Rush Hour Rambling

Weather: 80 degrees (~27°C) and sunny… I don’t know how much more of this I can stand!

We have been very busy at work of late. It involves things I can’t talk about on this blog, but suffice to say that I could probably spend every waking hour there, and it still wouldn’t be enough.

Some of you must be wondering where all the pretty pictures went. Well, my wife Amy has commandeered the camera this week, for the whole array of graduation activities at my daughter’s school. Amy works there, you see, and this is the photographic season at schools everywhere. So I am left with mere words to paint a picture of my daily commute.

Anyway, I had just made a commitment on the phone to be here with my family at a certain time tonight, for one of Emily’s school activities, when one of our bosses asked me to perform a bunch of technical tests on some of our products late in the day. The timing couldn’t have been worse, but I stood my ground and chose the most important option. My family will be with me for life. My employer could drop me at any time, for any reason. They say so right in the Employee Handbook.

I made a small compromise, and stayed as long as I could. By the time I left, the only way I could make it home in time was to take the freeway, and hope there wasn’t an accident or incident which would cause the whole horrible mob to come to a screeching halt. It’s been years since I rode the freeway home, and I knew that conditions there had only gotten worse over time.

The same freeway route that I take to work in the morning is an absolute nightmare on the way home. This is because you only have the day shift to deal with on the way to work in the morning. In the afternoon, you have everyone else who needs to use the roads; including folks going home, big trucks hauling freight, all the other folks heading to second shift jobs, and the shoppers and miscellaneous travellers, who don’t know enough to run the side streets.

It is a madhouse of oblivious morons, yakking on cellphones and darting from lane-to-lane, secure in the knowledge that their insurance company will deal with whatever damage they cause in their ignorance. Unfortunately, we who ride motorbikes are playing this stupid game for much higher stakes.

Well, since “filtering” is illegal in Minnesota, I have to consider the shoulders and the navigable green-space around the freeway as fair game if I get into a dangerously congested situation. I refuse to be surrounded by vehicles higher than my helmet when everything comes to a stop. That is one of the only places on the road where nothing I can do will save me and Frogwing from some idiot rear-ending the vehicle behind us, and making us the meat in a very messy sandwich.

I will go to court against any prosecutor with that argument. Before the court date, I would write the AMA for support. If we don’t win, then we expose the so-called “justice system” for the greedy, revenue-gathering activity that it has become. Then we go on the PR offensive.

But I’m getting off the point here. My adrenaline level was higher on the ride home tonight than it has ever been, even in the midst of a CRA roadrace up at Brainerd. I couldn’t believe some of the behaviour I was seeing:

- Some folks just pick a lane, open the paper on their steering wheel, and roll ahead whenever the car ahead of them disappears from view.

- Others are dividing their attention between the road and a laptop in the passenger seat, doing gawd-knows-what, but devoting very little attention to piloting their two-ton vehicle.

- Then you have the obvious cellphone-yakkers and makeup-appliers, mixing in with the little dipshits in the pocket rockets, changing lanes whenever two feet appear between adjacent vehicles…

No, I am not going to ride on the freeway during the afternoon rush hour again. If I have to go anywhere quickly at that time, I would rather speed down the sidestreets and risk getting a ticket. At least I will be alive to dispute it in court.

Weather: Roiling black clouds

The Devil drives a big, black Dodge four-by-four.

It’s a 3500 model pickup truck with an enormous engine, dark tinted windows, and a black topper with a large “Baja” sticker across the rear end. And the number of the beast in this case is not “666″, but it is inscribed on a Minnesota license plate.

How do I know this? Because the bastard tried to kill me this morning.

Frogwing and I were motoring along in the left lane on the Lafayette Bridge, when I saw an all-too-familiar sight in my rearview mirrors: bright headlights, set up high in the grill of a huge, gas-hog behemoth, weaving back and forth through traffic at stupid speeds.

Relying on the intimidation factor of such a large vehicle to move people out of his way, this moron, (I will call him “Little Dick”, for obvious reasons…) endangers the life of countless people every day on his way to work.

This morning, I wasn’t having any… I’m tired of this arsehole.

So I pulled even with the car in the right lane, and refused to move over when he pulled up on Frogwing’s rear tire and flashed his brights. I refrained from using hand signals to communicate my contempt, but it was a close thing.

The ramp onto I-94 is a 270-degree right cloverleaf, and vehicles line up in a long queue to exit there. This guy always roars right up to the head of the line and then bullies his way in by approaching at a steep angle and thrusting his fender in between smaller cars.

Today, when I saw him do this, I bypassed the ramp, took a right on seventh street, and motored on past the jam-up to take the seventh street entrance to the freeway… ahead of the Beast!

His reaction was predictable, of course. As soon as he fought free of the onramp congestion, he floored his accelerator and came roaring back at me through traffic. I don’t know what kind of supercharged Hemi monster motor he has in that unholy tank, but he is able to out-accelerate most other vehicles, and even gives my lightweight, tactical KLR a good run up to the speed limit.

Today, seeing that Little Dick was in rare form, I moved over to the center lane and watched him blast on by. Then I moved back into the left lane and followed a couple car lengths back, to watch the show.

This continued all the way to our exit onto 394, where the left lane of the ramp was jammed up, and the Beast was trapped once again. The ramp has a right lane, and there was a car stalled in it, with the flashers on. There was room for Frogwing and I to squeeze by, and we did this, and bypassed the congestion once again.

This time it took Little Dick a couple miles to catch up with us. When he did, the road had narrowed to two lanes. This time there was no car beside me in the right lane, and I fully expected him to pass me there. But I forgot who I was dealing with…

As the Beast pulled alongside, I could just barely see Little Dick’s maniacal grin through the heavy, illegal tinting in his driver’s-side window as he swung his wheel left and moved over into my lane. He seemed intent on running me into the retaining wall unless I could either accelerate away or hit the brakes and yield the lane.

They say that discretion is the better part of valor, but I’ve never believed it. Nonetheless, I braked gently and yielded the lane to this dangerous lunatic. Then I calmly memorized his license plate number for my report to the State Patrol website. Since I became a father six years ago, I tend to choose this option more often than not. It does help keep me out of jail.

We took the next exit towards work, and I went inside to log onto my computer. Pulling up the State Patrol website, I filled in the form with my name and all the pertinent information, and then I typed a summary of the above account in the space provided.

Why do all government websites use the word “Submit” whenever you want to send them something? Why can’t the button simply say “Send”? Are they Sending a Message?

I “submitted” the form, and then I sat there at my desk, thinking. Yeah, I do too much of that, I know.

It occurred to me that I might have made a mistake in sending this report to the Authorities. Now, my name is inextricably linked with this maniac in their records. Not only that, but it will probably increase the patrol presence on my morning freeway route to work. That’s not always a good thing, either.

What if they contact Little Dick, whoever he is, and he tells a much more horrible story about me? My word against his – is the best I can do with a report like that. Only if several other motorists report him are the Authorities likely to take action.

And now I don’t have any other… let’s say extra-legal options for dealing with him, because I will be the first person they interview if something bad were to happen to the Beast, or to Little Dick himself.

The implications are sobering. The Law seems pretty impotent, until after something terrible happens. So it seems the best way to deal with such a dangerous freak is to just get out of his way, which is exactly what he wants.

What do YOU think about that?

Weather: Ho-Hum… just another beautiful day.

First Thursday… The Plot Thickens!

If you compare the photo above with the one I took on the First Thursday in May, you will see that the parking lot is much more crowded. There are two reasons for this: First, I took this photo later in the evening. Second, it’s June, and the weather is perfect.

It was really hard to move around in that sea of humanity. So much so that I couldn’t get a decent photograph of any single bike, without the clutter of human limbs and bike parts intruding. And that’s really a shame, because some truly Fine Machinery turned up at this month’s event.

One bike I especially liked was the Honda GB500, belonging to local newspaper columnist and radio talk-show celebrity Joe Soucheray.

This man wears many hats. He is known locally as The Flashlight King, and he also holds a lifetime appointment as Mayor of Garage Logic, Minnesota. But to my mind, he will always be the self-described “ink-stained wretch” on the staff of our hometown newspaper, The Saint Paul Pioneer Press. His columns speak common sense in an era of twisted logic, media spin, and politically correct gibberish.

But let’s get back to motorbikes…

Joe bought this bike recently, and you can tell at a glance that it was well cared-for by the previous owner. Braided stainless steel replaces the rubber bits for all hydraulic and oil lines, and the rest of the bike reflects an attention to detail usually seen only on the bike show circuit.

Yes, I should have taken a photo, but I was too busy trying to guide Joe through the crowd in the parking lot and across the street, where I had parked Frogwing on the grassy verge between the sidewalk and the road. I wanted to show him what I ride when I’m not flogging a scooter through the cold and snow of our Minnesota winter.

The Honorable Joe Soucheray, mayor of Garage Logic, Minnesota.

I think he was impressed, as he said, “Well, it looks like you have ridden the hell out of that.”

Then again, maybe he was commenting on Frogwing’s dishevelled appearance, and my seeming lack of pride in his presentation. I don’t know… maybe some people don’t understand the Road Warrior aesthetic. That patina of dirt and grease was well-earned over the course of our last road trip, and I am loathe to just wash it all away. That would be like rinsing good memories down the gutter.

Anyway, Joe is a busy man, and he had a lot of other people to meet and greet last night, so my time with him was short. Hopefully, someday, we will be able to ride together. That would be something to remember, and I’m sure it would make for a wonderful blog entry.

As most of you know by now, I’m not much for crowd scenes. When it got to the point where I couldn’t move anywhere without contact on both sides, constantly saying “Excuse me.”, I decided it was time to leave.

Rush hour had ended, and the freeway was relatively clear. Frogwing and I made it home in half an hour, and I had a nice dinner with my girls.

Now, I am sitting here thinking about how different this is from the whole winter scenario. It’s like living on two different planets, really. Maybe that is why some people really love Minnesota. While it’s not exactly pleasant here, all the time, we certainly do have variety.