Jinxed.

I have two cars, both fairly sporty models with manual transmissions, so one would be correct in assuming I enjoy driving with a little bit of verve.

Thing is, I also live in a city that is generally flat as a pancake in a place where the roads are generally ruler-straight and intersect at tidy right angles. It's not an environment conducive to pulling g's in corners.

There are a few stretches of road near the house that actually have some curves and elevation changes, like Westfield just north of Broad Ripple village or Spring Mill between Kessler and Holliday Park, both due to the terrain along the White River.

Naturally, I incorporate these stretches into my errands if at all possible, like the other day when I was transporting a trunkload of books to Half-Price Books in the Mustang. Instead of shooting straight up Meridian to 86th, I jogged west on Kessler to take Spring Mill instead.

This, of course, was fate's signal to have me preceded through the s-curves on Spring Mill by a septuagenarian in a car of similar vintage to mine, but instead of a Mustang GT, it was a blue-green Buick Regal sedan in the same cosmetic state it was when it rolled off the lot in the mid-Nineties. And its owner was determined to keep it that way by not exceeding twenty miles per hour in those curves.

Of course, on the way back, I was following a trailer full of lawnmowers downhill through those same curves at the same velocity I'd come up. The traffic gods did not smile upon me that day.