I was having trouble with the motorists. On my way home from South Bend, traveling down US 31 I was trying to maximize my speed, to get back as soon as possible. There was a car that just wasn't going to let me pass. Gaining on him steadily I'd take the left lane and then there we'd sit, going exactly the same speed with me just barely behind. My truck is governed so I couldn't go any faster. My only option was to move back over into the granny lane which can be tricky if other cars have moved up behind us. Pissed off at me for taking up the hammer lane they'll line up behind the car that I was trying to pass giving me nowhere to go. I'd then have to slow way down and let things clear out to my right and then get over, which isn't so bad, I'd have to slow down anyway or I'd have been way to close to that other car.
So I slowed way down, put a lot of space between me the guy I was trying to pass, then resummed cruise control at my top speed hoping that the other guy would keep his speed up. Not so; I'd gain on him steadily and then when I tried to pass he sped up again. I tried several times. Sometimes I think people do that unconsciously and when you demonstrate to them that you are going faster than they really care to go they'll let you by. Not this guy. I don't know whether he was being stupid or malicious, but he obviously wasn't going to let me by.
I could have just stayed out there in the hammer lane and perhaps he would have eventually relented, but then I would have held up traffic behind us and there's no telling if it would have even worked. Or I might have been able to keep up my speed by tailgating the jerk. Every time that I'd try to pass I'd think, “What, you want me on your ass?” But besides being rude that would be extremely dangerous; not that there aren't thousands of truck drivers out there who would be happy to take either of those options, regardless of the possible consequences. No, I eventually dropped back and reset my cruise control to a slower speed. No biggie.
Taking off from a stoplight my enemy was able to get far enough ahead of me that I wasn't going to have to worry about him for awhile and stepped up my speed again. I was empty and could take off fairly quickly, but still had to run through the gears, much slower than a car from a dead stop. I was quicker than a loaded truck, though, and passed one who had been at the light ahead of me as he struggled to gain speed. Further down the road I looked in my mirror and saw the truck gaining on me. As he pulled into the passing lane I turned off the cruise and slowed, to help him get by me. I just can't understand these guys who make a passing truck work for every inch. I, for one, don't want to drive along with another truck a few feet to my left.
I kept off of it until enough space had opened between us for a comfortable following distance and then resumed my speed. I'll be damned if the truck wasn't now going slower than I was before he'd passed me. I've seen it before, but I still find it hard to believe. You have to understand that besides the childish ego need to be first that seems to animate many drivers, of all stripes, in the trucking industry the company that I work for is known as one of the slowest on the road. Everyone else feels that they have to be in front of a company truck, no matter the cost or the circumstances; the conditioned response in what I term “Pavlov's Drivers.” One failed attempt to try to re-pass this guy was sufficient to tell me that I never would. I dropped back and “took my place” behind him. Again, no biggie, it was only a matter of minutes that I'd have saved, and one ill timed stop light could easily erase those gains anyway.
A little later down the road there seemed to be something gumming up the traffic. It could be that my new nemesis had caught up to the old, though if so why the big truck didn't use the extra speed that he did have, that I only wished that I'd had, to pull away I don't know. I don't honestly know what the problem was but traffic was being held up and I found myself in the midst of a pack of impatient cars, one of my least favorite places to be.
I was trying to maintain my space cushion and wishing that things would clear up when I noticed a bird winging its way toward the highway from off the shoulder. It was a medium sized bird, about the size of a crow, but more slender, and dark but not black. Its shape was unique, though I couldn't identify it at the oblique angle from which I was seeing it. It flew into the open space in front of me and proceeded to continue down the highway as if it were another car in line. I could see then that it was some kind of a duck. It kept flapping its wings and heading down the highway.
It was going fast, but not fast enough for traffic. I thought at first that as I drew near it would swerve away but it didn't. It just kept right on following the road in front of me and I realized that if I wasn't going to hit it I'd have to slow down. So I did and traffic passed us by leaving us alone on the highway. Still it continued down the road, constantly varying its position, sometimes high, above my line of sight, sometimes low, just above its own shadow on the pavement; sometimes over on the median or back again to the shoulder but every time that I thought I might get past it it'd veer back over in front of me again. I was amazed at how fast those little wings were carrying it. I clocked it between 50 and 55 mph.
This went on for several miles. Whenever another car would pass I'd try to see if the occupants noticed this odd creature, but I couldn't tell if any did or not. No one slowed down to look in any case. Finally, just before we got to the Eel river my pilot bird veered off to the right. I wasn't able to distinguish any unique markings from behind so I tried to get a good look at the bird as I passed. All I could quickly identify were two white stripes along the bottom of the wing though. Looking at Peterson's Field Guide that would make it a Mallard, but I'm sure it wasn't. I'd have recognized a Mallard and this bird was larger than any Mallard I've seen before. Perhaps it was a Merganser? I'll probably never know, but it was a strange and wonderful event. After my traveling companion left me I was free of traffic until I got to Kokomo, so I owe it a debt of gratitude for that too.
(It was a female Mallard, duh. Ms Jonathan Livingston Duck. The best theory to date is that she was riding the compression wave in front of my truck. 6/5/10)
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