A heated commenting session was going on under Merlin's dodgeball league post so I thought I would blog about it instead.
See, Merlin informed us that our little jaunt down to South Carolina would take about "5 to 5 and a half hours if you take your time". Unfortunately, it took us a lot longer than that to get there with Knoxville traffic, the mountains and a stop at IHOP.
We've been giving Merlin a hard time about it, but it really wasn't all that bad. We just expected it to be considerably shorter.
The funny thing that I was going to comment about is that everyone firmly believes that I drive incredibly slow.
However, these same people also will only drive 9 mph over the speed limit because they don't want to get a speeding ticket.
That being said, most of the time I'll drive 70 mph(i.e. slow) on the interstate, but everyone else that calls me slow will drive 74 and consider themselves outlaws like George Castanza bootleggin' a movie.
Here's my point, the "you drive like my grandma" comments don't hold much water when you don't have the onions to drive 76 mph. And they especially don't hold water when most drives we make are 45 minutes and under. That's the difference of getting there quickly at 5 p.m. or laugh-out-loud slowly at 5:03. I also tend to make sure that my life is never so hectic that 3 extra three minutes is a big deal.
Sivart likes to think that on our Road Trip of Death a few years ago that I was practically driving Miss Daisy back from Pennsylvania with the cruise control set at 70. And going through the mountains of West Virginia his Xterra was churning at a nose-bleeding 4,000 rpm on those 6 percent grades at 2400 ft.
So I guess when we stopped for gas in eastern Kentucky, if I had told Sivart to drive not only would he have climbed through the window a la Bo Duke-style, but he would have driven a spine-tingling 4 mph faster.
The moral of the story is, I drive comfortably at 65-70.
The Bandits of the world? They drive 74 and Jerry Reed writes song about them.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I would take the time to write a witty reply, but that was such a great post it should stand alone.
But 70 in Tennessee will get you ran over on I-40.
Well I drove 70 the entire time and never once got "ran over" and never had a chance to stay in the right lane either. What gets you run over is the traffic that doesn't drive the speed limit and the people who believe that the cops can't catch what they can't see.
There was never a point where we could begin to stay in the right lane for more than a couple of minutes at a time because of slow traffic. Going up the mountains we stayed in the left lane the entire time. It was fun. Like a road race, you had to time and choose when you were going to pass. It was really fun. Granted we almost got sandwiched into the barrier going around an RV, but he pulled back just in time. Running the mountains in a sports car would rock.
To end this ignorant conversation, 70 doesn't get you ran over on I-40 and if it actually does for you there is a reason for it, figure it out.
We'll just say everyone slows down to let me by. Purple is a regal color and they just assume I'm royalty.
Post a Comment