Highway Sport

 Every morning and every evening I participate in a little adventure I like to call “Highway Sport”.

 I call it sport because it takes quite a lot of skill to not only enter and exit the highway but to negotiate the twenty-odd kilometres and arrive safely on the other side.

 The object of the “game” is to slide onto the highway at whatever speed the vehicle in front of you is traveling at and bully your way into one of the four available lanes.  The lanes are entirely preference ranked and it would be futile to assume that the fast lane is on the extreme right and the slow lane is on the extreme left.  In fact, to the contrary, the “fast” lane is the one lane that everyone zooms into only to sit (with a smug expression on their faces at having arrived in the “fast” lane) going at about 70km/h because this lane is the fullest of the lot.

 The lane that is the most difficult to negotiate is the second lane from the left.  Where this should be used exclusively for passing very slow traffic in the left lane it actually consists of two types of vehicles: those who genuinely would rattle apart into little pieces if they went any faster and those driven by people with abject terror etched onto their faces while they grip the steering wheel tightly and sit way too close to the steering wheel to have any real control of their vehicle.  They usually display various forms of red “L” on the back window.  Both of these vehicles drive between 80km/h and 90km/h.

 The lane to the left of the “fast” lane consists of a massive variety of folk, different shapes and sizes, colours and vehicles who all have one thing in common: they are going to drive between the speeds of 103km/h and 110km/h no matter how many vehicles are sitting behind them trying to get past and no matter how many kilometres of the lane in front of them is open and free of cars and available for anyone who may want to go at the speed limit.

 These folk in the second to fast lane are an interesting bunch.  There’s Doris who is applying her make-up at 103-110km/h and spends more time looking at her passenger seat, presumably digging through a make-up selection, than looking through her windscreen.  Then there’s a variety of folk who sit low in their seats, seemingly peering through the top of their steering wheel.  They wear dark glasses and think they’re incredibly cool.  They could be driving the latest sports car but apparently are just too cool to go any faster than 110km/h.  Then there’s the inevitable dude, mainly driving a bakkie or a small lorry (as I like to call the utility vehicles) who needs an ego boost and who will speed up when you want to cross the line into the lane in front of him and slow down when you want to cross the line into the lane behind him.  The funniest of the lot are the blokes sitting in their wife’s Mommy-Mobile (invariably a Haval, Beemer X3 or similar) whose number plate proudly claims “Kelly” or “For Her”.  They look like they wish the world would swallow them up.

 The inevitable cowboys zoom in and out of the traffic in their hotted up, dark-window specials scaring the crepe out of the scaredy-cats in the second lane and causing the bakkie/lorry dudes much consternation when they manage to squeeze into the space ahead of them.

 I’m usually quite calm and sane until I reach my off-ramp, whereupon I flip a switch and turn into a crazy woman spitting sparks and brimstone.  For this is where every known bumhole on the planet believes they have the right to zoom up, cross a thick solid stripe and push into the traffic ahead of me.  With my lips in a tight line, my eyes shooting “don’t you even think about it” daggers directly at them and my arm (middle finger proudly protruding) stuck to my window I will gently intimidate them out of my way making very sure they understand that this little “old” lady will NOT be bullied.

 And the trip home?  Well that’s a whole other story for a whole other day.

 Happy Day!