Dean's Blog

Here is a quote from Richard Hammond, one of the hosts of my favourite television show of all time, Top Gear! (The real version shown on BBC in England, not the boring Americanized version)

“Now, this is really quite simple, ok? Understeer works like this: (moving a model of a Ford Focus) you drive down the road, turn the wheel, but the car goes straight on, crashes into a tree and you die. OVERsteer works like this: (moving a model of a BMW series 3) you drive down the same bit of road, turn the wheel, but the back of the car comes round like this (showing how the car does a 180), and you go off the road, crash into a tree and you die. Now, oversteer is best, because you don’t see the tree that kills you.”

That’s great! Anyhow, on to the part of my blog where I complain about something. As most Calgarians have probably come to realize by now, driving in Calgary is like driving in hell, only instead of endlessly burning to death but never dying from it, you’re stuck in endless construction zones sandwiched between a big SUV driven by some lipstick applying woman in pink, and a minivan that is being used as a house.

Then there is the invariable sign that says, left lane closed ahead. So, naturally I move over to the right lane, as to avoid the left lane, which is closed ahead. Did I mention it is closed ahead? I feel the need to repeatedly mention that the left lane is closed ahead because of the huge amount of morons who continue to drive in the left lane, right to the utmost final inch of space before they have to merge into the right lane of traffic which has been very happy until this lethargic latecomer from the left hand path came along. Not only that, but dozens of other morons have also piled up into the left lane, and now expect the ones who noticed that the lane was closed and had moved into the right lane, to now make room, so that they can merge in. As if we don’t know what you’re up to, flapping about like you should deserve to get ahead in traffic because you took the lane less travelled by. I’ll give them room near the sign that said left lane closed ahead, but if they are trying to merge after they had ample time and are now stuck at the barricade, then too bloody bad.