Texans Can't Drive. Nor Can They Walk.

OLD sign outside Hondo, TX

A very good friend of mine (who has driven the length and breadth of the country) once told me that Texas has the worst road and highway system he has ever seen.  He particularly despises access roads, which apparently don't exist in other states.  Personally, I think they rock.  They let cowardly (or drunken) drivers like I used to be (cowardly, not drunken) get from point A to point B (and possibly C should one make an incorrect turn) with as little interstate stress as possible.  It took driving around Nashville for eight years to break me of said cowardice.  So maybe that’s the reason we Texans can’t seem to drive worth a crap: the state has given us a substandard system upon which to practice. 

Access Roads are on the far right and left

Now, I’m the first to admit my disinterest in and therefore lack of superior expertise in driving.  I do what I must to take care of travelling business and leave the rest up to the bus, taxi, limo, horse-drawn buggy, any motorized farm implement you can think of, and airplane system.  Nothing would please me more than to spend the rest of my life letting someone else drive me around so I can enjoy the scenery and a good daydream.  Even ugly scenery can be pretty scenery once you get to sit still and actually study it whilst breezing wistfully by in your air-conditioned/heated vehicle that someone else is driving…but not the drivers on the road with me today!  Today was absolutely the day I should’ve stayed home and protected myself from the fiendish, road-hogging, speed-demoning Texans intent upon murdering me at 60 m.p.h.

I was only trying to get to work on time and was following my routine of circling under an overpass to get onto the loop that runs through town (what there is of it).  My lane has the right of way, and the people exiting directly off the overpass from the opposite direction are supposed to yield.  Well, apparently Redneck in the White Pickup Truck didn’t think so because he came barreling off the overpass, slowed down briefly when he glanced in my direction, waited until I’d started speeding up to take my proper right-of-way place, then floored the accelerator and began immediately moving into my lane without even looking at the girl steering madly and defensively onto the very-rocky shoulder of the road.  I sat there while several cars passed before I could get back onto the access road then onto the loop, all the while watching Redneck in the White Pickup Truck blazing a lightspeed-breaking trail toward the Austin exit.  During the final ten or so minutes of my journey work-ward I was praying madly that there would be no flat tires by the time I hike the six miles from our building back out to my car come 4:53. 

Upon nearly reaching work, a person in the lane to my left swerved over directly in front of me at the last possible second before collision should be sounded (aoooooga, aooooga!).  By now I was CONVINCED of my impending death and overly-cautiously made my way up the hill, into the parking lot, and into an empty space the aforementioned six miles from my building’s entrance.  Braving the evil-plotting starlings collaborating on a power line, pockmarks, cracks, and three-foot-deep potholes scattered o’er the aging asphalt, I successfully maneuvered myself inside only to nearly collide with ten people before reaching the elevators…and we’re not talking crowded halls, people, we’re talking folks who walk as skillfully as they drive!  You practically need a turn signal (not that anyone here uses them) to get around corners without running into nursing students in deep conversation about when their next salon appointment is (and they all have the same friggin’ hairstyle anyway), guys pushing AND pulling huge carts of heaven knows what manner of smelliness, patients being taken to and from wards on giant wheeled beds (I feel so sorry for these people!  I would hate for everybody we passed to see me in such a state), guys of dubious employment staring you up and down like you were a pile of hot wings covered in Cowboys season tickets, and women of dubious employment staring you up and down for I don’t know WHAT reason.  Did I forget to check my nose for boogers??

I fully expect to walk outside this afternoon and be offed by a Smart car.