[COBALT]

I had some jack-ass do this to me on Saturday.

I was on my way home, and took 80th/85th from I-5 in north Seattle. You end up on 75th, and there's a stretch of residential street I HATE to drive on between Rosevelt and 25th. The streets are in crappy shape, so I'm bouncing all over the place, and there's a couple of stop lights going down hill. I've seen a few rear-end collisions on these hills when it's been wet out.

Well the street is actually wide enough for two lanes, but thanks to someone's briliant planning they allow people to park in the right lane. It's a disease that's all over Seattle.

Anyway people get all impatient since cars sometimes decide to flip on their left turn signal and snag cars behind them, so people dash out in that right lane to go around people if no cars are parked there.

The problem with this is there's ALWAYS a car parked in the right lane just when you crest the next hill, and the cars that do perform this daring move suddenly want to merge left to avoid hitting the parked car.

I pull away from this light on Saturday, and this guy in his Ford SUV doesn't want to be behind me, so he goes in the right lane. Now he's driving next to me. We crest the hill and here's a red light, and a car parked on the right directly in his path past the light. Instead of slowing down he guns it to get ahead of me, and then throws his rig in front of me before slamming on his brakes for the light.

This is down hill at a red light, and this guy just cut me off. Not only that but he stopped short. I had to lock up all four drums to keep from hitting him, and I made a terrible racket with the back of the truck bouncing all over the place and all four wheels dragging.

Then he has the balls to look in his side mirror at me like I'm crazy for *almost* hitting him! I couldn't help it. I flipped him off and mouthed ASSHOLE at him. I was so goddamn pissed.

I couldn't help but think what would have happened if I hit him. He'd blame me, and since it was a rear-end collision it would have been my fault. Even if I explained the circumstances to the cops I would have been screwed.

Even though I missed him I was completely shaken up. I missed him by inches, and could have totaled my truck.

And it was for absolutely NOTHING. He was an impatient ass, and tried to shave 3 seconds off of his driving time by risking everyone on the road.