Today we're having Sara's family birthday party for my side of her family. We're going to Laurel Creek CA and barbequing up some meat, drinking some pop and watching her open some presents. Nothing big, but it's usually a fair amount of fun. Since I seem to leave everything to the last moment, I had to go out this morning to get the food, wrapping paper, and assorted other crap.

On the way to Dollarama, I was making a right onto Albert. The truck in front of me was tooling along at 30 km, so I moved left to pass -- in front of the woman about to jump past me. It was a clean, signalled move over -- I had lots of room. We both made the move at the same time. I didn't cut her off. This is important.

Anyway, I drive pretty fast normally if conditions are good. So I'm clocking it at 70 km/hr in a 60 zone. And this woman is right on my ass. I *hate* tailgaters, so I tap the brakes twice and make a back off wave with my hand. She starts screaming at me and comes up even closer. She's so close that I can see maybe a foot of her hood before the windshield in my rear-view mirror, forget headlights. I figure she's maybe a foot off my back bumper.

So I slow down to the limit. She's flipping out. Just as an aside, this is on a 4-lane street. She could have moved over right at any point and passed me. But no, she's on my rear bumper, screaming and flipping out. My turn comes up for Dollarama, I signal and check for her. She has turned into the previous entrance to the plaza. So I watch her roll up to Dollarama, incredulous. She gets out of her car, glares at me and continues throwing a fit and goes into the Dollar Store.

This woman was in such a massive rush that she was tailgating, speeding, flipping the fuck out, to get to a dollar store!

I wait in the car for a little bit so I calm down, I dislike scenes in stores, and in the mood I was in, I wanted one pretty bad. When I finally go in, she walks past me avoiding my eyes. What's with the bullies in their cars, who become cowards once they're faced with a human, not another car?

So that's today's driving moron update. It's so fucking bad that I thank the ground a good driver drives on when I see them. There's the guy that "pretended" to rear end me when I tapped my brakes at him in Cambridge. I'm serious. This guy got so pissed off that I told him to back the fuck off my ass, that he would slow down then accelerate to the verge of rear-ending me, then slam on the brakes and do it again. Then the one that honked at me for stopping at a red light after tailgating me the entire way down University.

People, I'm not a slow driver. I'm not even a hesitant one. If anything, I drive too fast, I take turns way too aggressively; I like the feeling of power and speed. What I don't do is drive at the cost of the people around me.

Because whenever I get behind the wheel I do so with the full and utter knowledge that I am in control of over a ton of steel. A ton of steel that if for whatever reason I lose control of, I am lucky if I just seriously injure someone. I am lucky beyond imagining if the person I hit walks away. But I can't count on luck. I can count on killing someone. Taking away a future, taking away someone somebody loves, taking away something vastly more important than anything I have to do. I remember this every single time I get behind the wheel.

And if you don't, you shouldn't drive. Period.