archive.tylerdave.com All the stuff from when Dave was actually called Tylerdave.

Over the past three weeks or so I’ve developed a new pet peeve: On a normal Cleveland [cloudy / partly-cloudy] day I make it to work in 26-30 minutes. On a clear day however, things get bad. Because the first ten minutes of my commute is due east, I am driving in the direction of the rising sun. I know this. I don’t have sunglasses but if the sun bothered me enough to affect my driving, I would. I don’t understand why there’s so many people who make the same daily commute but forget that the sun is bright. Because the drivers are unprepared for this, every time they round a slight curve that directs them into the sun they slam on the breaks. Breaks are not good for highway traffic. On days like this it takes me between 50 and 75 minutes to get to work.

Luckily, today I saw something that made my drive more amusing: Traffic was moving at about 20 MPH and most everyone was being good about letting others change lanes and merge. At the W 140th entrance I let two cars merge into traffic ahead of me. A third car, a little shiny white Honda Civic tried to aggressively get in front of me. Since I had already let two cars into traffic, I blocked this guy (I’m usually a nice driver but I don’t take that kind of crap). Immediately he was riding my ass, honking his horn and flicking me off. It seemed like a bit of an overreaction but that’s how people are I guess. The guy continued to drive like an idiot for the next two miles. Every time traffic would come to a stop I could see him start to yell. Eventually he got the opportunity to pass me. This is when I came up with a theory of why he was so pissed.

The driver was a man who appeared to be in his early fifties. He was dressed in a nice suit and looked like a business man. The car he was driving had a pink furry steering wheel cover, pink fuzzy dice, white leopard print seat covers and one of those silver shiny oval stickers that said ‘Princess’ on the rear bumper. My guess is that his car would not start this morning, so he had to borrow his daughter’s car. Because of his car troubles he was already running late without the extra sun traffic which really upset him.

The sight amused me enough that I enjoyed the rest of my drive to work.