The Jetta with the GPS

Six o'clock in the morning comes early for me.  My alarm starts it's low mumbling of radio music and slowly builds into a crecendo of ear piercing, base pounding tunes that I generally sleep through until my cat Molly jumps on my head as if to say "Wake Up!!  My tender little kitty ears can't take it anymore!" and I blindly reach for the snooze button.  I will hit snooze at least 4 times (sometimes 5) before I eventually roll out of bed.  My husband does not understand this concept, he's perfectly happy to jump out of bed bright eyed and bushy tailed at the first sound of the alarm.  My body on the other hand needs that 45 minutes of half sleep to slowly wake up.  Due to my inability to rise when the alarm first begins it's charming march from octive 1 to octive 800, I invariably end up in a mad dash to get myself ready and out the door for work.  I have my morning routine down to the minute - I know that if I'm not heading down my driveway by 7:38am I will be late for work.

When I head out the door I'm still a little sleepy - people say you should take a shower to wake up but the shower I take every morning does very little to help me get a move on it.  My husband thinks I should wake up even earlier than 6:45am so that I can drink a cup of coffee to jolt myself into something resembling a living human being, but I cherrish my sleep way more than I enjoy predawn coffee.  However, the lack of caffiene in my system is also a contributing factor as to why I am such a grouch in the morning.  My husband will say all of one sentence to me every morning; "Have a good day honey, I love you."  He knows it would be detrimental to his health should he engage me further that soon after I've woken up.

Its too bad that I can't have a sign on the outside of my car that reads: "Not a morning person, late for work, get out of my way".  This simple sentence may advise the drivers near me that they should either put the petal to the metal or get the heck out of my lane or else I'll run you off the road!  Here's the thing; Indiana driver's are NOTHING like Michigan drivers.  Being from the Metro Detroit area you could say I learned how to drive with road rage...And I never really let that part of my driving skills go.  Now, I've never been in an actual accident - in fact the only thing close was a mild fender bender where I barely bumped the car in front of me while sliding helplessly through a large puddle of water during a violent thunder storm; hardly my fault.  I wasn't even speeding!  It was rush hour and I was driving up Crooks Rd. towards 16 mile on my way to work.  I wasn't even late that's how insignificant the whole thing was.

Since moving to Indiana I've seen more frightening accidents occur right before my eyes than I ever witnessed in Michigan.  I saw an SUV get side swiped by an old 1980's style mini van (probably had some kind of metal frame) and the SUV flipped over so close to me that my car was splashed by the windshield glass exploding.  I saw a Charger's tire blow out directly in front of me while driving down the highway and had to swerve to miss the oncoming flying rubber.  There have been several near accident exposures over the years and so while I may have a bit of a lead foot and I tend to start screaming when some driver thinks it's ok to merge with oncoming traffic going 40 miles an hour, (which has become one of my bigger pet peeves) I am a safe driver, I swear.  In Indiana the Interstate entrance and exit ramps are not very "driver friendly", you have a mere 30 to 40 yards after coming around the curve to get up to speed and merge with oncoming traffic.  Oh and did I mention while you're trying to get on other drivers trying to exit are slowing down and squeezing into your lane to get off the highway on the same 30 or 40 yards of ramp.  Not at all like in Michigan where there is much more distance between cars merging onto and off of the highway.  To me, this is simply a recipe for disaster - no wonder I've seen so many accidents down here.

On to the point of the blog; the Jetta with the GPS is a car I have been stuck behind on numerous occassions while headed to work in the mornings.  Jetta's are cute cars but for some reason I always view their drivers as somewhat pretentious, which probably seems like an oxymoron since Jetta's are rather petite unthreatening looking vehicles.  It's just how I feel.  The driver of this dark blue puddle jumper is short with a whole lot of curly dark hair, a sort of mop top if you will, and from what I can gather they appear to be female so we'll call the driver "she".  I assume she lives near my subdivision because I always end up behind her only a mile from where I live, always on the same stretch of road.  I deduce that she has a garage in which she keeps her beloved Jetta because I don't recall ever seeing it covered in snow or even spotted with snow. This is all the more annoying because I am unable to park my car in the garage (thanks to a workshop that currently inhabits every inch of my garage.  Yes honey, I know it's important to have that shop, I know you've furnished our home with your hand crafted furniture...I'm just sayin'.), so in the winter months I have to get up even earlier than normal to allow time to warm up and clean off my car.  And we all know how I feel about that.

As if her bright and shiny clean Jetta weren't annoying enough (jealousy in it's rawest form) she also has a GPS attached to her dashboard and it's always turned on.  I know this because I can see it's glimmering screen and glossy maps through the slightly tinted windows.  It's also especially illuminated in the morning as the sun hasn't risen yet so it's very bright against the dusky morning sky.  Now maybe she has a job where she has to travel a lot to areas she's never been, maybe she's new to our town and needs a GPS to navigate the local streets, or maybe she's just lazy and wasting energy by leaving it on all the time.  I'm not exactly sure why this bothers me, it just seems irresponsible to have your GPS turned on at all times.  Regardless of her reasons, she drives the same route that I do every day so you'd think she would have it figured out by now and shut the darn thing off.

If that weren't bad enough, she clearly has no idea how to read speed limit signs or apply their suggestions to her own driving habits.  This woman never drives more than 10 miles under the recommended speed.  10 miles!  I can't even begin to tell you how frustrating this can be.  Especially at 7:45am when I'm half asleep and in a rush to get to work on time.  It's all I can do to hold back the urge to violate the passing laws down that particular stretch of road...speed up really fast and zoom in front of her in a purposeful effort to simultaneously cut her off, flip her the bird and give her the stink eye.  Or ride her bumper until I can overtake the Jetta "Monster Truck" style.  My little Equinox isn't exactly the biggest or scariest looking vehicle (She's a shade of faded red that is almost pink, so I named her Frenchie like the character from Grease) but when the Detroit road rage comes out of me I think Frenchie and I could totally take her.  Although she probably wouldn't even notice if I did do any of these things, she always seems spaced out and very stubornly in her own little world where taking a Sunday cruise during rush hour is completely acceptable.

It's called "Rush Hour" for a reason and I don't think she gets it.  She's probably a native to Indiana, and here in Indiana the stress of rush hour is quite different than it is in Metro Detroit.  The drivers here are much calmer, less stressed and in no great hurry to get anywhere.  When I drive back to Detroit I can literally feel my shoulders inch up into my neck and my knuckles go white the closer and closer to Detroit I get.  Traffic gets more erratic and much faster.  If you're not going at least 75 miles an hour in the slow lane you're getting run off the road.  The speed limit on the highway here in town is 65 miles an hour, which feels like a slow crawl after driving in Detroit.

Not that it's necessarily a bad thing for the driving experience here to be so much calmer than in Detroit.  In fact it's one of the qualities of this town that I appreciate the most.  However, this is no reason for the Jetta driver to ingore the traffic laws with such disregard for her fellow travelers on the road.  Doesn't she realize that we have places to go, time cards to punch and coffee to brew?  She's starting to affect my morning mood now too.  If I end up behind her I have to let out a heavy sigh and say to myself "this damn car again?"  I suppose I could wake up 5 minutes earlier every morning and avoid the whole thing altogether.

Yea that's not gonna happen.