It’s been a while since I had an old-school driving rant, so here we go!
At least twice a week, I have a 40 minute drive to the train station to get to work. It involves a fair amount of twisty back roads, and other drivers who aren’t quite as alert or clear thinking at 5:30am.
Today I’m heading in, haven’t even left Warwick yet and I catch up to this red Subaru doing 35mph. It’s a 55mph zone. The fastest they went was about 40mph. There’s a truck behind me who is likely also wondering why we’re traveling so slowly.
So as we reach Route 94, I make a move I rarely do, as I’m trying to avoid being stuck behind a red Subaru all the way through to Sterling Forest, I hang a left on Hathorn Rd which is a decent shortcut even if you stick to the speed limit of 30mph.
The Subaru ends up going left, the truck ends up flooring it to get ahead of me, no big deal. I pull out and there was a white Ford work van (I love aggressive drivers in clearly labelled work vehicles!) who apparently floored it the moment they had a green light and was approaching rapidly from behind.
Now State Route 94 is 45mph in Warwick, it goes into a 30mph zone when you reach the village. I pulled out, hit 45mph, and had this jackasses headlights in my rear view within seconds. This pretty much continued straight through town (I’d already aimed my rear-view in a manner so it was out of sight, out of mind) and nearly into Sterling Forest.
I’ll admit part of it may have been my fault, as I did something I normally do NOT do, I flipped the jerk off the second they were on my rear bumper. 5:30am, not everyone is thinking clearly, old reflexes kick in, but still… Wet roads, you’re in a van tailgating a sport coupe… come on.
Upside, apparently if you hang a left onto Mountain Lake Road from 17A, continue onto Old Rt 17A, then hang a right onto Old Tuxedo Road, that completely loops around Greenwood Lake, avoiding the usual bottleneck that is Greenwood Lake and dumps you back out on 17A, hopefully ahead of the slowpokes.
A Kia Stinger took that route this morning and wound up a quarter mile ahead when they pulled back out onto 17A, I never saw the taillights again since I was sandwiched between a slowpoke and the aforementioned jerk in a work fan.
