Irritability has got NOTHING on me.

Well, my car's in the shop.

Yeah, in case you didn't read here; Thanks to three weeks of nearly endless snow, my carport collapsed on top of my little gas-sipper of a commuter car, and squished it.

Not my best day, I can tell you.

Anyway, while making arrangements to get my car repaired, my wife and I discovered that we'd taken rental car coverage off of our policy for some reason!

Yup. No rental car for me to fall back on in order to get to work.

There's a silver lining to this, though.

My sister-in-law hurt her knee this last week, and is unable to drive. Because of this, I'm borrowing her car in order to get to work.

Her car? A Jeep. Soft Top. Really. Loud. On. The. Freeway.

Yeah. Not the best car to be driving around on the freeway, but I've gotta get to work somehow, right?

Well, yesterday wasn't too bad. The weather here has warmed up some, and the ice and snow aren't an issue.

However, this is the Pacific Northwest, and like everyone knows, it's raining.

There are two major problems I've got with the car I'm stuck with for now.

One: The windshield of a Jeep is designed for basic off-road work. Thus, it's quite flexible. Because of this flexability, the wiper blades at times don't make contact with the glass. This isn't good, because when it's raining the wipers are unable to clear the water off the glass, making vision even more blurry. I have to maintain a speed of no greater than 55 MPH in order to keep the wipers in contact with the windshield. Posted speed limit? 70 for cars. 65 for big rigs. Yeah, I get passed by EVERYONE.

Two: The soft top isn't all that stable. Most convertible covers that I've seen have the heavy-duty snaps that are a bitch to fasten and a bitch to take off. Not so with this car. Everything that connects the top for this one is..

Velcro.

Yup. Velcro.

Another reason I can't go above 55 MPH is that if I do, and a good gust of wind comes along, 2/3 of the top just come unfastened and start flapping about. This wouldn't be TOO bad if the weather were nice.. But no. It's raining here, and I need all of the cover I can get! I had to stop twice this morning to fasten the top back down because of a truck flying past me and causing a big gust to blow across the car.

So yeah. I'm trying to dry out and warm up this morning, and I'm dreading the drive home today.

Maybe I'll try to find some back-roads way home, and just take a scenic trip.

We'll see.

To any of you with experience with Jeeps:

HELP! Any suggestions?

WTF Wednesday

OK, as some of you may know, because of my work, I'm a commuter. I drive approximately 35 miles one way to work, so I tack on about 70 miles a day in driving on my car. Thankfully I only work 4 days a week, so that extra day really helps keep the gas budget down.

Now, in driving back and forth to work, I've come to one conclusion..

Most semi drivers are assholes.

Don't get me wrong. I'm sure that they're nice folks outside of their cab, and some of the most nice and impressionable folks you'll ever meet.

But while on the freeway? They're asses.

I mean, I live in the Pacific Northwest. It rains here.. Often.

Yet it never seems to fail. I drive to work at an ungodly hour in the morning, and usually the only traffic I'll ever see is trucks.

About 70% of the time, the drivers are decent, and stay in the far right-hand lane, and cut down on congestion if there happens to be another driver around.

However, there have been quite a few times where I've seen all THREE lines blocked by trucks, and they're all going about 10-15 miles BELOW the posted speed limit.

Then there's the grand deal of RAIN.

As I've said before, in this great Pacific Northwest area, it rains quite a bit. Because of this, visibility gets kind of limited from the rain falling, and the spray kicked up by vehicle tires from the road.

Now, in a perfect world, the mudflaps that are added to a trailer are supposed to cut down on this spray. But in reality? All it really does is fan the spray to the sides of the truck. This causes what I've come to describe as "The Halo" effect.

Picture this: You're driving along, and it's gently raining, so the mist is causing you to need your wipers intermittently, and everything's pretty decent. Then, up ahead, you see a foggy shroud. As you get closer, you notice dark shapes in the fog. As you approach, the shapes resolve into lights surrounding trailers. Suddenly, intermittent wiping becomes low. You come alongside these trailers, and low turns to high so that you can see from all the water being thrown into the air off the pavement, plus the added precipitation falling from the sky. As you finally pass this truck and trailer, then reverse. High gears down to low, then eventually back to the intermittent wiping.

The above scenario is only for ONE truck, and that is only if he's in the right-hand lane.

For some strange reason, when it rains around here, truckers seem to feel the need to drive in the center lane. Now, I don't know if this is for visibility reasons, or just because they like to splash cars on BOTH sides, but it's what they do.

Now, if you get more than one truck, there's no hope of maintaining any kind of speed, and visibility is more a game of Russian Roulette than driving. I mean, what if they hit a small patch of standing water that flies towards your windshield? Suddenly the constant spatter is submerged in a gritty and dirty blanket of oil, tar, and asphalt combined with what water is left. Attempting to see through it is nearly impossible, and even the best wipers can only smear the stuff from side to side for a while. Repeat this about 3-4 times, and even the most well dispositioned personality will be thinking about a sniper rifle and hatch marks on the butt end!

Needless to say, I can't stand driving with truckers. While in a car, they're fine. While walking, they're fine. Put them in the cab of a truck, and we've got problems.

Until they can find a way to monitor this better, I'm going to keep buying stock in wiper blades, tires, rain-x, headlights, and rifles and ammunition!

Wish me luck this afternoon, it's raining here, and I've got a drive ahead of me...