Freeway driving

Since I've had to go up to Salt Lake every day for the past 2 weeks, I've had some fun watching the types of drivers that happen on the freeway. It is kind of entertaining. There is a bit of construction on the interstate, so there is time that I'm just sitting there watching other people in their cars.

1-The Granny:
The Granny is someone who--when the freeway is free and moving right along--is in the middle or the far left lane going below the speed limit. Grr. Drives me insane. I tend to go either right at or just above freeway speeds, but I stay with the flow of traffic. I just set my cruise control and go. These Grannies tend to mess a few things up in that regard. I have to cancel the cruise control and try to move around them, but that messes up the person behind me and so on. It would just be so much easier if the Granny would just stick to the far right lane where the speed tends to be slower anyway.

2-The Trucker:
I'm not talking about the big rigs. I'm talking about those 4x4s that mostly construction and farmers/ranchers use. The hauling trucks. These are those people who have those huge trucks and like to tailgate and try to intimidate you. Today I was traveling in the middle lane and there wasn't anyone in the other 2 lanes and this truck came right up behind me to the point that I couldn't see the front out of my side mirrors anymore and if I was to slam on my breaks, he would have come through my back windshield. I didn't move and he started to hold down the horn . . . there was no one in the other lanes! Move yourself! Geez. No, I didn't move and I didn't dare press my breaks. He ended up moving to the next lane, but he just sped up to the car in front of me and did the same thing again.

3-The Talker:
I cannot believe how many people I pass on the freeway talking on their cell phone and not paying attention to what is going on around them. There was this little yellow mazda-type car that didn't notice that the lanes had started to shift and just kept on talking and moved straight into me. It was a good thing that I was paying attention because she certainly wasn't. I had to slam my fist on the horn to get her to look up. And then she flipped me off! Ugg.

4-The Family Posters:
These are those people who have their entire family mapped out on their back windshield and they tend to have half of them in the car at the time. If I see this car again, I'm going to try to take a picture of their back windshield. This car is a surburban and the back windshield is completely covered along the bottom with members of their family.

There are a few others, but I'll leave that for another post.

But the class today hasn't been as bad as yesterday. Today they actually got into what I thought they would and they've been giving people time to actually ask questions that work with the class and giving us time to work on stuff and share techniques and lesson plans. I'm not a person who likes to follow a lesson plan. I will make an outline of what I need to touch on, but that tends to be it. I also ask the students what they'd like to learn and then try to add what I can into what I'm teaching. At least the students tend to pay attention a bit more because they are learning what they would like it instead of just what the state wants them to learn.

At least they are taking it a bit easier on the "forcefeeding" of programs today. I think she realized that most of us know how to use the programs that we are teaching and if there is a question, it will be asked, but she doesn't need to go over the program step by step. I've learned a few new tricks today, but I don't know if I will be able to use them because the district isn't going that direction with the software. They aren't using the software that the rest of the state tends to use. They are saving money by not buying it, so I don't know if they will upgrade or not. I hope they don't because there will just be another version coming out within a few years and the you have to buy the newer one. I think they are doing the right thing by waiting.

Well, my lunch break is over. Back to writing lesson plans. :rolls eyes: