Yesterday morning, there was a bit of a heavy rain going on while I was driving to work. I didn't think too much of it, as I had left late enough to avoid all the usual morning traffic. Besides, I'm a big boy now and I know all of the driving in the rain rules:
- Allow more stopping distance
- Don't make sudden changes in direction
- Use your windshield wipers
- Try to stay out of the ditches
See? It's not so bad once you know these basic rules. So, I set out on my way too long trip to work. Things were going fine, despite the rain, and I figured my trip time would probably be just about normal...or at least just about normal if I drove the speed limit everyday. I don't. It's not that I TRY to speed, but I think my car is just sucked along with the other cars going well over the speed limit. The car doesn't weigh that much - it's like a leaf on the wind! Besides, people drive so fast, it is almost safer to drive at their speed than to be someone going much slower than them on the highway!
Just as I was nearing downtown from the south...around the 55-44 interchange, traffic suddenly stopped. As it turns out, it stayed like this for quite a way. Of course, periodically the traffic would lurch forward, lulling you into a false sense of belief that things would be back to normal, soon. They weren't.
This is where the problems began. I drive an old car...a '94...and there are admittedly quite a few things that could be, um, better with this car. For example, once a week I put oil in, and there is a leak in the engine cooling system (getting fixed on Thursday so don't write to me and tell me how bad this is) that requires me to add coolant once or twice a day. There's more, but if I tell you, then I'll start getting hassled about "time to get a new car" which is the last thing I want to spend my money on. Of course, if someone wants to gift me a new Camaro when they are released, I'll take it. I'd even consider a Mustang GT for the wife. Must have manual transmissions. We have our standards! Just saying.
So, one of the interesting personality quirks my car has is it sometimes forgets to turn on the radiator fan when I'm stopped in traffic for awhile. This interesting behavior causes the engine temperature to shoot sky high - though the car has never ACTUALLY overheated. After being essentially parked in the traffic for a half-hour today, I glanced down and noticed my temperature gauge all the way up.
Yikes!
A small, but significant warning bell went off in my head. I knew that I needed to get rid of some of that heat, and I was STUCK in traffic (middle lane) with no exits around from which to make my escape from gridlock. So, I turned on the heater, full blast. Now, an interesting small-car weather phenomenon is that if it is cool and humid outside and you suddenly turn on the heater your windows will instantly fog up.
Which they did....instantly....and completely. Window shades could not have cut me off from the world more completely. The last thing I saw before I was sealed into my car, completely blind was that the traffic suddenly started to move just fine. Uh-oh. While this was good for my soon to overheat engine, it was bad for me since I couldn't see. I switched the heater to DEFROST knowing that soon the window would heat up and the fogging would go away. I also reached up to wipe a clear area with my hand in the windshield.
This is when the seemingly gigantic spider dropped from somewhere on the windshield toward my lap. PERFECT! It was so sudden and so, um, BIG, that it seemed almost like one of those practical joke rubber spiders. (An obvious exaggeration, but I couldn't have been any more shocked). If you know me at all, you know that I am good under pressure. Sometimes even brilliant. I did not disappoint in this case, either. Quickly thinking, I grabbed the little web line the spider was dropping from and flung the spider to my passenger seat and continued to rub a clear patch in the window. Don't try to do the math on number of hands and stuff. Unless I somehow instinctively used my feet, legs or teeth to steer, it seems reasonable to conclude that at some point I was not actually steering my car.
For the next mile, until the windshield cleared, I had to divide my attention between the little view port I cleared on the windshield and the monster spider sitting next to me.
THIS is why driving in the rain is so dangerous.
By the way, I tried to keep an eye on the spider the rest of the way to work, but he still somehow wandered off in the car. I don't know where the spider went, but I've been feeling him crawl on me for the past 24 hours!
