Posts tagged with "driving" - Faerye Net

Experiment

2008-07-18T11:15:07+00:00

Yesterday I undertook to count cars that turned without using their turn signals. I thought I’d count until I saw just one that DID use the signal. I was extremely – one might even say over- – scrupulous, for I ignored the six or seven cars who appeared not to use their signals but could conceivably have blinked once or twice at the beginning or end of their turn without my seeing. Only turning, not merging, was considered. I also gave a pass to cars turning into parking spaces, just to be expansively generous.

So, having let so many fish escape my net, how many cars did I see IN A ROW turn without using their signals? NINE.

NINE. No wonder I write sarcastic rants about the signal use in the Valley. And let’s not get into how many people actually look both ways before turning onto a busy street.

Highway 101 has it in for me.

2008-06-13T23:45:26+00:00

I picked up a nail in my tire tonight. It was by no means obvious, but I think it happened on a short jaunt on 101 from Mt. View, where I was gaming with friends new and old, to the Queequeg’s Qoffee Qasa where I toil. It was not until the sign of the mighty Pequod, its sails emblazoned with the coffee bean, was extinguished and the doors of Queequeg’s were locked behind its weary employees that I saw the flat tire.

Previous misadventures, including several memorable hours stranded on the shoulder on a lofty freeway interchange (also tire-related), convinced me to pay the semi-yearly pittance for roadside assistance, and the truck appeared before my fellow Queequegger and I could budge the lugnuts. I took the long way home, via surface streets. But really, tires and 101 both have it in for me. And the two together? Oh lordy.

Unlike some fictional characters who masquerade as real people among us, I think I will celebrate my tire mishap with a patch or a new tire, followed closely by a mango-strawberry smoothie at Queequeg’s. Not a new sports car. That’s just how I roll. Slowly, cautiously, and under 55 miles per hour on a compact spare.

Eldritch lights

2008-03-22T00:17:27+00:00

Now, as we all know, this web-footed fairye is currently kickin’ it down California-way. California is, as movies and Mickeys like to remind us, a magical place. As such, things are a little different down here. Things like cars.

Within a few minutes of passing into the domain of Califia, your car acquires Multipurpose Magic Spell Lights or MMSLs. Depending on the make of car, the location of the controls vary, but they usually take the form of a wand attached to the steering wheel. This wand only has a few directions of mobility, but since it is magically contextual, that doesn’t matter.

A FEW USES FOR YOUR Multipurpose Magic Spell Lights
(for Oregonians and others who may not understand)

If you are merging (and when aren’t you?) and you see a car where you would like to be, activating the MMSL will transport this car into a parallel dimension, allowing you to safely enter the freeway or expressway precisely where that vehicle previously rolled.
While you are bombing down the freeway, happily ensconced in a lane, activate the MMSL to daze surrounding drivers, causing them to take their feet off the gas and lose precious moments.
At any time at all, activate both MMSLs at once with a special Ultrasecret Button Control in order to make yourself the center of attention. All the other drivers will stare at you, and you will know that you are one seriously cool dude.

In short, there are no shortage of valid uses for the MMSL. Just, whatever you do, do NOT attempt to use the MMSL to communicate your intentions to other drivers, especially in high-speed lane changes, all-way stops, or other potentially dangerous situations. The MMSL is an eldritch force beyond human reckoning, and should NOT be abused just because some other drivers want to use the roads as well. Treasure your MMSL, and recharge it once in a while by honking at people who stop at red lights before turning right. Traffic magic is a renewable resource!

Adventures at Readings: Lorrie Moore owes me a pen.

2008-02-16T13:00:52+00:00

Since I seem to be making a habit of attending literary readings, I thought I’d better come up with a snappy (or at least cheesy) title for posts about them.

Some time ago, I happened to pick up a free bookmark covered with free reading dates at the Stegner Fellowship office on Stanford campus. Now, since I don’t have Powell’s down here to provide me with readings, and since Palo Alto is only a jillion miles away – which passes for convenient in my life at present – I popped all those babies right onto my calendar. The first so popped was that of Lorrie Moore.

Duly, I chose respectable yet not-overwarm clothing and printed off three views of the Stanford campus map along with a set of directions carefully sanity-checked against same. I set off forty minutes earlier than the map site recommended, and felt sure that such a cushion of time would allow me to navigate the Stanford Maze.

The Stanford Maze is an effect of Stanford’s size and wealth coupled with certain human factors. Not only is the campus huge and laid out with organic whimsy, as the growing wealth of the institution and the ambitions of its managers allowed, but it apparently maintains for itself the illusion of intimacy. I infer this from the fact that all the winding byways of the campus intersect at four-way stops. If you have never attempted to use an all-way stop in California, I do not recommend it—even if the ways stopping only contain one lane each, which is not always the case at Stanford. This utter inability to remember who has right-of-way is one human factor; another is confident undergrads striding about without looking at cars, often at night in dark clothing (in the day they wear bright cheerful colors, but a few like to wear dark colors at night just to keep the drivers on their toes.) Throw in many cyclists and the occasional activist against turn-signal use, and you still have only the slightest understanding of the Stanford Maze.

The final effable ingredient is construction. Also an effect of the Stanford Wealth, this construction is everywhere and detour signs are, to put it generously, few. Thus it was that I squandered 25 of my 40 extra minutes driving back and forth in front of a construction fence which concealed not only the road I needed, but its curbcut, sign and existence. Finally realizing this, I moved on to trying to park and become a dangerous, dark-clothed pedestrian, which took the other 15 minutes, as I couldn’t find a single non-permit-requiring parking spot. At last I trusted to luck and parked in whatever an “EA permit” spot might be.

At this point I was some distance away from the auditorium, with only three minutes to find it lest I become an embarrassed latecomer mouthing ‘sorry’ as I scoot my butt past those in more convenient seats (which would have been extra-mortifying when I found out that Tobias Wolff was doing the introduction. Tobias “Bullet in the Brain” freakin’ Wolff.) Luckily, by dint of fast walking and ignoring the cryptic names of buildings on my map in favor of their cross-sectional shape, I managed to squeak in one minute before anyone said anything, if, in all probability, one minute after nominal showtime. I found myself in one of the larger readings I’ve ever attended, dreadfully thirsty, surrounded by people I didn’t know and arriving just in the nick of time. This is no way to acquire the secure air of the lone sophisticate, but luckily one of the four people I know at Stanford was there, so I did not have to sit alone and look clever.

Lorrie Moore read the first chapter of a novel she has almost completed (I have no idea if it’s the one she was working on in this Ploughshares interview, but it didn’t seem to be about hate.) It proved to have a self-deprecating narrator with a distinctive voice (Moore excels at voice) and a fund of odd observations about the world. She had us laughing out loud a great deal. As The Believer’s article on her says, “Moore’s hallmark has become the inextricability of humor and pathos, which she explores with rare understanding.” I look forward to reading the rest of the novel. She has an idiosyncratic reading style; she places emphasis and pauses in very different places than I would expect. I wonder if this means that she ‘hears’ those emphases and pauses when she’s writing, as well? I think it’s easy to assume that the way you yourself hear sentences is ‘normal’, but in all probability everyone is a little different. The individual ear is probably informed by the literary sponge effect.

At any rate, I enjoyed the reading, and utilized my patented Lurking Skills to haunt the author afterwards so I could get my copy of Like Life signed. I was only the second or so person to approach her in this vein, and she didn’t have a pen. Luckily, I have a messenger bag instead of a purse, so I whipped it open, noted with amazement that I had TWO of my preferred rollerballs as well as my fountain pen, and handed her one of the rollerballs. (Not only is the fountain pen all cherished and stuff, but it was loaded with aqua ink AND I have handed it to two faculty authors in my program only to discover they are left-handed and fountain pens are a hindrance more than a help.) Anyway, she foolishly said this was the type of pen she liked herself, whereupon, flushed with the competence of having 2 of them on me, I offered to abandon it to her. There was, after all, a line forming, books in hand. There is a certain wordy bashfulness common in writers, and in the depths of same we clashed, courtesy upon courtesy, until I told her my name and that she could owe me a pen and dashed away.

It’s not much of a distinction, being owed a pen by a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, but that, and no ticket on your windshield, will get you home happy and warm. That ain’t bad for any adventure.

Top Ten Move-Related Firsts

2007-04-09T17:46:52+00:00

10. First Starbucks I’ve visited in California.

9. First time I’ve driven eight hours in one day. That leg wouldn’t have taken so long if I hadn’t tried to give the cats water at every stop. On a related note, you’d think the average Californian had never seen a grown woman in pigtails with a leashed cat climbing her back before.

8. First real live CHP motorcycle officer sighted. They really do dress like that.

7. First road trip with cats. Next time, Ryan gets to drive Miss Evilcat.

6. First time I’ve ever wanted to kill a cat. In my defense, it certainly would have rendered her tranquil.

5. First time sleeping in a room with two cats. And second, and, tonight, third. The pouncing, the kneading…last night Qubit tried to stretch her forepaws into my eyesockets. In a nice way.

4. First time finding British comedy on in the middle of the day on a weekday. I think I’m going to like it here.

3. First time driving in California. I went from ‘zippy’ to ‘slowpoke’ without changing speeds!

2. First time I’ve been told I have a pretty ethnicity. Umm, thanks. It works out.

1. First fifty-point-bonus word on my first turn of Scrabble. (I built ‘STRAINED’ off Grandma’s ‘CORES’, with the ‘D’ on a triple word score.)

Should I put it on my Christmas list?

2006-11-06T20:52:37+00:00

I want a car-horn that plays the scary beasty-noise from Lost. Then I will honk when people in black clothes run out in front of my car in the rain. Run, fools! The jungle is angry!

Ms. Curmudgeon encounters Traffic

2006-02-26T03:04:21+00:00

I am beginning to wonder whether 25 is quite so young as my friends insist; or whether, perhaps, spending time by yourself in a consistent and internally sane world is very detrimental to your ability to cope with fools and insanity.

Every time I try to drive anywhere of late, I witness or suffer a potentially perilous situation caused solely by someone’s idiocy. Today, I had barely driven out of my apartment complex when it happened. I was waiting for a green light in a left-turn yield lane. The light turned green, and rather than proceeding straight or turning right, the gigantic grey SUV across the way did…nothing. I oonched out and considered whether I should just turn across her and risk tickets or smithereenification. There was no sign of eye contact beyond the smoky windshield, no indication of the well-meaning ‘generosity’ some people like to demonstrate by fouling up the entire traffic system. She just sat. Finally, she began to move forward, and as she passed me and the cars queued behind her began to file on their way, I could not help but give her a curious glance.

Perched in her gigantic autobeast, directing several tons of lethal Detroit steel around the burg, this woman was actually…wait for it…using her laptop. It was sitting in her lap, still absorbing at least half of her attention as she drove across the intersection.

I ask you, world, is there more folly than in previous months? Or have I, insulated in a nest of books, crafts, phone calls and teapots, become more sensitive to it? Must I, at 25, be a Curmudgeon? And does this mean that well before 40 I shall be an Old Bat?

Road Rage Haiku

2003-07-07T22:23:21+00:00

Seventy too slow
Sunlit Interstate left lane
Get out of my way