How most people look after walking down Whidbey roads a few times.
I am the one who watches, and winces.
Again, and again.
Being without a vehicle, I have to make important decisions now like, if I want one thing from Prairie Center, do I want to walk across the prairie, seemingly uphill both ways?
Or do I want to give up two hours to ride the bus, and only walk part of that journey from the bus stop back to my street?
Suddenly maybe I don’t want that one thing all that much…
Let me be really clear here — Island Transit, with its free fares and friendly (and quick-thinking) drivers is awesome.
The rest of you people out there driving on our Whidbey roads … maybe not so much.
As I bounce along on the bus, sit on the side of a highway waiting for the bus, or walk on the side of the road to that bus stop in the first place, I’ve come to notice things I probably didn’t before.
Which is about 96.3 percent of you need to go back to driver’s ed.
How many times can some moron, seeing a rather LARGE bus roaring down a hill at full steam towards them, suddenly decide to pull out in front of said bus while doing a leisurely seven miles an hour?
Or even better, do that same move, and then immediately hit their brakes as soon as one wheel touches the open road?
There are days where I almost wish our bus drivers weren’t as skilled as they seem to be, and just body-checked a Hyundai or two into a nearby open field.
No death or bodily harm required, just a little bent steel (or plastic) and a wake-up to morons everywhere. Let the frickin’ bus go by, you wankers.
And it’s not just the open roads, as one moron, seeing a LARGE bus ambling down the backside of Broadway, continued to back out of their driveway anyway and came within 1.3 inches of smacking into the side of the LARGE vehicle occupying all of the road.
On the side where I was sitting.
Now, of course, being out on the highway is where most of the stupidity happens.
Welcome to Sherman Road, where morons go to do their business.
Coming from Whales Run Place, just up the hill, I’m either hoofing it across the highway, then walking down the Kettles trail, which would seem to be a safe haven — except where a car plowed through the fence a few weeks back — or cold staring down drivers living on the white line as I navigate the edge of the highway itself.
The last couple of days that has involved trying not to step on mounds of crushed glass left behind by a car crash.
How did that accident happen?
I’m willing to place 99.92 percent odds because of what I saw yesterday while I idled at the Sherman stop on the other side of the highway, waiting to go into town for a soccer game.
A UPS truck stopped to make a left hand turn, but, with oncoming traffic, a line of cars had to come to a stop before gunning it down towards Coupeville’s bustling business section.
Well, except for the moron in the truck four vehicles back, who either really needed to get to a bathroom or just wanted to shave three seconds off his commute and decided to try and lurch past everyone on the right side of the road.
Which means he went into Sherman Road and back out again — which I can tell you by personal experience will get you pulled over if you do something similar years ago up in Oak Harbor without noticing the cop sitting on your bumper…
Only thing is, this time, as Lightning McQueen and his Crapmobile 7000 came back out of Sherman, the UPS truck turned and the cars behind him surged forward.
Which required our Mensa candidate to have to mash the gas pedal and lurch wildly into the bus zone and back out just to not get knocked over the edge of the road, free-falling towards the waiting Kettles Trail.
Since this happened not that many feet away from me, minding my own business, I kinda hope if Lightning McQueen was ankling for the bathroom, he got a serious case of the Taco Bell Revenge and had to burn his pants once he got home.
That would be sweet, sweet poetic justice.
