Oddball Update

Lately I’ve been trying to be nice. I know I have at least a couple of people who read my site just for the rants, but I have been trying to avoid such pessimistic prattle as of late because…well, I don’t know; I could spew something about “maturity” or “trying to turn over a new leaf” and “not letting stuff get to me so much.” While I think each year brings me closer to something casually referred to as “a state of Zen,” I am not sure I will ever be able to let go of dumb stuff that happens while I’m driving.

So I went out this afternoon, primarily to stop off at the bank and deposit a company check. While I was out, and since it was “on the way,” I decided to run over to Wal-Mart and pick up a copy of Casino Royale on DVD. I bought a copy in Thailand, but when I tested it yesterday I found the quality was abysmal, worse than a copy of a VHS recording somebody made off of HBO. So, since I still had a Wal-Mart gift card with about $27 left on it, Wal-Mart seemed like the place to hit up. (Otherwise I wouldn’t even go there, honestly, except to say hi to my grandpa who works as a greeter.)

I decided to take the GTO because it’s a beautiful day; sunny and cool outside and no sign of rain. Perhaps this contributed to my stress, as I hate being jacked with when I’m driving my prized muscle car, and do not want anything bad to happen to it.

Wal-Mart was the first stop. I went in and was going to park in my usual space at the back of the lot, when I observed some free-roaming shopping baskets loitering in the area. “My” spot is in a somewhat sunken area at the end of a downhill slope, the wind was pretty gusty today, and I recalled (not at all fondly) the episode in February wherein a basket punched the side of our Mazda6 in this very lot. So I did a U-turn and parked in a corner at the crest of a hill, still out in the back of the lot.

Inside the store, I headed directly for the DVD section. It looked like it was restock day, because there were a lot of empty spaces on the shelves, particularly in the “New Releases” area. In fact, there was some guy in the New Releases aisle, loading the shelves with new product at a maddeningly slow pace. I stepped around him, took a gander at the shelves and came to the sinking realization that Wal-Mart apparently doesn’t believe in alphabetizing their DVD New Releases. I had a whole wall of discs to look through, and none of them appeared to be in any kind of order. Great.

So about twenty minutes later, I’d searched the whole joint and the only copy of Casino Royale that I could find was a Blu-Ray disc. Also great. Since I’m not about to feed the evil Sony empire any money for an absurdly overpriced Blu-Ray player — especially given that there is not yet a clear winner in the war between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD — I walked out empty-handed.

On the way out the door, there was a huge crush of people all walking in haphazard directions. It was like they were doing some kind of macabre dance, either that or they had suddenly regressed to a 16-month-old’s mental state. A dude coming in the door let out a very exasperated “Phhheewww” as he navigated through the last of the weirdos and walked by me. I wanted to laugh, because I’ve done exactly the same thing many a time. Although this time I managed to keep my lip buttoned and a smile on my face. That’s right, a smile. I wasn’t yet discouraged enough to wear a sour mask. It takes more than Wally World to crush my resolve!

Back into the car I climbed and headed for the bank. This trip took me down one of our county’s major boulevards, which — as I realized too late — is presently under heavy construction. Sure enough, the trip was nerve-wracking (those construction barrels are placed way too close to the traffic lanes), slow and noisy. Oh, and dusty. Of course, there are a million traffic lights down this stretch of road, and despite the construction, they were all working. In fact, there was even a new one at an intersection that hasn’t yet been completed, and it was working too. God only knows why, since I doubt there’s much cross-traffic from a road that isn’t yet open to the public.

Finally I made it to the bank. What’s this? The intersecting road is being ripped to pieces, too. Apple warned me about that last week, but I’d forgotten. Okay, so I had to navigate through a choppy patch of gravel to get into the plaza where the bank is. Messed up my shiny clean tires a little, but no biggie.

The bank was the sole shining moment of the whole trip — there was not a soul there. Our local bank just opened up a new branch in this location, and it’s a state-of-the-art branch, too. There are video screens in the drive-through lanes so you can see the tellers and communicate with them, and the ATM is a drive-up so you don’t even have to get out of your car. The last time I went there, when they sent my transaction back in the little vacuum capsule thing, they even included a lollipop with my cash and driver’s license. Now that’s service. It’s still a far cry from banks in Thailand that give you gifts every year just for being an account holder, but it’s the little things that count.

I left the drive-up ATM lane and decided to see if there was an alternate exit from the plaza, so I could avoid the gravel pit. I got down to the other end and saw a sign reading “No Outlet.” No, I guess not. I looped around through the plaza lot, up by the storefronts so I could see what kind of stores they were putting in. Then I searched for an aisle to drive down so I could go back out onto the main road. The aisles have angled parking spaces and are pretty narrow, so there are arrows on the pavement at the mouth of each aisle telling you which way to drive. In short, they’re not two-way traffic aisles.

Choosing an aisle whose arrow pointed in the direction I wanted to go, I swung down it. A second later, as I headed toward the opposite end of the aisle, a maroon GMC Envoy turned into it, facing me. I came to a stop. The aisle was literally only wide enough for one car to drive down, and there were cars parked sporadically on each side so I couldn’t go around. Worse, this wrong-way bastard kept coming at me, like he expected me to be gone by the time he arrived at my present location.

Grumbling, I threw the goat in reverse and backed up. There was a Mercedes coming down the perimeter road behind me, so I had to wait to back out of the aisle. As I watched the Mercedes approach, I hoped it wasn’t going to decide to turn down the same aisle and sandwich me into some kind of gridlock disaster. Fortunately it passed, so I backed out and swung my car sideways until I was looking at the still-approaching Envoy, which was now nearly right on top of me. “YOU WENT THE WRONG WAY!” I literally hollered out my window at the moron. He kept on driving obliviously toward the other end of the plaza as though I didn’t exist — apparently he was only using the aisle as a shortcut, too. Idiot. At least look at the fucking arrows before you enter!

So I got back onto the main road, fully aggravated now. Back on the road, I punched the throttle and managed to get through first, second and third gears with my tires basically just spinning, because they were covered with dirt from the gravel pit. With that little display over with, I skipped fourth and settled into a relaxing 45 MPH cruise in fifth. All right, heading for home now.

Up near the next major intersection, where I needed to turn right, traffic slowed to a crawl. Apparently there was some kind of industrial truck up ahead that was doing about 10 MPH. That figures, because every fifth vehicle in Naples is a slow-ass truck of one size or another. Fortunately, there was a shortcut coming up — a nice little freshly-asphalted side road that snaked behind the Sweet Bay supermarket and emptied out onto my street. It’s actually the access road to the new home community we were going to move into, before the real estate market decided to give everybody the finger.

Gleefully I turned down the shortcut road and — what’s this? Holy shit, they’ve ripped up the road here and there’s a huge, five-inch pavement transition between — WHAM. I only had time to hit the brakes and slow to about 15 MPH before my car slammed down the transition. I was really pissed by now. I hate that kind of stupid shit. You hit enough of those, and that’s why stuff starts rattling in your car and you can never find what’s causing it. Obviously just one isn’t usually enough to do any kind of damage to your vehicle, but it all adds up. I was not happy.

I continued down the side road, made the 90-degree turn at the end and headed for the main street. And then I saw them. “Road Closed” signs. The exit I was looking for had been closed up. Okay, that’s beautiful. Really beautiful. I made a left turn, maneuvered back into the supermarket plaza, made another turn, and finally ended up on the road I wanted. Cool, it won’t be long now.

Or maybe it will, because I quickly came nose-to-tail with a white Toyota Prius that was going literally 30 MPH in a 45 zone. I could have passed him, but my next turn was coming up and I didn’t feel like spinning the goat’s drive wheels any more than they already had. So I waited, and of course Mr. Prius turned right where I did, so I had to follow him into our community. He went through the gate ahead of me and drove away, and I thought, Great, now I’ll be rid of him. I got up to the stop sign, and what happens? Another Toyota — this one an Avalon — on the intersecting street turned in front of me, then proceeded to drive even slower.

The Avalon had a New York plate, so I knew I was dealing with out-of-towners and reacted accordingly: I kept my distance, expecting sudden stops and asshat maneuvers at any moment. Sure enough, the Avalon proceeded to come to a full stop where there wasn’t a stop sign, then resume driving. Later, he made the slowest right turn known to man. I finally got rid of him and stopped to pick up the mail, at which time I glanced in my mirror and became suddenly unnerved that there was a Lexus directly behind me, tailgrabbin’ like Burt Reynolds. Christ, dude, I know I’m going slow. You can thank Frankie Avalon over there.

Finally, with the mail in hand, I headed home and had to follow some chucklenuts in a van who was brake-checking at every intersection on the way, because he obviously didn’t know where his street had gone.

Believe it or not, now that I’ve typed this all out, I feel much better. Rants: Try one, it’s like therapy. You’ll like it!

Categorized as Rants, Rants/Road Rage