King of the Road Goes to Queens

(A note regarding last week's column: I received an email from a reader who asked, "Did you actually write an entire column filled with dumb jokes about urinating?!"

I replied, "Oui, oui, Monsieur.")

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Recently, I drove with a few business friends to a Mets game. We had a great time, but driving from Connecticut to Westchester, through the Bronx, over the Whitestone Bridge, and onto the streets of Flushing, Queens — and then back again after the game — was quite an ordeal. When I finally got home I felt like I had just pitched a 15-inning complete game, except instead of one tired arm, both of my arms were beat from squeezing the steering wheel so tightly. Driving on crowded 3- and 4-lane highways, where cars routinely swerved across multiple lanes to get to an exit ramp, required relentless concentration. My brain was as exhausted as my arms.

Trying to keep my car from getting banged up required me to watch the road at every moment. I appointed the guy in the passenger seat as our official Navigator. I didn’t even want to take my eyes off the road to glance at the GPS display, so I told him to watch it and tell me when we needed to make a turn or get off an exit. I also told him to be on the lookout for wacky drivers, so I could steer clear of them. 

For two hours he offered the play-by-play of what was going on all around us. “OK, Bill,” he said at one point, “that green Toyota on our right doesn’t seem to have a driver. No wait, the guy was leaning over. Wow, that’s hard to do at 60 miles an hour. Oh, I see what he’s doing now. He’s got a sandwich. I guess he’s having lunch while he drives. Oh look — no, I mean, don’t look! — now he’s drinking something. Looks like a can of Budweiser. You might want to slow down, Bill, and let this guy get far ahead of us.”

A while later, my right-hand man said, “There’s a silver Buick coming up on our left, Bill. The driver is talking on her cell phone and drifting in and out of her lane. Hmm, it looks like she’s yelling. I think she’s having an argument. Oh yeah, she’s definitely having an argument because now she’s using her other hand to give her cell phone the finger. Hmm, she must be steering with her knees. If you can move one lane to our right and get away from her, Bill, that would be great.”

And that’s how it went for most of the trip. I was very tempted to look at some of the “characters” that were all around us, but with my luck, the moment I looked to the side, the driver in front of me would slam on his brakes. Then my car would end up in his back seat, and I would become one of the distracted “characters” that we were trying so hard to avoid.

When I finally got home, it dawned on me that during the ride to and from New York City, there had to be at least 1,000 different vehicles that spent some time either right in front of me or right behind me, or to my immediate left or right, all-the-while as we moved along at anywhere from 40 to 70 miles per hour. That means the fate of my car, whether it would get dented and scratched — or worse — was in the hands of 1,000 complete strangers, most of whom were driving distracted. 

I think it’s mathematically impossible that my car did NOT get dinged. This reminds me of a sign I saw: “A car’s weakest part is the nut holding the steering wheel.” 

The next time I go to a Mets game, I’m definitely taking the train.