Road Rage 101

i had an interesting experience on saturday. i guess you could say it was my first "in your face" road rage experience..... and it was definately interesting.
I had my mom's car for the week, because they've been on vacation in wisconsin. so i headed up to lancaster to visit. on saturday it was time to leave and head back down to virginia. i had to take some local roads to get to the highway. most of you won't know the names, but i'll say them anyway.

i was on route 30, heading west toward lancaster, but didn't want to wait behind all the tourist traffic, so i decided to take 896 to 340 and go around it. i turned onto 896 thinking, "now it'll go faster." the problem was that the guy in front of me was going 10 mph under the speed limit, so we were going 35 in a 45. needless to say, i was annoyed. i road his tail to make him go faster, but that didn't help. so half a mile later when no traffic was coming towards us, i passed him illegally. yeah........... not the best decision, but oh well.

i had to stop at the light at 340. i stopped right at the line and the guy slithered passed me illegally on the right and pulled up, half crooked, in front of me. yelling as he did. he stuck his head out the window and started ranting about my driving. something like "what do you think you're doing, you a$$hole!!!!!" i half yelled back that he was going 10 under the speed limit, but figured it wouldn't help him grasp how important it was for me to pass him. so he yelled the same thing again, and i responded again.

this is where it got more interesting. so now this guy is getting riled up. at this point, he gets out of his car and starts walking back towards me like he's gonna give me a good talking-to. i'm sitting in my car with my window down. remember that i'm in my mom's car, with virginia plates. he starts yelling as he's coming towards me and then stops next to my window, continuing with his monologue. i'll see if i can recite it. something like "why don't you learn to drive, you redneck a$$hole!!! don't they teach you how to drive down there in virginia?!!! what the hell were you tihnking?!!!"

that's the general gist of it, just repeated several times for effect. he didn't have alot of deep, meanlingful things to say. i pretty much just sat there calmly, half listening, just hoping he wouldn't flip and reach in the window. that would have been an interesting story though. i just repeated that he was going 10 under, that i wasn't a redneck or from virginia. i really wanted to add that he only had half his teeth and looked more like the redneck, but that wouldn't have helped the situation, would it?

he finally gave up after a couple minutes and went back to his car. he drove left, so i had to drive behind him again. not fun. so i decided to take the next right and take a back way to the next exit.

so what have we learned? only pass illegally when it's clear that there's no stop light coming up where the person that you passed can confront you. sound about right? or am i missing some deeper message here?