Dangers of GPS
Posted: 12 Jul 2009 12:17
Driving home this evening in the cold & wet I find a set of headlights right up my nought & lo & behold its a fat-arsed Porsche. I do the usual dab on the brake while maintaining my speed but this deters him for only a couple of seconds & soon he roars past using the painted refuge made for righ turning traffic & cuts me up as he has to slam on his brakes to avoid oncoming traffic. For the next several minutes I let him know it wasn't me that was holding him up by staying on his tail (not too close) as he fought thru the fairly heavy traffic. I was enjoying being able to match the Prosches acceleration on the passing lanes but given the amount of traffic that was about it was a bit pointless.
Then all of a sudden I find another driver attacking my rear bumper & unbelievably looks to pass me on the hard shoulder. When he can't do that he tries darting out into oncoming traffic & I see it is a Honda Odyssey. At the next passing lane (a NZ phenomena necessitated by single lane state highways) the Porsche & I roar off leaving the Odyssey for dead but when we slow down to reintegrate into traffic the Odyssey is right back on my date. Either Honda Odysseys must attract the mentally unsound or perhaps it is the sight of a sports car that triggers their deep sense of self-loathing as they pedal their 8-seater back to their brat infested nest. More than a few times I've had to contend with a maniac in one of these things.
After a few more miles & several more lunges from the Odyssey I decide it is time to remove myself from the situation. We were approaching a town that had a traffic light on the main road (we don't go in much for bypasses). Well I know this town well because I grew up there & I knew there was a back road that lead to the crossing road where that light was. Given the amount of slowing traffic ahead I figured there was a decent chance of getting thru that light before the cars around me so I slipped nonchalantly off the main road & scooted round the back on empty residential streets. I said I grew in this town but that was 25 years ago so I let my GPS recalculate the route for me rather than trust my memory. Soon though, it felt like I was headed away from the intended intersection & then the road opened out into farmland & I knew I had gone well past the lights. Not a problem though, the road was dead straight & had a 100kph speed limit so I gunned it into the night - for about 2km. After that it suddenly turned into a single-laned, unsealed, twisting goat track of a road that kept me in 2nd gear for another 2km before finally rejoining the main road presumably about 5 minutes behind where I would've been. Oh well, it had been an adventure & all my aggravation had melted away as I pretended to be Tony Pond's idiot brother for a while. A bit later when I had the car berthed in my nice dry garage I noticed that quite a bit of that goat track had decided to come home with me. I don't suppose the bikini car wash is open in the winter.
Note where the arches do their best to keep the tyres clean. Definately need to raise that rear about 1.5 inches.
Never say die. At least not while you're still breathing.
Then all of a sudden I find another driver attacking my rear bumper & unbelievably looks to pass me on the hard shoulder. When he can't do that he tries darting out into oncoming traffic & I see it is a Honda Odyssey. At the next passing lane (a NZ phenomena necessitated by single lane state highways) the Porsche & I roar off leaving the Odyssey for dead but when we slow down to reintegrate into traffic the Odyssey is right back on my date. Either Honda Odysseys must attract the mentally unsound or perhaps it is the sight of a sports car that triggers their deep sense of self-loathing as they pedal their 8-seater back to their brat infested nest. More than a few times I've had to contend with a maniac in one of these things.
After a few more miles & several more lunges from the Odyssey I decide it is time to remove myself from the situation. We were approaching a town that had a traffic light on the main road (we don't go in much for bypasses). Well I know this town well because I grew up there & I knew there was a back road that lead to the crossing road where that light was. Given the amount of slowing traffic ahead I figured there was a decent chance of getting thru that light before the cars around me so I slipped nonchalantly off the main road & scooted round the back on empty residential streets. I said I grew in this town but that was 25 years ago so I let my GPS recalculate the route for me rather than trust my memory. Soon though, it felt like I was headed away from the intended intersection & then the road opened out into farmland & I knew I had gone well past the lights. Not a problem though, the road was dead straight & had a 100kph speed limit so I gunned it into the night - for about 2km. After that it suddenly turned into a single-laned, unsealed, twisting goat track of a road that kept me in 2nd gear for another 2km before finally rejoining the main road presumably about 5 minutes behind where I would've been. Oh well, it had been an adventure & all my aggravation had melted away as I pretended to be Tony Pond's idiot brother for a while. A bit later when I had the car berthed in my nice dry garage I noticed that quite a bit of that goat track had decided to come home with me. I don't suppose the bikini car wash is open in the winter.
Note where the arches do their best to keep the tyres clean. Definately need to raise that rear about 1.5 inches.
Never say die. At least not while you're still breathing.
