Normally, on a Friday, I will spend the afternoon creating videos and posts for the weekend. Once the trading day is over, I have a few hours to crank out a ton of content – – usually a dozen posts or more – – so that I have a chance of actually not working too much over the weekend itself.
Creating it all in advance gives me a chance to relax.
Not so this time. In spite of having a ton to talk about what is suddenly a very interesting market, I had planned to drive us up to the mountains for the weekend. Thus, I have absolutely zero content for you right now on this beautiful Saturday morning, and I am duty-bound to start creating it. I’ll start with writing about an incident on the way up here.
We got a deliberately early start, heading out of the house at 2 p.m., well before the traffic. Well, I say “well before“, but for reasons I’ve never understood, rush hour starts building just after 2, and by 3 p.m. there are long stretches of very slow traffic all over the Bay Area. Umm, what happened to the 9 to 5 workday? I can understand a 6 p.m. rush hour, but where on earth do all these people at 2 p.m. come from? Does everyone knock off from work after lunch these days? Not everyone is employed as a civil “servant”, you know.
Anyway, a couple of hours into the journey my Tesla thoughtfully suggested getting off the freeway and doing a detour on local roads. I suspect by its own calculations I could save thirty seconds by doing so. I should know better than to obey these suggestions, but I was already in FSD, so I just let the car move off the freeway and into the wilds of Davis.
The problem with this is that not only is freeway traffic far safer than city traffic, but these days LOTS of other people get these helpful suggestions to take a weird-ass route away from the freeway, and it’s always the same route. Therefore, in short order, the faster route becomes a slower one as people all take the alternate route.
What was supposed to save me a little bit of time probably cost me an extra twenty minute of slow, frustrating driving. For the love of God, everyone, including me, remember………………
In the future, I don’t care if there’s a 20-car pileup and gasoline fires burning on both sides of the freeway. I’m not getting off of it. Period.
There’s more to this, however. Remember how I mentioned freeways are safer? Well, they are.
In the midst of my tedious, stop-and-go reroute, I was parked at a busy intersection, waiting for an opportunity to make a rather dangerous left-hand turn. The dogs were getting impatient, and the traffic was daunting enough, so I was feeling awfully tense already.
Then, out of absolutely nowhere…………………BANG!
The car shook, because the car behind me had mashed into the back of my car. This wasn’t a high-speed crash, of course. We were just a bunch of cars waiting in line, and I was wondering what in the hell would have compelled this person to hit my car.
Were they frustrated? Crazy? I shared my feelings with the occupants of my vehicle.
Moments later, I was able to make that left turn, and I pulled over to the side of the road to examine the damage. The person driving the assaulting vehicle likewise pulled over, and out of the car stepped – – – some of you are ahead of me here – – a woman.
Of course.
Since I tend to piss off and alienate just about everyone, sooner or later, I’ll just come out and say that, after living this long, women drivers absolutely suck. They’re horrible. Why do I say that? Empirical data. I have had five or six instances in my life when my car has been damaged by some other driver doing some stupid-ass thing, and the gender split hasn’t been 50/50, as would be the case if all drivers were equal. No, 100% – – One. Hundred. Percent. – – have been women.
I would hasten to add that in 100% of all the “close calls“, particularly those are intersections in which the other party is supposed to stop but they instead breeze right through – – they have been women. Why? Why is this? I honestly have no idea, but it’s annoying and expensive. I mean, I thought men were the aggressive, macho, empty-headed nitwits out there, but at least they can drive.
When she got out of her car, she immediately said, “Bro, sorry about that, that’s on me. I’m late.”
First, yeah, it was “on you” and second………………..”Bro“? This woman was in her 30s. She and I are not 17 years old. There’s no reason to talk this way. I throw off a “sir” vibe, not “bro“, white trash.
Sheesh.
In summary, what my car’s helpful suggestion to reroute provided was:
- a substantial amount of wasted time and frustration;
- driving a damaged vehicle for a while;
- out-of-pocket costs of whatever my deductible is (in spite of being the innocent here, as I have been in every one of these circumstances);
- all the time dealing with insurance, estimators, and repairs;
- the inconvenience of being without my car for however long it takes to fix it
Never get out of the boat. Not ever.
Thus, with that, I’d better start making some posts for you, in spite of the allure outside.
