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!
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