East coast driving and son, DIL and grandchildren
bpost
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I drove to Farmington CT from Middleport OH last wed. It was a trip to see my now 2 month old grandson for the first time and his elder brother 2-1/2. Being one blessed by God above to see your children have kids of their own is a special gift that is indescribable, pure love times a trillion. It also brings back memories of raising my sons, the time, frustration, effort, COST and sleepless nights that infant humans cause us. They are little human beings totally dependent on some one else for everything keeping them alive.
My youngest, 35 YO is 6'5" 300 pounds of pure muscle, he works out every day. His wife is 4'11". His 2-1/2 year old is a monster, taking after his dad being about the size of a four year old. The youngest is at 65 percentile. It was amazing how the warmth from God flooded me when seeing him for the first time and getting him to smile just before he puked and loaded his diaper.
It was awesome feeding him, handing him back to mom or dad and awaiting the inventory reduction that comes with infants before it happens. I just smiled and thought back to when it was my turn at the diaper duty.
After driving about 1,750,000 miles in my life I must admit I am getting pretty good at it. Ohio is a very dangerous state to speed in, there are a lot of troopers, I see several every day shooting radar for speeders. I usually set the cruise control about 3-4 MPH over and have not been stopped since 1981.
In Maryland, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, not so much.
I was amazed how people ignore speed limit signs. I am not saying I felt unsafe but you dang well better get with the program and hammer the hell out of the right pedal. It was common for my entire round trip of 1200 miles to be doing 75-85 just keeping up with traffic. The mind blowing thing was the speed limits were 65 and sometimes 55. I was doing 82 in the Kia Soul in a 55 zone just maintaining safe distance and "going with the flow" in the middle lane. God knows what state I was in, they all run together over there. Twice I was passed by cops they were doing 90 or more. They did not care, they will bust you for aggressive driving according to my son but speeding is not an issue.
Several cars, usually big buck BMW's, Audi's and Mercedes came by at well over 90 some over 100. I even saw trucks running 85 on the flats 60 up the hill and God knows how fast down the hill. I can say for the most part the roads are super excellent. Of course that ends in West Virginia where a good road is utter junk, at best.
There is not enough money in the USA, world or universe that would get me to move to any city over 5,000, way to many people and insane taxes. Double that for either coast. Meigs county Ohio has 25,000 people in the entire county, that is enough for me.
Comments
I was down there on a business trip once in south Jersey and decided to drive up to Hoboken and get a coffee mug from that cake boss show bakery. I had rented a Chrysler 300 with a Hemi and was cruising up the GSP at a pretty respectable clip and cars were blowing past me on both sides. So I ran it up to 100 and set the cruise control. Made good time and nobody even gave me a 2nd look.
But man there are a lot of those puny little deer along the road. Skittish little buggers had me worried they'd kamikaze me.
It's not just the east coast bpost, try to drive I-465 around Indy at the 55 mph posted speed and you're blocking traffic. I go to SD often and that's a place where folks don't speed (much) on the interstate. 🙂
Years ago the media chastised the Superintendant of the NJ state Police when he admitted to speeding to & from work so he wouldn't hold up traffic.
glad the family is doing good and you made it there and back (and just had a underwear change LOL )
we just had our 1st grand kid and yes it flood of memories of up all hours any time of night and of course the holly cow what you eat kid 😁
I use to love to drive and I was the one normally doing well over the speed limit but not erratic just fast . when younger driving to me was like a huge race I had to be in front 😉 I also pick and chose when traffic was light to make the see how fast we can go runs .
honest now driving I am not so excited to hit the road speeders do not bother me , what I fear are the distracted drivers they scare the crap out of me, its a huge gamble any more you never know when they will cross lanes head on into you or cross the dividers run lights stop signs even hit you in the rear when traffic slows or stops . cell phones and such devises have killed way more than any guns in the USA ( that's just my personal guess based on the news and all the crashes reported not even counting the ones that go unreported by the local networks )
Last year, the mid-east states chalked up a record number of single car fatal accidents. Seems that with the pesky commuters off the roads, the would-be Indy drivers had the opportunity to see how fast their street racers would go. Many over estimated their driving skill.
Many of the morons are still with us. You can still hear them over taking you, with their straight pipes & glass packs; I guess that's no longer a motor vehicle violation, the police don't seem to want to pull them over. Be careful out there.
Neal