Tuesday, January 03, 2012

Get-there-itis.

Woke up this morning and waited 'til checkout time, then took a leisurely brunch at Denny's before pulling back onto the interstate around noon.

Ten miles on, it's stop and go and there's an ambulance running code up the shoulder.

After thirty minutes of trembling clutch leg, things loosened up and half the cars on the road immediately ran back up to 70+, tailgating and weaving between the lanes, there through the Cumberland Gap and up past Jellicoe.

How many wrecks do you need to drive past before slowing down and leaving a bit of following distance might not be a bad idea? Sure the sun's out and the road is dry... mostly. Those shiny dark spots you see on the bridges and along the shoulders might just be water, and then again they might not, sport. The exits are few and far between up there, the closest hospital's a long Life Flight away, and a lot of that stretch of 75 has a rock wall on one side of the road and a thousand feet of nothing on the other.

Anyhow, safely at my destination, and some of the color has returned to my knuckles. Now, a beer for me, and a beer for some Kraut engineers in the chassis department in Munich.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, mayhaps it's time to get one of them uppity pick-em-up-trucks! Glad to hear you safely returned from your sojourn. Hugs,
.

Farmmom said...

Glad you made it in one piece. There is no such thing as road courtesy anymore.

Old NFO said...

Glad you got there in one piece... sigh... FM is right!

Matt G said...

Anonymous, pick-em-up-trucks may make you more likely to survive the accident*, but they also make that crash more likely, on slick roads.

_________________________________
Sort of. They're twice as likely to roll over in a crash, and when you're in a roll-over, you're twice as likely to die in a crash. Moral? You REALLY want to buckle up in your truck.

B said...

Glad you made it.

Didja get my text?

Robert said...

And one for the fine workers in Greenville, SC that assembled it for you?

Keads said...

Glad you made it!
Kville I assume? Jump another 5 hours or so south when done! Let's go shoot.

I do love traveling by auto 99.9 percent of the time anyway. If it matters My '94 Mustang was totaled on a beautiful spring day by some punk that blew a Stop sign. Sigh....

doubletrouble said...

Well, there you go again, talking like a responsible driver; why not just join the herd?

Happy to hear you made it.

Tam said...

Hey, I've transited that area at... oh, let's call it "10 over"... myself may a time... On beautiful spring and summer days with dry roads and sparse traffic. The views on the straights are breathtaking and the curves let you pull just enough G's to remind you why you drive a sports car. :)

(And I signaled my lane changes and didn't tailgate, because that's rude.)

At night or in poor weather, it's another animal altogether.

Frank W. James said...

Tam: You WON! You arrived ALIVE!...

All The Best,
Frank W. James

Borepatch said...

Glad you're there safe. It was 25 degrees at Oh My God Thirty this AM, and the Roswell PoPo had blocked off a lane leading down to the Chattahoochee.

There's a reason that Dixie is populated with signs saying "Bridge freezes before road does."

Can't wait for the ice storm which I'm told will hit Austin sometime each winter.

WV: krudocki. I think that's Hockey played on I-75.

fast richard said...

That's a pretty good road when it's dry. Hills, curves, and ice are a bad combination. Just knowing the value of following distance and getting off the road when things get dicey puts you ahead of most of the drivers out there.

Justthisguy said...

When I have to drive in slow-moving stop-and-go traffic, I try to drive at the average speed of the traffic, to save wear and tear on clutch and brakes. This means that sometimes intervals open up in front of me and are immediately filled by doodahs from the next lane. After a while, they realize our lane isn't going any faster, get all upset, and barge back into the other lane which is going just as slowly.

I think automatic transmissions are one of the causes of bad road manners.

Comrade Misfit said...

After thirty minutes of trembling clutch leg

After several sessions of that on the old Central Artery, I resolved to switch to automatic transmissions. That, and too many people in my life had no idea how to operate a stick-shift.

Laura said...

trembling clutch leg: the biggest reason i parked my "boy racer" Subaru. just can't do the commuting in traffic in that thing anymore.

glad you arrived safe.

Justthisguy said...

Comrade and Laura, in re my comment just above; I have driven in such traffic without touching clutch or brake pedals for over a mile many times. You just have to ignore the tailgaiters and the ones who cut in front of you because you leave a good interval ahead, which naturally gets bigger and smaller as the impatient doodahs stop and go.