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07/30/2004: "Here in my car..."

It seems like weekly I hear those from the suburbs talk about just how baaaadddd drivers are in Detroit. While I have seen people running reds (and wow, much of the time, it's those fine Detroit cops doing it!) and people going a lot faster than posted in residential areas, I have to wonder exactly how far out of their little suburb these people have been.

My level of bad is, well, Matamoros, Mexico drivers. Perhaps spending a formative time of my childhood in Brownsville wasn't great for determining what is a bad driver.

Somehow getting suckered into taking advice from some "questionable" suburbanite mothers on a mailing list I'm on, I decided to go further into the depths of hell to see the "better" Whole Foods store. It was traumatic enough going to the Troy location every few weeks for certain items unavailable elsewhere, but that level of trauma took a whole new level when I found myself in Rochester Hills.

The fact that Maquest lied in the amount of time it would take should have been my first indication. The "10 minute" difference between the Rochester Hills location and the Troy location turned into more like a half hour with the traffic nightmare that is Rochester Road.

After that little nightmare of a trip only to see that both locations of the overpriced grocery store are almost identical (pissed was an understatement of my emotions), I decided that if I ever befriend a shrink, I would need to purchase a lifetime therapy coupon to give to anyone who lived in the suburbs and talked about how bad Detroit drivers were.

Never have I see in such a short period of time more soccer moms who obviously could not handle driving their large SUV, people who either could not or did not care to park in a parking spot properly, people who failed to use their turn signal when cutting in front of a car, and people who actually seemed to SPEED UP when they saw an ambulance with lights and sirens was attempting to turn in front of them.

Detroit drivers seemed like little angels when I finally returned from my journey to hell.