Woofer Rides With The Road Rage King

I was going to write this blog about a year ago but I really needed to take some time and get myself back together. After a year filled with Xanax, Valium and some major anti-depressants I think the time has finally come. Maybe. If this blog ends in the middle it's because I scared myself so bad I'm hiding under the desk until somebody forces me out. I like it under the desk. It's safe and now that I have the Cat Free Zone (hereafter referred to as the CFZ) there are no furry little troglodytes under there to ruin my Zen moments.

Anyway, I'm sure you all are aquiver with anticipation to hear this story. I will attempt not to digress too much although as noted in previous blogs I digress often. And well. And I'm digressing again.......

About a year and a half ago I signed a contract with some very nice people to restore their somewhat horrendously remodeled home in Haddon Heights, New Jersey. Now I'm sure that you don't really care where the house was but it lends a little perspective and color to the tale. Someone had taken a beautiful 3 story home in a high dollar neighborhood, slapped on a little aluminum siding which they later painted with cheap latex paint in a popular color known in the trade as “s**t brown. (I'm trying my best to be inoffensive here. It shows I care, right?) Add in a poorly built addition covered with the finest in puke yellow vinyl siding and you have the beginning of an idea of the horrors that had been visited on this home. I could go on, but suffice it to say that this was a home that was tailor made for a family of bikers who liked to do oil changes in the living room.

Now I live about 2 hours away from Haddon Heights and with a van that averaged about 12 miles per gallon a daily commute didn't seem like the most cost effective method for working this particular job. I decided to partner with “Steve” who lives in the Eastern part of Pennsylvania because I needed help on the job and I could stay with him and his wife during the week and travel with him to the job site every day. It was only a half hour commute and we could use his truck and save a ton of money.

Let me explain a little about “Steve.” First, the name has been changed to protect the innocent, namely me. It should be apparent why shortly. I first met “Steve” in 1999 after his release from prison. His mom had called me and told me that her son was getting out after 5 years and needed a job to meet the criteria for his parole. I've done this before and it's worked out pretty well. What I got on his first day on the job was a long-haired, bearded, pasty (apparently sun tanning is a no no in most prisons), highly aggressive young guy with huge prison muscles and an attitude. He looked kind of like an Italian hit man. All in all the first day was moderately tense. He wound up working for me for almost 4 years and became my almost adopted son. Underneath the tough veneer was a really great person. He was also a really talented carpenter and we had partnered a few jobs together. He fell in love and moved to a small town in Eastern Pennsylvania to cohabit with the love of his life. Gone was the young desperado, replaced by a fine upstanding citizen with a shaved head, seven earrings in one ear and more tattoos than the Illustrated Man. Still looked like an Italian hit man though.

So what does this all of this have to do with road rage? Well, it seems that “Steve” had channeled all of his aggression and love of fighting into one basic area: driving. In just a few short years he had crafted himself into the most pissed off driver ever to ply the highways and byways of the East Coast. I've heard rumors that there is someone even worse in Denver but until I'm furnished with proof I believe “Steve” holds the title of Road Rage King.

Now I'm not used to sitting in the passenger seat of any vehicle. I have extreme control issues that do not do well from the right hand side of any moving vehicle. I have an aversion to being killed by other people. I'd much rather do it myself.

Route 295 between his home and Haddon Heights is a major route for commuters working in Philadelphia. It is chock full of big trucks, motorcycles, half-awake commuters in their Mercedes and Lexi (that is the plural of Lexus, I think) and is constantly under major construction. Your tax dollars at work.

Picture this: 6:30 in the morning, 80 miles per hour, heavy traffic weaving in and out of four lanes, sometimes three. Lane changes and construction barriers everywhere. Truckers that have been driving for 48 hours straight. You are seated in the passenger seat next to a driver who is holding an Egg McMuffin in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other, steering with his knee, looking for a phone number in the pile of paperwork on the dash while his cell phone is pressed firmly in his ear. Screaming obscenities out the window and pausing every few minutes to deliver an invective filled lecture on the stupidity of the average American driver. And this is only practice for the ride home 10 hours later when exhaustion has set in and the Egg McMuffin has been replaced with a Big Mac.

30 minutes can seem like a lifetime. When your bladder is full, your hands are shaking, and there are clawmarks all over the upholstery the idea of becoming a Tibetan monk seems like the best idea you've ever had. Vows of poverty, silence and celibacy seem to make a world of sense. Within the first three miles you learn everything you ever wanted to know about prayer. You pray for things like an afterlife where bicycles and horses are the only modes of transportation. You have entered something worse than the worst the Twilight Zone ever offered.

Five to six days a week for seven months. Through rain, snow, ice and traffic jams. There aren't enough drugs or alcohol to even begin to arm oneself with the coping mechanisms needed. Somewhere around the third week there is a sanity shift. The mind numbs, the brain refuses to function. You begin to admire the extremely fashionable garb that hockey players wear. Hitch hiking begins to seem like a safe hobby to indulge in. And the $150.00 per week investment in Depends seems like a small price to pay.

I have never, to the best of my knowledge, passed anyone's criteria for normal. This experience pushed me so far over the edge that I'm not sure I'm ever coming back. After a few months road rage becomes contagious. You find yourself waking up at 2:00 in the morning thinking about the best semi-automatic weapons to arm a vehicle with and scouring the internet for new, more comprehensive profanity.

I'm beginning to calm, to mellow slightly. I no longer hide in the back seat when my wife drives us out to the grocery store. I no longer jump out of the car at red lights to allow the guy in the car behind us an opportunity to kick my ass. I rarely shoot my middle finger out at little old ladies that do really dumb stuff.

I am healing. I will be well someday. But probably not today.

Long live The King Of Road Rage. As long as I'm not in the passenger seat...............