abuse free card.

It's not Road Rage, I'm just cashing in my Karma. Officer.





Pic from here. [link]

Also published here [link]

Beach Butt Bingo

With the limo trade as dead as a dodo, I have time to spend frivolously at the beach. It's a balance - my tan improves, my bank balance declines. That's the Zen of Chauffeurdom. I hope business will pick up sometime soon, because if not, I will have to look for something more.

However, in the dying weeks of summer before the start of Season, a few lazy days on Florida's best sand won't hurt too much. Fingers crossed.

A few months ago, I noticed the above sign at my favorite local swimming spot. The City erected them adjacent to carpark paths to the beach, with receptacles for cigarette trash attached to the poles. Hooray! Few things piss me off more than lying down on my towel only to find myself in an ash heap of butts left by some inconsiderate asshole.

Now I'm not averse to people smoking should they choose to. But lazy douchebags who have neither consideration for their fellow beach-goer nor the law truly cheese me off. How difficult is it to collect the product of your habit, stick it in your sunbag, and cart that shit off the beach?

Apparently it's beyond a lot of them. Just this morning, after a few laps between the buoys, I was relaxing on Lido Beach. Groups of Girl Scouts were all over, picking up (with gloved hands) butts and other beach detritus to "...keep the world clean". So it's come to this: children now volunteer as garbage collectors to do the work of indolent, selfish adults.

*

Butts are not bio-degradable.