With an election looming, we’re hearing a lot about questions we think about every day. Whoa nelly… I knew that little bottle with a child proof cap wasn’t a single serving bottle of Kool-Aid. (They’re making it really thick these days, eh?)

O.K., so we’re not hearing a lot about day-to-day, nuts and bolts, regular life stuff. This is where I come in…. This afternoon I was thinking about such a question. How do you pick the best lane in traffic? I’m not a terrible driver. I don’t change lanes on a whim. I don’t believe passing cars in an adjacent lane automatically gives me exclusive right-of-way, in all directions. However, when opportunity presents itself I’m not above a bit of traffic speculating; and acting on the outcome of this mental exercise.

So I was pulling out of my office and immediately got my freak on; I was turning on to US 19 and there was NO oncoming traffic. I was like a kid coming out of the candy store, with a bag of empty wrappers, a five speed manual transmission, and right foot with an itch that needed scratching. That’s right, I’ve got your “vroom-vroom” rie-cheer baby! (Author’s note: “rie” rhymes with “pie.” I point that out just in case you can’t find the phonetic spelling in the dictionary.)

With this unprecedented room to maneuver and a red light on the horizon I had a big decision to make. Do I get behind the dump truck, the city bus, or the light-truck/commercial vehicle? “Alex, I’ll take ‘light commercial vehicles’ for 500 yards please.”

The dump truck was a no-brainer, particularly with its middle wheel touching the ground. We all know what that means: it was leaning towards the dump on the fill-dump cycle. It also means it’s doing the quarter mile in nine minutes, so it’s a poor choice to follow. A city bus can be tricky. If it makes a stop it feels like you’ve died and gone to driver’s hell. On the other hand, you get yourself behind some bus driver that’s good and pissed from being cut off all day… you can make some pretty decent time. Alas, those guys seem a bit rare around these parts, so the odds say, “Bye-bye bus.” That leaves the light-truck/commercial vehicle, which in some circles is referred to as a “pick-up truck.” In my experience these are some of the worst drivers (behind cops and the occasional probation officer), so naturally they are the perfect candidates to keep in front of you (if you can keep them in sight that long).

So I picked the pick-up; and if you are a regular reader you know that the dump truck won the race. (The one that no one else knew was happening but me.)