Lament of the highway-woman

Might as well keep driving -- the Bear Left / January 2016 Deborah Lynch

It’s a big difficult to sit down and write an essay after a 6½-hour roadtrip, five hours of which were on interstates clogged with tractor-trailers and “campers,” so that’s today’s topic. Mile after winding mile behind a slow Chevypast kitschy shops of wood-carved wildlife statuesstrategically maneuvering tight streets of Troy, NY,almost two hours to the thruway. Then, the pace picks up, but it’s trickier,almost like a physics problemtiming moves into and out of the passing lanewithout tapping brakes to break cruise. A short school bus camouflaged in flat gray paintexcept over the letters S C H O O L   B U S“2 Cool For School” emblazoned on the side.Pony-tailed drivers chilling as I breeze by. A smile is short-lived before tractor-trailersbox me in, mile after mile after mile.When finally I can make a break for itanother awaits for an other-side reality check. Drivers of cars -- distracted, clueless, entitled?Guilty as the tractor-trailer journeymenmoving to the passing lane, then camping there.Traffic lines up behind, impatient to move on. Signage “Keep Right, Pass Left. It’s the Law.”Ineffective. Laws need enforcement.Instead, motorists mutter, swear, gesture,weave dangerously, sometimes worse. Road construction, both mismarked and accurate.Traffic slows to a simmering crawlThen – finally -- open road.Rain begins to pelt the windshield.