When was the last time you gave someone the bird?

On my way to work this morning. Before that, I really can't remember. Sure I give the bird for candid photos with friends, but that is all in good fun. To seriously fling that middle finger and reaffirm to yourself that this may turn ugly, is a whole other situation. I was fully intent to be polite and stop being hell on wheels everyday on my way to work. LaVerne would rather go loud and furious. I did my best to keep her under control, someone a few cars in front was taking their sweet time getting up the entrance ramp. I thought no problem, there really isn't much traffic, and did my best to keep her in saintly presence. Then some rather impatient people behind me thought it would be very helpful to accelerate aggressively, move left quickly, and severely limit the merging opportunities of those commuters in front. Fucking Me first types, probably some idiotic self-inflicted stress of calling work, or reminding their moron kids to put the milk back in the refrigerator after they finish their chocolate frosted sugar bombs, and drive at the same time. I kept my cool, LaVerne stayed stable. Eventually the collective group was able to move over onto the mainlanes of the freeway, although I'm sure there were a bunch of brake lights from the helpful idiots trying to merge ahead of their counterparts in front. The whole situation was a little disruptive to my normal communal thought process of "We are ALL trying to get ON the FUCKING freeway together DUMBASS(ES), don't be an UBER-DUMBASS(ES) and think you're really going to get ahead of all of us at this point in time; DUMBASS(ES)! There will be plenty of opportunity to jockey for position in another half mile, and I will probably slip by you in the RIGHT FUCKING LANE, because all you DUMBASS(ES) think the left lane is the FASTEST lane, and it probably would be, but its NOT, because there are so many more of you FUCKING DUMBASS(ES) populating the urban environment than any other type of driver on the road today, and you all think that you need to park your ignorant ass in the left lane from the moment you enter the on ramp."

So there we were....

I soothed LaVerne. I guided her onto the freeway, which is actually a tollway. We both smirked at the DUMBASSES waffling at cruising speed in the left lane. We increased speed slightly and slipped into the middle lane. Not too much later down the road, the culprit that had caused the whole incident to unfold on the entrance ramp in the first place (remember the slow DUMBASS, that was still on island time leading the procession?) decided to immediately change into the middle lane (no signal, no apparent reason for the DUMBASS to change out of the lane they were in anyway) and nearly clip fenders. Did I mention LaVerne is a loyal gal. She does not appreciate rubbing, even love nibbles, from other roadies. It was rather close, so close that merely braking would not have avoided a visit to the body shop for everyone (including me).

We swerved. Then she told me "Give that senseless wonder of the commuting world the bird". So I did.

It felt great, Hell on Wheels.

Ride on,
JR