The Road Rage

There was an incident yesterday, so today you've decided to take 35W to Diamond Lake Road in order to get to the gym. It's faster that way, so you should probably go that way anyway.

You usually take Lyndale. It's usually scenic and relaxing. You like to look at the houses that line the street, especially down toward Tangletown where they become beautiful two-story structures with ornate windows and brick chimneys and balconies and peaked roofs and carriage houses and etc.

However, Lyndale Avenue has an issue. Most of the time it's a two-way thoroughfare that has one lane going in each direction with plenty of room for parking on each side. Seems simple, right?

Well, here's the complication: Twice a day, during the morning and evening rush hours, Lyndale Ave becomes a no-parking zone, and the parking lanes are then used for the overflowing traffic.

Ordinarily, the fact that any street in Minneapolis becoming a four-lane rush-hour raceway for douchebags is not an issue for you, because you do not drive during rush hour. You've scheduled your entire existence in the Twin Cities around that premise.

But here's where the complication gets even hairier: During the non-rush-hour times, douchebags seem to think that they can use the parking lane as a passing lane. This turns your nice, relaxing drive to the gym each day into a Mad Max movie.

The street is always peppered with parked vehicles, so douchebags are constantly weaving in and out and cutting other drivers off, which is stupid, because the douchebags who do the most weaving and speeding are always caught at the next stoplight just like the drivers who choose not to speed and weave.

So, being the douchebag you are...yesterday, you got caught up in the douchebaggery of it all:

A douchebag in a green Ford Taurus careened up behind you and then attempted to pass. In response, you stepped on the gas. You thought this was pretty funny until you got to the next red stoplight where you had to sidle up next to a gargantuan purple Chevy Suburban (why do so many douchebags in Minnesota drive purple vehicles? Is it a Viking thing?) in order to keep the green Taurus from doing the same. We'll the douchebag in the purple Suburban took that as a challenge and gunned it when the light turned green.

Now, here's the thing: You have a fast car: Nissan SE-R Spec-V. It doesn't look like a sports car, and that's part of the reason you love it, because it's so unassuming, but it has a 175-horse-power 2.5-liter engine, with a six-speed manual transmission, which goes 0 to 60 in 7 seconds.

Anyway, you passed the Suburban like it was sitting still. This, I guess, emasculated the driver of the heavy-ass, gas-guzzling, Detroit-steel monstrosity, so at the next stoplight, he proceeded to not only pull out in front of you at the next intersection to block you in, but then he jumped out of the Suburban and started yelling profanities and flipping you off at the same time.

This would have been extremely hilarious except that he was standing in the middle of a busy intersection blocking traffic and putting himself in a serious mortal-idiot-squashed-by-automobile predicament, and you really don't like seeing people die right in front of you.

Also, although you doubt he recognized you, you know this particular douchebag. He works at the NAPA store down the street, and you occasionally buy auto parts there.

So, the outlook on your karma portfolio is way the fuck down this quarter, and you're certain the cosmos will cash it in any time now. Uhg.

And now you take the interstate, where drivers expect to be passed, and cut off, and raced, and etc. And it's not scenic AT ALL.