Screw defensive driving/old school/lets convoy!?!!!!

[bobstad]

Was just along I-5 out of the Cherry Street on-ramp from Seattle downtown north bound at around maybe eleven at night, and got into motoring along with all three lanes of the freeway; or maybe four, or five?

Anyway, we'd all been holding abreast together for a few miles; unlike the defensive driving technique learned via driver's ed/ROAD AND TRACK magazine, etc./circa late '60s.(avoid clumps, speed up to escape congestion, and/or slow down, etc.)

Seattle is now known to have worse gridlock problems than LA; though with five million in Washington state total versus 20 or 30 million population in the Los Angeles, CA basin whose auto traffic/smog/gross overdevelopment woes are now legendary, you tend to hear less of whats happening now up this neck of the woods.

I'd had an Audi squirreling around behind me darting around speeding past, then dropping back aways who'd caught my eye initially coming south for a musician's workshop at noon.(Gallery 1412; and I'd attended the evening performance also that night there at eight, featuring the same leader/& scheduled for the evening solo set performer as the workshop, and two other performer/musicians)(adds up to four total players that night; with a mini-multitude of instruments, etc.)(there is a better description and link following in another post of mine to this thread!)

So, on the way home for a mile or maybe more I'd gotten into a spontaneous or maybe contrived traffic situation unlike any other I'd noticed, with everyone in all lanes going the same direction anyone could change too and from if so desired; and we'd all been going along together at the posted speed limit, during which unusual driving situation I'd experience a remarkable sensation of calm and relaxation as long as we'd been traveling thus.

Which about the time or shortly after I'd felt as described, the incessant jockeying so to speak for position as per usual came into play and the rest of the ninety or so mile journey in return, here to Bellingham-was the normal freeway drive or whatever.

I remember riding the city bus around during the day between the workshop and evening performance; while waiting for a transfer I'd been shooting the breeze anonymously after a considerable, downtown traffic disrupting, demonstration; in behalf of same gender marriage.(I'm of the opinion marriage is a racket to begin with so everyone deserves equal rights/though the institution itself is highly questionable, and likely one more abuse of society by "exclusive" versus "syncretic" religion, etc.)

Anyway, off the top I'd quipped that any society where "protection" is required during sex has got major problems to begin with; and likely a holdover from the days of chastity belts was my next snappy line which also got some approval.

But, in reflection I think then my quips standing on the street could be applied to automobile driving for conditions as exist, not as per mid-20th century?(assuming a calendar not always consensus; but in this sense meaning during the past fifty years or so)

So, anyone? Help me out if this could use translation? And/or opinions on the foregoing?

[Mike McKown]

I honestly don't have any idea what you're talking about.

[bobstad]

Me neither?

[milehighbear]

From what i gathered was he was at a relaxed state of driving along with four other cars going same direction, the same speed and no one trying to pass each other or whipping in or out between them and they were lost in the foremost action of content, and quiet and were enjoying the presence of driving with not a care in the world and thinking of things going on in the world and not having to think about driving. Kind of like going into a pool of water and your in the forest and its absolutely quiet and your just floating their watching the clouds go over and trying to make the clouds look like birds, or like dragons or dogs and just being at ease, and their is no sound except for the sound of your own breathing and then boom the sky's fill over and a great big storm comes along and you wonder what got mother nature so mad that she would deliberatly bring a storm along with lightning and thunder and rain driven by 40 mile wind gusts that would blow a barn over and then just think of the poor animals having to seek cover and get out of the rain and not being able to and just standing there freezing and wet yet a few miles away its calm and quiet and has meadows of golden wheat just swaying back and forth like a lullaby and the would put a baby to sleep while it was just swaying in its cradle and then you could lay down on the bed and get a good nights sleep knowing that tomorrow is another day. Then all of a sudden someone is behind you honking and you leave the quiet fields on swaying wheat and come back to reality that someone behind you five cars thinks your taking up the whole rode and he cant get past you and he is weaving back and forth trying to get around one of you guys and then suddenly there are twenty or thirty cars now trying to get around you and they are all honking at you want you guys to break the line and then suddenly one of them crashes into the back of your car and your car is swerving out of control and now the convoy line has been broken and all of a sudden WHAM yOU WAKE UP AND IT WAS ALL A DREAM, except for the fact that yu have an old steering wheel in your hand and you dont know how it got there. And tomorrow we will continue the story of the little rubber ducky that lost its momma and is sitting in a pond frightened because all the little fishes are swimming around you and they are glaring at you and you just keep wanting your momma and she is nowhere around.

[bobstad]

What was the name of that movie?(TARA TARA TARA?)

Hey milehighbear. That was almost it; except we were a flotilla like the horde of hundreds of Japanese Zeros traveling to attack Pearl Harbor in the movie TURA TURA TURA; except in reality really the reunited cadre' of the old Seattle marching lawn mower brigade TORO TORO TORO based upon that same movie; who used to march and demonstrate regularly in parades there decades ago now.(OR MAYBE EVEN THE "CRITICAL MASS" DIRECT ACTION GENERATION COME OF AGE: SEEKING EMPOWERMENT AND CONTROL OF SOCIETY AS A WHOLE: FOR ONCE ABANDONING OUR BELOVED PEDAL POWER IN SHEER DOMINATION OF THE ROAD AS A THREAT AND SHOW OF OUR UNITED STRENGTH!!!...Seattle has that history; with the classic '60s art of jungle beasts roaming the once incomplete freeway ramps out into space; in that particular vision abandoned to the ECOTOPIAN future scenario those thus motivated out of my generation have seen crushed along with our naive often hopes and plans as if we'd triumph about thirty or forty long, dumb, hopeless years ago as the developers of urban and suburban sprawl empowered the vicious reactionary entropy of global chaos and repression in order to throw up their insults to humanity for profits gained by ripping teats from suckling babes left to starve in third world hells all over the planet which now sees about two billion thus encumbered for such vain, stupid, corrupt and vile goals...just off the top of my head here; milehighbear?)

I think we'd been at least fifty or a hundred strong; motoring along for several miles as a contiguous cloud of iron, steel, aluminum and rubber of all marques and descriptions; but, united in this peculiar moment of insight as to what seems like an inspired alternative way of travel to the typical snarling mass of chaos the usual urban freeway "adventure" has become that spurts occasionally up to the speed limit; but is usually poking along just a little faster than stationary in the patterns of gridlock I find especially distressing since my Festiva's cooling fan hasn't ever worked since I bought the car June of '99 I didn't even notice the first few years since I'd lived in isolated northern Humboldt county in Eureka, CA where we don't have traffic jams; though the highest insurance rates of any town its size in the state because the city fathers decided against a freeway bypass Caltrans already had bought the land for; in order to milk the tourist traffic so now every one has to drive 30 mph right through the center of town on US 101, which yields a no holds barred sort of "ripost-touche' " martial style driving experience and a cynical public defender's office inured to taking low-income drivers off the street in the rash of alcohol and/or cannabis influenced DUIs I'd weathered my own $7000 nightmare version of the spring of 2001, etc.

I'm trying to think of exactly the time of night this happened? I'd been at the GALLERY 1412 performance of viola player Christian Asplund's quartet which started around eight for a couple incredible sets of experimental music.(his first set was solo viola; then joined by Seattle music legend and icon Amy Denio on alto sax & accordian, with also drummer Greg Campbell and elder, trombonist Stuart Dempster playing wonderfully w/conch as percussion; <http://www.gallery1412.org>) Then I'd gone east on Union Street at the corner there and right on 23rd to the ARCO station on Cherry and got $13 worth of gas at $2.20/gallon inner city prices for regular.(hey; has anyone ever found poor Ethyl? I think she must be hookin' on the street now forgotten and forelorn?)

I'd then gone down Cherry and ran into some road construction or some sort of police barracade of traffic where I'd sat about five or ten minutes as lanes in both directions on Cherry on either side of and under interstate 5 were stopped; then I'd driven under the freeway and right/north on 4th and another right on University to get northbound on I-5 when I got picked up by the huge floating mass of traffic all as if almost sitting still together in meditation as we'd rolled along together to north of the University District far beyond downtown where the whole energy then dispersed and returned to normal; the not too hard to handle late evening patterns heading out of town...I'm guessing more like ten at night than the elevenish I'd thought beginning this post; so perhaps somewhere in between; but a time when plenty of cars were available for whatever reason?(coulda been midnight, since I'd been blocked in by Campbell's car who'd had to load his drum kit before he, Asplund and a friend could leave; who'd locked up the place)

[TRUCKtiva]

Youre awesome Bob! I have so much fun reading your stories! Kills time @ work.