Every Sunday I am able, I take the 60-mile trek down from Denver to my parent’s home in Colorado Springs. I have lunch with my parents, go to church with them, visit my grandparents, then come back to my folks house. During football season, my dad and I watch the Broncos play. All in all, it is an enjoyable day.
So this past Sunday evening, I am on my way back to my house. The road I’m on has 2 left-turn lanes to use and I’m in the right left-turn lane. This way, after my left turn is completed, I can immediately merge right and be in the correct lane to take I-25 north to Denver. Otherwise, both of the left-turn lanes become the entry ramp to south bound I-25. Clear as mud?
As I wait at the red light in my turn lane, a giant pickup truck pulls up next to me in the left left-turn lane. Immediately, I knew what the driver of this truck was going to attempt to do. He was going to attempt to leap out in front of me, then cut in front of me before merging right into the entry ramp for I-25 North. I can’t explain it, but there are times when I just can sense these things.
The light turns green and I take off as I normally do. I don’t waste time at green lights, turn lanes even more so. I’m making the turn and the big truck is starting to drift into my lane where I’m at. The huge pickup can’t make the turn at our current acceleration and stay in his lane. So he’s forced to slow down. Since I’m confident in what the driver wants to do, I immediately merge right as soon as I legally can so that the monster pickup can merge into the lane I had been in, then into the I-25 North ramp. The driver of the pickup truck did this, but then he did something unexpected — he raced forward and started riding my bumper.
I was annoyed by this. Obviously, the other driver felt that I had wronged him and he was going to ride my bumper now. However, I kicked in the speed and by the time the ramp was ready to merge with I-25, I was going over the posted limit of 75 MPH. I quickly merged left into I-25 with my blinker flashing, then began to merge left again to get into the left lane.
My ‘buddy’ didn’t want me to merge into the left lane and attempted to leapfrog me to carry out his plan. I decided that since I was already merging, I wasn’t going to let him intimidate me, big truck not withstanding. My smaller SUV could take a hit.
Well, this set off the guy in the pickup truck. He immediately turns his high-beams on and off several times before leaving them on for a bit. I was irritated, but I laughed evilly because he could high-beam me all night long and it wouldn’t bother me. My rear-view mirror gets dark automatically so that even the sun beaming in it wouldn’t hurt my eyes.
A few moments later, he returned his lights to normal, but then got up on my bumper again. Well now I’m getting pissed, but as I’m paying attention to him, I notice that there are break lights coming on in front of me. I hit the breaks and my ‘buddy’ slams breaks to keep from rear-ending me. I hadn’t done this on purpose, but I knew he’d think I had. As such, I again got an evil, gleeful feeling. As soon as I could work through this slow patch of traffic, I was going to smoke out of there and get as far away from this smeg head as possible.
After the giant pickup had backed off, he began to pull forward again, only to have another vehicle merge in front of him. I could tell he was giving the guy behind me the high-beams and I angrily screamed something or other and slammed my fist into the steering wheel. I absolutely hate people like the ones in the pickup truck.
Traffic isn’t cooperating with my plan to smoke out of there and my ‘buddy’ lurches right. I had a sneaking suspicion the SUV behind me and I were going to get flipped off. I decided I didn’t care; I just wouldn’t look.
Sure enough, a young teen boy has his head out the window, flipping me off while his mouth is flapping. I could see all of this out of the corner of my eye, so technically, I didn’t look at him. I had my Japanese pop tunes blasting, so it was impossible for me to hear anything the smeg head wanted to convey to me. I didn’t care — let him rage.
Well, that changed in short order as this kid decides he’s going to ram himself in front of me. I watched in amazement as I just miss having my front end taken off. For some reason, I didn’t brake but continued on despite this. I think my own sense of anger had gotten to the point to where if my front end got taken off, I had his license plate number in my head and his truck was going to take damage too.
After ramming in front of me, he immediately slammed on his breaks. It was payback time. Now I was really in a rage and wishing I had a gun to kill this little punk. Almost immediately, I felt like I got a figurative whack in the head and I regretted wishing the death of this smeg head. I figured this was God’s way of saying, “I’m watching you and I can take your life right now if I so desire.” So I backed off, but of course smeg head slowed down too to try to keep me up close so he could slam his brakes a couple more times.
I was upset with myself for allowing myself to be baited into smeg head’s game, not to mention wishing his death. Was I wrong in not letting him carry out his manuever back at the turn signal? I had figured this is what he’d do. Was I wrong to not back off and let him leapfrog me? I think I wasn’t, but maybe I’m wrong.
Regardless, it is over now, but I try to be a little nicer on the road these days.