Award Tour Vol. 59: 45 minutes at a time

You know what I hate about my commute?

It isn't the 45 minutes of my life that I have to waste doing it (by the way that's 45 minutes one way in GOOD traffic - so if you hated it the first time - congratulations you get to do it all over again on your way home)

It's not the scarcity of exits on the interstate that I am mostly keenly reminded of at times when I have failed to:

a). gas up
b). use the bathroom

BEFORE I got on the road

It isn't the exorbitantly priced fuel, which seems to set a record high in price, as often as oil companies set record highs in profits. It isn't even the fact that I am resigned to my fate conceding that I must now "learn how to spin straw into gold" to pay for my fuel, while being told these companies that are setting record profits, need even MORE tax breaks, in order to build refineries the likes of which they had been consolidating and closing down since 1997 in order to produce the artificial shortage we experience now. Yeah I know - it's real tempting to think this is the one that p!sses me off the most - but it's not.

It's not the mild mannered Prius owner that suddenly forgets the refrain from the song "Give Peace a Chance" and turns into an "A$$ wing" the moment he gets into his car and decides, just before I pass him, that he'd like to get in on this "left hand lane" action, a left hand lane (I might add) that he sees no reason should be used for passing.

It isn't the dashboard of my car turning into a Christmas tree AFTER I come from the auto repair shop and lighting up warning signals that I'm still not convinced even apply to my car. No that doesn't bother me so much. I mean think about it: the lights just mean more money out of my pocket, and since I'm already spinning straw into Gold for gas, I've already got that one covered.

It isn't being snarled in traffic and watching a convoy of self absorbed drivers zoom by in the right hand lane passing a half dozen signs warning them to merge left because the lane will soon end. We all know they're trying to leap frog traffic - we all know that at the last possible second that same caravan is going to attempt to dart over and force it's way into any crevice or hole created by some group of inattentive driver who were slow to accelerate. And as this happens I will again (as I have done in the past) transform into Mel Gibson in "The Patriot" screaming "hold the line" from my position far in back - and like the Continental army of the aforementioned movie, they will fail to do so. So you see - this is not the part of my commute that I hate. You're saying to yourself, "man it's gotta be that" but no... it's not. With therapy and a strong support system, I can get past this. Really I can.

It's not the traffic jam that disappears and reforms only after I have safely passed the last convenient exit and am no way near the next one, it's not even the fact that jam on my side of the interstate is due to an accident on the OTHER side of the interstate and completely separate. I can forgive it all.

What I can't forgive is that I don't have the hovercraft that I so richly deserve, so I wouldn't have to deal with any of this in the first place. It is 2008. 2008. Back to the Future Part II takes place in 2015 - we've got exactly 7 years to get caught up to the Hollywood technology curve, and where are we? We don't have a hover-anything. Not one damn vehicle. No hover bike, no hover board, no hover nothing. I mean if they're trying to pass off this maglev/magnetic levitation train as a hover craft I'm not buying. Magnetic levitation might as well be just another way of saying "magic". There's no hover going on here. I mean look at this picture... can you see any space between the train and the ground?




No you can't. You know why? Because it's not hovering. This isn't the techonolgy that leads to Buck Rogers... this is the technology that Buck Rogers and his 25th Century compatriots would look at in an antiquity musuems and shake their heads wondering out loud, "man - how did we ever survive this dark era"?

And to that question I would answer: we survived it 45 minutes at a time.