CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE VEHICLE KIND

I sure haven't posted very often lately, have I. I am here, and I am fine, just haven't had much to say that was bloggable!

I should say that I am fine, only by the grace of God. I think I've had four or five close calls in my truck within the past three days. Two of them really shook me up.

Two nights ago I was in town, driving down the main street that is lined with the strip malls, the restaurants, fast food joints, banks and gas stations. There is only limited access to those businesses. The majority of those places can only be entered from the side streets, the frontage road or the parking lots that run on the other side of the businesses. There is a concrete median between the two and three lanes that are running in each direction. The medians have street lights and stop lights at the intersections, so they are very clearly marked, very visible. I was heading to the west, in the left lane, when I saw a small red car coming right at me in my lane. This young woman should have been heading east on the other side of the median, but she was in my lane, heading the wrong direction. I looked to the right to see if I could pull over, but there was a big SUV right next to me. Fortunately he saw the red car and quickly speeded up, allowing me room to slip in between him and the car following him. We were all safe, no one even touched, but I'm guessing that several of us had pounding hearts! The cars behind me were able to slam on their brakes and avoid hitting her, too. The driver was a young woman, probably no more than twenty years old, and when she realized what she had done she threw her hands up in front of her face. At least she must have put her foot on the brake too, because she did come to a stop, and the traffic that had all come to a screeching halt for her, waited until she turned around and headed the other direction. However, if she would have come straight at me and we would have hit, she would have gotten the worst of the deal. My big Ford 350 diesel truck would have been all over her cute little red car!

Then this morning, as I was leaving Sam's Club, and again driving where I was supposed to be, going the right direction in a lane across the empty parking lot, a car headed cross ways across the lot, heading right for my door. This time it was an older woman, probably 75 or more, looking straight ahead, fists locked on the steering wheel, and pedal to the metal! I thought she'd T-bone me, but at the last second she made a sharp turn and swerved right in front of me, then slammed on her brakes at the stop sign before again flooring it to cut in front of an oncoming car on the side street.

There were a couple of other incidents the past few days too, and I'm feeling like I should stay off the streets for awhile until things calm down. These folk have had too much Halloween candy, I guess.