I am a firm believer in improving infrastructure. I don't like the way they are handling it though (they being the govt. and their agencies). These "revitalization" projects re nothing but an excuse for in my case CalTrans to make a mess of the road I drive on for about 5 months now. There has been no improvement in the road unless you consider the new yellow lines. The road had it's share of small potholes, but they surely weren't large or dangerous. The parking lots of the few minor business establishments along the way have faired well though, since good ol CalTrans repaired the parking lots as well along the way. Basically "my" road (from mon-fri) is the same width and has new yellow lines, but I still have to take an extra 20-30 minutes to get to work because of it.

I have noticed that along with the road crews, I'm getting to deal with people that don't understand how their lights work in their vehicles. I have had a license for about 26 years, but I'm pretty sure I remember when to use all the lights and flashers in my vehicle. Ian at Daily Dose mentioned this particular topic not long ago in a post found here. He brought up a very good point, and I'd like to go a little further with it.

Fog lights are for FOG!!! They are not to make your 15 year old ugly ass car look cool. Here's a tip if you have 7 different colors of paint on your car, the fog lights aren't gonna tie all that together to make it Pop! If you are a big redneck with your huge lifted truck then fog lights get in my eyes with my regular size truck. By the way, yes I've been called a redneck a time or two and I'm not disagreeing with that. So from one good ol' boy to another, adjust your fog lights and use them WHEN IT'S FOGGY! They are not so that you can look like a big rig with a running light setup. If you can see 50-100 ft. fog lights are not required partner, trust me on this one. I really hate when a normal truck that has a 4 or 8" lift kit on it is running fog lights in the light haze of morning. It blinds you twice, because you can see through the lights and from distance that light just shines on the fog and you can't see through it.

Use your brakes more than 10 feet before you come to a stop sign if the weather is crappy. Many of the drivers behind you are looking at your lights as well as the road. Do us all a favor and brake early and often please! I encountered a bright young man on Thursday who decided that he was going to go from 50-0 in 2.6 seconds. Mind you the fog wasn't here, it was a slight drizzle at the time. He realized entirely too late that the constant drizzle was making the road a little slick. As he slid all the way through the stop sign and ended up on the other side of the road about 5 feet from an almond tree I'm sure his pea brain was starting to digest that information.
I pulled over and asked if he was ok, or if his car was stuck. He said he was fine, and just got distracted. I made sure he got out and he took off and guess what happened at the next stop sign about 1/2 mile up the road? Yep you guessed it he slid about 5 feet past that one as well. So I took down his license plate, cause I'm pretty sure I'm gonna read about this guy in the paper real soon. It will also not be a favorable article. I'm thinking something along the lines of "Unidentified man found in ditch trapped in his car."

I'm almost done preaching, but I have one more that is just driving me nuts. High beams are not meant to be used during dusk with oncoming traffic close to you. It's also not meant to be used if you are right behind somebody. To those of you traveling my road consider yourselves lucky that I don't carry a firearm in the vehicle. There are plenty of farmers out here that do. So if you get buckshot through your windshield, don't blame anybody but yourself. I will admit that I have on occassion turned on the high beams at oncoming cars who have theirs on as well. I think about it afterwards and realize that I'm gonna make them crash by blinding them.

Ok, my complaining is done for the morning. (well at least for this post.)

Monday I'm hopeful of bringing you 4 blogs that you haven't seen before...(Yeah I'm gonna raise your reading time a bit)