Who's going to drive you home?

Being the USA, everything is based on the car. Need to buy a pint of milk? Drive to the shops? Need to borrow some sugar? Drive to your next door neighbour. Need to go out for the evening? Drive to the pub, get hammered and still drive home. That being the case, you would have thought that everything was designed to make driving as simple as possible.

Hell no.

They've done the first half. It's virtually impossible to walk anywhere, because they've removed all the 'sidewalks', meaning you have to take your life into your own hands to walk along either the (hard) shoulder or - worse - along the side of the road with no space to protect you from the traffic. But they haven't done the key part of making the roads work. Clearly, they have a large number of roads. And some of them are massive. To get from here to Newark airport, I can take a six-lane behemoth (for a mere $2.05 in tolls) [or I can take a 2/3 lane highway, with frequent stops for traffic lights and a very high possibility of not moving very far for a very long time]. But, significantly, these roads are holier than the Vatican, or are so badly constructed that the camber virtually catapults you off the ramp and into oblivion. Whether this is just through chronic underfunding (likely), or a more sinister cartel agreement by the garages and spare parts providers (*sucks air through teeth* "Your suspension has gone, and your wheel is bent. It's going to cost you..."), has yet to be determined.

But worse than the quality of the road is the quality of the drivers. With all the miles under their collective (oversized) belts, you would expect them to have picked up some of the basics, but no. The key issues appear to be driving straight and turning corners. And also awareness. It seems that few people have any concept about the size of their cars. In fact, almost all seem to think that their massively corpulent cars are, in fact, twice the enormous width that they already are. Thus, when they are driving down a road without central markings, they will have a tendency to drive straight down the middle, or - if they are overtaking a parked car - somewhere between the wrong side of the road and the adjacent front yard (if there was a pavement, they'd be mounting that).

This perceived car size doubles when they have to turn a corner. Honestly, the way some people (especially in SUVs) take a 90 degree turn (often at traffic lights) you'd think they had just come back from their jobs as supertanker captains and hadn't yet switched off. Occasionally, when they have to squeeze through a space only three times the size of their car, they will stop completely. You can almost hear the cogs whirring, and you have expect them to start backing up. I find the best way to counter that is by holding your horn while shouting outrageous abuse at them. They look put out, but miraculously find that they can actually get their vehicle round in the space.

At least these two issues of stupidity can be highlighted to the perpetrator through effective use of honking and swearing. Unfortunately, the most pernicious failure of driving skill is unlikely to give you a chance to warn other road users. It appears that the perceived size of a car is inversely proportional to your speed. Such that, when travelling at 65 mph, your car can fit into a space less than 5 feet long. So confident of this are most drivers that they don't even bother to check before they change lane. In fact, the breathtaking ignorance and selfishness is something to behold. And because nobody knows how to drive, everybody drives within about 3 inches of each other. It's fearful, but a good chance to practice defensive driving. I dread to think how bad it will be when the winter and ice kicks in.

Why so bad? Well, it turns out that the driving test is only slightly more advanced than a child's learning toy (note: this does not apply to the theory test, which is difficult owing to the inane precision required to answer some of the questions, requiring proper revision. Yes, I did fail it the first time. By one question). Seriously, the driving test consists of: starting the car; driving around some cones in a car park; reverse parking using cones in a car park (with a very big margin of error); doing a 3-point turn in a car park. But here's the twist: somewhere during this drive around a car park, there is a stop sign that you have to stop at. And that's it. No testing of your road awareness. No concept of being able to control the car when other vehicles are near you. None... No wonder the level of driving skill is so poor. And the death rate so high.

I was going to discuss my long drive to Boston and back for the weekend, but the rant kind of took over. That will follow another time. If I don't crash before then...

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Making The Stone Roses seem prolific

OK, so it's taken me a while to get my arse into gear and blogging again. But now, following the sad, whimpering demise of my previous computer (with the loss of the hard drive, it appears. Fortunately, I had backed up most things prior to September, but not those things you forget about, like bookmarks. So, remember, kids, back-up often), I have bought myself a laptop that (i) isn't larger than an IBM mainframe; (ii) doesn't keep the block awake when the fan is running (i.e. all the time); and (iii) can actually process more than zero things at any one time. So this, combined with the fact that I'm living abroad and dammit you want to hear about my adventures (and I'm going to be better disciplined...), means I will write often. But still keep it interesting, of course.

So, what do I have to tell you about? Well, I'll feedback on the enjoyable stupidity of Vegas, driving up to Boston for a weekend, trying not to spend any money at all yet still vaguely have a life, but more interesting things should be happening soon. It all kicks off in two weeks, when my visitors start arriving (all women, all coming just before Christmas. Hmmmm. Ever feel like you're being used? Still, I provide free lodging, they can damn well buy some beer...). Until then, I'll let you catch up on all the interesting (sic) things I've done recently.

This week, of course, I have spent an inordinate number of hours trying to connect to the internet, which - thanks to Vista - is like trying to herd smoke. Still, it's better than having a Mac. I've also played football inside what appeared to be a massive bubble. And split my ear open playing football on the more traditional concept of a pitch (or field, as it's known here). Which is all very dull. There was also some election or other, which was all very predictable (with the added caveat that I still thought the dumb public here would fail to get it right. Again. But anyone voting for Palin deserves to be hit around the head with a brick until they see the error of their ways.

And with that, more news soon.