Experiment - Day 2

I have discovered that I am physically incapable of going 55mph on a highway. I can handle 60, but 55 is just plain out of my reach. Which is fine, I guess, since it seems like the rest of the metro area has the same disease.

Anyway, my second full day of trying to drive the speed limit was a relative success, if you don't count my morning commute (I got up 5 whole minutes earlier but still wasn't able to leave in time to go such a leisurely speed). While I did drive 60 in a 55 (hey, baby steps, OK? That's enormous, considering that lately I've been going 70 in that stretch of highway...), I still drove a portion of my commute home in the RIGHT LANE! Yes, I drove in the right lane. It was...an experience. So that's what it looks like on that side of the road! Of course, that was just a small stretch, since it was a commute and at this time of day even the left lane doesn't go the speed limit most of the time. OK, so maybe I'm cheating a little by relying on slow traffic to keep me slow. But I drove slow when I had to run errands over lunch, and traffic wasn't slow then, and it's not like I don't have stretches where I'm going against traffic, so there! :o)

I have discovered, however, that focusing so much on actually maintaining the speed limit occupies me enough that I don't have time to get impatient at how slow I'm going, so there's hope yet. And, to illustrate just how serious I am in this experiment, there was one point where I was actually the poor schmuck driving all alone in the right light (literally - there were no cars in front or behind me for quite some space) while everybody else flew by me on the left. That was extremely hard to do, because, being one of the people who normally does the flying by, I knew just what all of those drivers were thinking of me. Oh well, let's just call it penance for my sins.

And in a related topic, I remembered one other group who sits squarely on my jihad list: gas stations. For the second time in a row gas prices jumped 10 cents the day I had to get gas. If the pattern continues, prices will once again drop about 2 days from now, when my gas tank is still above half full. Just more proof that the forces of the world are against me. Either that or proof of my stupidity for not getting gas whenever the prices fall below $2.80. I prefer to blame the world in this case...