STREET PANDEMONIUM!

It happened again today.
For those of you who don’t know me (although at this early stage in the blogging game, I’m unsure of how many randos amble their way innocently into this vocabularical violent kingdom…), I own a muscle car. Rather, the bank is graciously allowing me to borrow the hotness until it’s paid off and I can legally call her mine. That being said, I try my best to take care of her. Premium dino juice at the pump when less than insanely expensive, and NEVER below midgrade under any financial circumstances whatsoever. Mobil 1 fully synthetic motor oil, no compromise on that at any time for any reason. Straight monthly fee unlimited car washes at the local Crew. Parking as far away from toddlers/shopping carts/Canadian geese/human beings as possible in public places. I don’t rub her with a diaper on my days off, but I make damn sure to engage in some windows down, sunroof open, remote country road therapy whenever I can. She is my pride and joy and my most favorite almost possession. Rain or shine, snow or sleet, bone chilling cold and soul scorching heat, I drive her daily.
I’ve often heard life is more about the journey than the destination. In this car I couldn’t agree more. I look down in pity at the seemingly endless throngs of commuter class vehicles clogging our American roads. Volkswagens. Kias. Hyundais. Toyotas. Buicks. All minivans. All SUV’s (quit fooling yourselves, folks: they’re just mini-minivans). Pickup trucks (farm implements). All of those vehicles out there without souls… yes, especially Kia Soul’s. What the hell are those ugly things? Rolling toasters! No wonder nine out of ten drivers on American roads these days are distracted — their vehicles are putting them to sleep!

My hotness has ~400 horsepower under the hood. What does that mean? Apparently if you lined up four hundred Budweiser Clydesdales and harnessed them all to a semi-moveable object and whipped them with a raucous HIYAH!! that amount of force is an approximation of the power level I have at my right foot’s disposal at any given time when the engine is operating. That is my fire breathing dragon doing everything in its massive willpower to keep from burning rubber around you while you’re driving 45mph in a 50mph speed zone. While you’re changing lanes without a signal. While you’re merging onto the 70mph speed limit interstate at 50mph and the unmitigated chaos that results from your inane, grossly inappropriate merging technique. While you’re bumbling along blissfully unaware of anything going on around you because KLOVE is having yet another fundraiser and that lady’s life was forever changed because she donated last year and her husband was miraculously cured of stage 70 eyelid cancer and you need a miracle in your life right about…
RRRRAAAAWWWWWRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!! For the love of all things holy there is only so much my barely-beneath-the-surface volcanic road rage can tolerate!

She is beautiful, she is vulgar, and she is a caged beast with the door unlocked one roar away from blastoff every single time I sit and hit that start button. Any message I wish to portray to my fellow road-goers is instantly and loudly accomplished with a blip of the gas pedal. Sure, she’s been put in her place a couple of times over the past 2 years. A Ford Raptor pickup truck (still just a farm implement). A 2017 Camaro SS. Porsches. Corvettes. But 99 times out of 100 we find a way to get the upper hand over everyone else in the idiotic warfare that is traveling on American roads in the 21st century.
But she was threatened this morning. It wasn’t my life I was concerned about. Instead I was worried about our adversary and what might happen to him should his arrogance dare crinkle my Precious.

Nonchalant commute at first, only minutes into the morning adventure. Why not duck into the car wash since I’m dropping $40/month for the unlimited privilege and we’re not supposed to get any rain until next week and this Journey song is really feelin’ good right about now and turn signal on and… HOLY HELL A FLASHY BLACK METEOR NEARLY DINOSAUR’D US TO KINGDOM COME!! WHAT WAS THAT SONIC BOOM?!
It was an oil-slick black 4th generation sharkface Camaro. Lowered. Crager rims. Tinted windows. Aftermarket exhaust. Autozone LED fog lights. I’d spotted him approaching the turn from the opposite direction I was headed. Male driver. Frowning. Slight upper lip curled in semi-snarl. Single hand fearlessly protesting the 10:00-2:00 two hand rule at a swagger-licious high noon position, ready to rock hard that first generation airbag steering wheel in vicious turning motion at the first sign of straight-line trouble.

Every time these guys try to act hard around my muscle car I pity them. These cars are a dime a dozen here in the Midwest and from what I’ve seen in the past 20-some-odd years it’s the exact same demographic piloting them:

It’s like every single driver out there in these rolling chumbuckets has something to prove and how DARE you mock them! Rolling short man syndrome on parade. “THIS… is a CHEVROLET… CAMARO!”
Whatever his problem was he didn’t feel it was necessary to legally yield to me during his left hand turn nearly into my driver’s side door. I had signaled, I had the right of way, I had to thunderstomp my cold brakes so he didn’t end us both. Death at 40mph… what an embarrassment! To seal the deal he squealed his tires and shat road buckshot all over my front end as he continued his phallic display of disregard for traffic laws, common/uncommon decency, and sleepy 7:00am Wednesday morning commute civility.
My hair trigger white hot molten road rage instantly Incredible Hulk’d and the normal feather foot that is my right bottom groundling appendage when riding this dragon turned into a depleted uranium A-20 Warthog Vulcan cannon shot of unbridled fury.

The aftermarket exhaust on my own rolling testicle wailed out its righteous rage at ear-piercing, peaceful Wednesday morning shattering decibels and all 400 Clydesdales were thumped into vengeance mode in less than a second. I made such a spectacle of the ordeal there should’ve been SWAT called out and maybe even the National Guard. This is as close to homicidal rage as it gets without actually murdering someone, folks… and that’s exactly what I wanted to do to this weeping assbag of a showoff circumcision accident gone horribly wrong. Can you imagine that pipsqueak weakling 200 horsepower on his best day wagging his mancannon at me as if my dragon was completely toothless and only looked like it should be avoided? Have you ever seen what happens to a starving dog when you wag a package of rancid bacon in its face?

It was mere moments before my crimson lightning bolt had tailslapped the sharkface into total submission, thundering… roaring… BLASTING past him like there was no tomorrow. And there almost wasn’t. It’s easy to lose your temper and shake your fist or other vulgar gestures in a supremely offensive protest at your fellow taxpayers/road warriors/breathing colon polyps; it’s harder to do so while maintaining control of an enraged bucking broncho of a muscle car with too much NA-NA… nah NAH! for its driver’s own good. You see, blind rage in human beings has the nasty little side effect of causing tunnel vision sometimes, and while I was focused on whipping the impudent little Chevy gelding, I wasn’t focused on the huge curve in the road we were approaching at breakneck (read: maniacal) speed. The moment my eyes went from ocular murder mode and back into vehicle steering responsibility, the white hot rage turned into white hot panic and I glanced down at the Sport mode button on my console that is supposed to be engaged for revenge operations like the one I was currently waging war in. It wasn’t.
The two lane left-handed curve is tricky at the posted 35mph speed limit. On dry pavement. With noon day sun. Staying in your own lane. Unopposed. Under control.
From the left lane I took a millisecond to glance down at the speedo, you know… so I could brag about my win to the demons and devils in whatever Hell I’m destined for. Speedo report: Well… well… well over twice the posted limit. Damp pavement. Dawn. Stupid black Camaro trying for a comeback in the right lane. As far as physics go I never took a class in high school or college, but experience has taught me when you throw an automobile into a violent maneuver such as attempting a 35mph curve at almost 3 times that speed, no matter how muscled your muscle car is, you aren’t going to make that turn. Furthermore, you will turn the steering wheel to the left, your front tires will indeed turn, but the car itself will continue on its fantastic voyage in a nearly straight line through the curve, most definitely out of your lane, and straight nuts into whatever vehicle/object/animal is in the right lane on your way off the road and into oblivion. The laws of physics are simple: they state you are an idiot and deserve to be punished and/or killed for your vehicular lunacy. Higher brain functions completely blasted away by rage and panic, I tightened my grip on the steering wheel, stood on the brake pedal, prayed to a God I recently denounced as nonexistent or at least completely disinterested in little ole' me, and braced for the inevitable tragedy.
My hotness came specially equipped with several options. Something called a “Super Track Pack” (totally not making that term up, blame Dodge) which included larger brakes, lowered and beefier suspension, wider wheels, performance tires, and a engine management computer that is apparently just lying in wait for asinine attempted death maneuvers just like this one. I’d like to think Dodge engineers realized that overgrown children such as myself would be ill-prepared to properly control such a rambunctious rocket that is my car and their poster child celebration of 100 years of Dodge automotive glory. After all, these are the same people/sorcerers that brought us the Dodge Hellcat, a 707 horsepower factory moonshine gulp on wheels, and the even more insane Dodge Demon with 840 horsepower that was banned from NHRA drag strips for being, and I quote, “too fast.” If they can figure out a spell that makes these things rip pavement up in boulder-sized chunks in a straight line, surely they can find a way to protect me from myself when I try to turn my paltry little 400 horsepower logic guillotine, right?

And that’s exactly what happened. The brake stomp, double-fisted steering wheel assault, and praying, coupled with some anti-momentum field generated effect from some as-yet-undiscovered time/energy/matter distortion generator located SOMEWHERE in my car caused it to squat down like a bobcat stalking its prey, lunge forward into the curve with reckless abandon, tires squalling like they were being William Wallace’d on the rack, chicane-like swish-flip waa-laa potato cannon spud launch out the other side of the curve like it was just another day at Laguna Seca or the Nürburgring. Maintained my side of the road, if not my individual lane. I haven’t located my testicles in the aftermath of this stupid stunt either, but I’m pretty sure they’re hiding somewhere inside some deep, dark recesses of undiscovered warmth and safety just like that undiscovered miracle engine somewhere in my car. After I regained consciousness and checked all of my mirrors, I saw the Camaro so far behind me it looked like a stray puppy tripping and falling all over itself to catch up to its new owner. I started breathing again and also double checked my window slits for any law enforcement presence that may have been a little less appreciative of my reckless fighter jock bravado, and (thankfully) no such luck.
What’s the lesson in all of this? I was hoping it would make a difference to that little black Camaro that got schooled, but as I was pulling into the car wash it roared past in continued defiance and a hollow overtake victory.
What just took you probably several minutes to read took less than 10 seconds to happen in real time. That’s how fast stupidity rears its ugly head. No matter how big my engine is, no matter how high my fuel octane or horsepower or throttle expertise, I’ll never outrun my own capacity for vehicular stupidity. And what’s worse: I know of my potential for it, my ability to negate all higher consciousness and turn into an adrenaline fueled warchild with a loaded weapon in a world full of innocent bystanders and people who feel no rage when they’re cut off by lesser mortals in sub-par vehicles.
I got lucky this morning. Someday that luck will run out. And I hope it’s just me that gets ended. The worst part is I’m only one drop in an ever growing sea of road rage idiots out there. I’m making efforts to relax and enjoy the ride.
But then I get in my car and drive around on public roads and the donkeys are outbreeding us conscientious drivers and I just want to travel 8 miles in less than 45 minutes and this jackass in a Scion is straddling both lanes and… and…

