The pet peeve thread

[gehringer_2]

6 hours ago, chasfh said:

I am constantly astounded by how other people seem to have no clue about effective and efficient driving techniques that are like second nature to me.

If you think about it, why would they?  Nobody teaches anyone to drive at anything more than the minimum level. Driver's ed schools are far more interested in getting their students licensed a easily as possible than undertaking any of the cost or risk associated with actually teaching them to drive well. Unless you had a parent who demanded you learn to do more than the absolute minimum behind the wheel, or grew up in a teenage performance car sub cohort (increasingly rare) where you self taught some higher level of car handling, or even more rarely got sent to a higher level driving school by your employer,  I don't know that one can fairly expect the average American driver to be better.

[LaceyLou]

16 hours ago, Motor City Sonics said:

 

I had a big bump on the back of my heel.   It became painful to wear shoes.   Dress shoes were impossible to wear.  

What they have to do is grind it away.  They do that by detaching the achilles tendon, grinding the bump away and then re-attaching the achilles.  They also took a small piece of the tendon on my big toe and stitched it to my achilles to lengthen it a bit.  But after that I could not put any weight on that foot for 2 1/2 months.    I really don't want to go through that again, but I am going to have to at some point.   

Knee Scooters Rule !    It was cheaper to actually buy one than to rent one, so I own it.   Wanna borrow it?   You in Michigan? 

Thanks! I have a knee scooter left over from the last time. I'm in Boston, actually. 

Something tells me you'll need it yourself soon. Good luck-that sounds way more complicated than mine. I actually watched one done on a video before going through it.

[Screwball]

11 hours ago, chasfh said:

I learned early on that the closer I followed them when they do that, the more likely one guy will slow down to the slower guy’s pace, and occasionally, they would both slow down to the 45 minimum, just for jollies, I assume. 

Driving... By the way, you did a drive from the coast back to Chicago. I expected a full report. 🙂 I'll bet there are some driving stories in there somewhere.

Don't we all crazy driving stories? It's crazy out there. I think about all the places I drove. Which one was the worse? I don't know. LAX area from Ventura on a Friday afternoon (took all afternoon and then some), or Boston downtown during the big dig.

If I had to pick one it would have to be the Craig bridge in Toledo, Ohio, route 280 north to the I-75 split. Big old ugly drawbridge with steel grated road surface that needed fixed 8 of the 10 years I drove across it - one lane of course - you can only imagine. Every summer it began - so did Mad Max. Then a big boat would come through and it wouldn't go down. They could be lined up to the Michigan line.

[gehringer_2]

2 hours ago, Screwball said:

If I had to pick one it would have to be the Craig bridge in Toledo, Ohio, route 280 north to the I-75 split. Big old ugly drawbridge with steel grated road surface that needed fixed 8 of the 10 years I drove across it - one lane of course - you can only imagine. Every summer it began - so did Mad Max. Then a big boat would come through and it wouldn't go down. They could be lined up to the Michigan line.

I'd only been commuting to Toledo for a short time when the shipping traffic stopped and the bridge was pretty much always down - so watched the new bridge go up behind schedule, overbudget, and with a major construction collapse disaster with few worker deaths added in, I remember they built a cement/fab plant a bit to the east of the bridge site where they cast the sections. I don't remember what I use to have to go over there for, but if you got stuck behind one of the ~30 axle flatbeds they used for moving the sections to the river you might as well have your lunch.

Edited 1 hour ago by gehringer_2