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Yesterday was Friday, the last day of a long week, and I was more than ready to get home and chill. But first, I had to dodge these obstacles and future traffic statistics before I could reach my goal.
I'm not even to the corner down the street from my work before I have my first encounter.
Haste Makes Waste
I'm driving along, paying attention to my surroundings because there are a couple of 24/7 operations on the same street as my workplace, and the people who work there often don't seem to be able to pay attention to more than one thing at a time, so there's a lot of people wandering around, stopping for no good reason, and just being general nuisances to anybody that wants to drive down the street.
There I am minding my own business when this guy in a hopped up SUV comes tearing out of a parking lot to the left, cuts me off, and then flips me some sort of gesture when I honk at him. He tears up the street and turns right. I follow because I have no choice.
He tears up the next section of road and makes like he wants to get into the left turn lane, but ends up going straight. I get into the left turn lane and Nekojin confirms that he does want to go left because he proceeds to make a dangerous and illegal u-turn (across a double yellow stripe) to come back around and then turn right.
All that maneuvering and driving like a complete fucktard and he's all of one car ahead of me. Again.
But wait, he's not done. He's tearing up the next section of road, getting ready to cut into the right turn lane ahead of the people who are waiting like sane people, but he doesn't. Instead, he ends up making yet another u-turn to head back the way we came and starts tearing back down the road to turn back towards the street we work on.
Turns out, in his burning need to get the fuck to wherever he was going now-now-now, he managed to forget something he needed at work.
I commenced laughing my ass off at his utter stupidity and continued on my way.
But, lo, I am not another 20 feet up the road when I have to go through yet another event.
This Lane Goes Where I Want Because I'm Special
I'm in the right turn lane. There are a few people ahead of me and a couple people behind, and the light is green, so we're moving right along.
But it's not fast enough for the douchebag in the Silverado.
He comes driving up the next lane over, which is a straight lane only and very little used, then swings an illegal right around the other people in the turn lane.
He managed to pass 4 cars in doing this.
He then pulls into the left turn lane ahead to get onto the local freeway. None of the people he passed do the same, meaning that for all his self-important idiocy, he gained absolutely zero time.
His passenger window was down, so I told him what I thought of his driving as I went by.
My next half-mile or so goes fairly calmly until it comes time for me make my next turn. Then it's yet another encounter.
Half a Car-Length is an Invitation
This next turn can be taken one of two ways. You can wait in line on the left to make it normally, which will usually run anywhere from 2 to 5 cycles, depending on traffic. Alternately, you can turn right at the side street before the signal, then cut left through an alley, then left again at the main street and take the next straight through. That maneuver takes almost exactly 1.5 cycles, or 2.5 cycles if you get delayed by something in the alley (it's a tiny alley, so anything in it will slow you down)
I'm in the left lane and considering moving to the right to take the alternate route when this ganger wannabe in a suped up rice-mobile decides that if there's enough room to shove his front end between me and the car ahead of me, that's enough room to make a lane change, and he barges his way over.
I don't fight him, and give him the spot, taking the opportunity to move on over to the right and pass him.
He was still waiting in the left turn lane, about three cars back, when I went on through the intersection on the other street.
Thankfully, the last half of the trip home was uneventful. Oh, except the cut scene.
Number Pads are Hard
We stopped by our storage unit to see if we could pull a few boxes of stuff to bring to the apartment in preparation for either moving to a smaller unit, or moving the stuff we want to keep stored into one of the containers at my workplace.
We grab what we want, load it up into the car, then head for the exit gate.
The way this place works is that you have to key your secret combination to not only activate the gate to let you through, but you also have to key it when entering to de-activate the alarm on your unit, and then key it again as you exit to re-activate the alarm.
There is a van at the exit keypad. I watch as the driver, who has their door open because they don't know how to drive close enough to not have to open their door to reach the keypad, starts punching a code in. Then I watch them do it again. And a third time. And a fourth.
It took this mental giant about 8 tries before they managed to get their code in correctly, and the gate started opening.
I had my code right the first time and the gate was still standing open when I departed.
And a bonus from a couple of days back.
This Lane Goes Where I Want Because I'm Special: The Ongoing Saga
The street my workplace is on goes past the end of the block, but because the local trucks couldn't manage to not use it (over the weight limit), they city decided to punish everybody (instead of issuing lots of tickets) and made it so you had to turn onto the cross street.
This isn't good enough for way too many people.
The end of my workplace street has two lanes. One turns left only and the other turns right only. This guy is sitting in the crossed out zone of no-going-straight because he doesn't have to obey the rules and is going straight anyway. His passenger window was down. He got to hear what I thought of his driving.
For extra bonus, I got to tell the half-witted girl who is our receptionist that she not only can't be going straight across at that point when coming to work, but that the turn she makes to get onto the street in the first place is illegal from 6am to 9am weekday mornings. However, the left turn she shouldn't be making is marked only on the far side on the right side of the street, and I only know that because Nekojin pointed it out one day. Who the hell looks at the signal pole on the far right corner when you're in the left lane and preparing to make a left turn? Is there some special reason they couldn't put a second sign on the light tree itself, say, right next to the signal?
^-.-^
I'm not even to the corner down the street from my work before I have my first encounter.
Haste Makes Waste
I'm driving along, paying attention to my surroundings because there are a couple of 24/7 operations on the same street as my workplace, and the people who work there often don't seem to be able to pay attention to more than one thing at a time, so there's a lot of people wandering around, stopping for no good reason, and just being general nuisances to anybody that wants to drive down the street.
There I am minding my own business when this guy in a hopped up SUV comes tearing out of a parking lot to the left, cuts me off, and then flips me some sort of gesture when I honk at him. He tears up the street and turns right. I follow because I have no choice.
He tears up the next section of road and makes like he wants to get into the left turn lane, but ends up going straight. I get into the left turn lane and Nekojin confirms that he does want to go left because he proceeds to make a dangerous and illegal u-turn (across a double yellow stripe) to come back around and then turn right.
All that maneuvering and driving like a complete fucktard and he's all of one car ahead of me. Again.
But wait, he's not done. He's tearing up the next section of road, getting ready to cut into the right turn lane ahead of the people who are waiting like sane people, but he doesn't. Instead, he ends up making yet another u-turn to head back the way we came and starts tearing back down the road to turn back towards the street we work on.
Turns out, in his burning need to get the fuck to wherever he was going now-now-now, he managed to forget something he needed at work.
I commenced laughing my ass off at his utter stupidity and continued on my way.
But, lo, I am not another 20 feet up the road when I have to go through yet another event.
This Lane Goes Where I Want Because I'm Special
I'm in the right turn lane. There are a few people ahead of me and a couple people behind, and the light is green, so we're moving right along.
But it's not fast enough for the douchebag in the Silverado.
He comes driving up the next lane over, which is a straight lane only and very little used, then swings an illegal right around the other people in the turn lane.
He managed to pass 4 cars in doing this.
He then pulls into the left turn lane ahead to get onto the local freeway. None of the people he passed do the same, meaning that for all his self-important idiocy, he gained absolutely zero time.
His passenger window was down, so I told him what I thought of his driving as I went by.
My next half-mile or so goes fairly calmly until it comes time for me make my next turn. Then it's yet another encounter.
Half a Car-Length is an Invitation
This next turn can be taken one of two ways. You can wait in line on the left to make it normally, which will usually run anywhere from 2 to 5 cycles, depending on traffic. Alternately, you can turn right at the side street before the signal, then cut left through an alley, then left again at the main street and take the next straight through. That maneuver takes almost exactly 1.5 cycles, or 2.5 cycles if you get delayed by something in the alley (it's a tiny alley, so anything in it will slow you down)
I'm in the left lane and considering moving to the right to take the alternate route when this ganger wannabe in a suped up rice-mobile decides that if there's enough room to shove his front end between me and the car ahead of me, that's enough room to make a lane change, and he barges his way over.
I don't fight him, and give him the spot, taking the opportunity to move on over to the right and pass him.
He was still waiting in the left turn lane, about three cars back, when I went on through the intersection on the other street.
Thankfully, the last half of the trip home was uneventful. Oh, except the cut scene.
Number Pads are Hard
We stopped by our storage unit to see if we could pull a few boxes of stuff to bring to the apartment in preparation for either moving to a smaller unit, or moving the stuff we want to keep stored into one of the containers at my workplace.
We grab what we want, load it up into the car, then head for the exit gate.
The way this place works is that you have to key your secret combination to not only activate the gate to let you through, but you also have to key it when entering to de-activate the alarm on your unit, and then key it again as you exit to re-activate the alarm.
There is a van at the exit keypad. I watch as the driver, who has their door open because they don't know how to drive close enough to not have to open their door to reach the keypad, starts punching a code in. Then I watch them do it again. And a third time. And a fourth.
It took this mental giant about 8 tries before they managed to get their code in correctly, and the gate started opening.
I had my code right the first time and the gate was still standing open when I departed.
And a bonus from a couple of days back.
This Lane Goes Where I Want Because I'm Special: The Ongoing Saga
The street my workplace is on goes past the end of the block, but because the local trucks couldn't manage to not use it (over the weight limit), they city decided to punish everybody (instead of issuing lots of tickets) and made it so you had to turn onto the cross street.
This isn't good enough for way too many people.
The end of my workplace street has two lanes. One turns left only and the other turns right only. This guy is sitting in the crossed out zone of no-going-straight because he doesn't have to obey the rules and is going straight anyway. His passenger window was down. He got to hear what I thought of his driving.
For extra bonus, I got to tell the half-witted girl who is our receptionist that she not only can't be going straight across at that point when coming to work, but that the turn she makes to get onto the street in the first place is illegal from 6am to 9am weekday mornings. However, the left turn she shouldn't be making is marked only on the far side on the right side of the street, and I only know that because Nekojin pointed it out one day. Who the hell looks at the signal pole on the far right corner when you're in the left lane and preparing to make a left turn? Is there some special reason they couldn't put a second sign on the light tree itself, say, right next to the signal?
^-.-^
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