I still could not get my sister to change her mind about my new car, but like a lot of my friends told me, she does not have to drive it so no big deal. But the trip to my sister’s in Burley, Idaho was fun, and I enjoyed her company.
I left last Monday morning to Spokane and was not too terribly concerned about the traffic since I left just after 7:30. Traffic was not an issue and even in a couple of places where road construction had enforced speed limit zones.
No, most of the problems were with more than a fair share of truck drivers. There was a time not too long ago where truck drivers were very professional in their driving habits and skills, as well as their general attitudes that they had in their possession a forty-ton killing machine they had to control.
The first incident occurred after the rest stop outside Buell. The trucker for some unfathomable reason drove his tractor and trailer on the inside lane of I-84. Faster drivers, like me, were forced to move in the right lane to pass this truck.
After that there were no other issues until I was about five miles north of Ontario, Oregon. I was doing the posted seventy miles per hour speed limit when this trucker blew past me as though I was going fifty rather than seventy. He too was pulling a trailer and all I could figure was that he had to get somewhere fast. Not that a trucker should be bothered by a deadline.
As it turned out I ended up passing him later near the concrete plant at Concrete. I spotted this same truck driver. The caveat being a drenching downpour and then snow squall that made driving white knuckle scary to say the least. As I was ready to pass this driver, he engaged his left turn signal, I assumed to get into my lane. I had to honk my horn, and he stayed in his lane until I passed him.
Now this same driver, after getting off Dead Man’s pass, came barreling down the freeway again, passing me and everyone else as though we were bothersome slow pokes.
I wonder where the speed traps are these days. It used to be that such reckless behavior was not tolerated by state and highway patrol troopers. One friend of mine thought these drivers are not educated to be safe and responsible operators like they were back when I was in my twenties.
Jerry Schellhammer 