Dear Fellow Fast Lane Driver,

I think that you and I must have some misunderstanding. When I storm up behind you in the fast lane with my high beams flashing it is not me who is being rude, it is you. You see, the fast lane is there for a purpose, that purpose is to allow people moving faster than you to pass you. That is why there are often two other lanes on the freeway, so you have someplace to drive when you are not passing. Driving in the right-hand lane (slow lane) does not necessarily mean you are going slowly. It simply means that you are making up to two other lanes of traffic available for people who are going faster than you. That is a courtesy to everyone else on the road.

It shouldn’t matter whether you are doing 66 miles an hour and believe that is "fast enough" for everyone. It actually isn’t, hence my high beams flashing at you. Whether I desire to go 67 miles an hour or 97 miles an hour. That is none of your concern (if the police decide it is their concern, and they have on more than one occasion, I will happily take my lumps).

Driving in the slow lane, except when passing makes everything run more smoothly. I find it quite nutty when the slow lane has no traffic in it and people are backed up in the fast and the center lanes. This is obviously a breakdown of the system and shouldn’t be happening.

Driving in the center lane or fast lane is not a God-given right, this is why there are signs all along the road saying "Slower Traffic Must Keep Right." Yes, this means you, even if you are going 80. If there is nothing in front of you and you are going more slowly than I am you must move right. While I’m very pleased when you move to the center lane, It actually makes more sense to move all the way to right lane. This means that I can pass you in the center lane, and the guy going even faster than I am can pass me in the fast lane. See how well that works? You changed to the right-hand lane, and you not only allowed me by, thereby making me happy, you allowed me to allow someone by, thereby making them happy.

If you choose not to move over, I will likely choose to forget that my brights are on, and unlike a car, the brights on my motorcycle are retina searing. I’m sure you’ll try and teach me a lesson and slow down. The only problem with that is passing on the right is dangerous, because those smart enough to practice good lane discipline could be pulling back to the right, directly into my path. So if you slow down, I will likely just sit behind you, brights on and wait until you decide to stop being rude, or lazy, or arrogant, or whatever it is you are being and move to the right so I can pass safely.

I hope this clears up any confusion you may have had.

A few posts ago I spilled the beans that I had actually written some erotica. I'm sure you were all completely shocked by that confession. Of course I doubt there's anyone who enjoys putting pen to paper that hasn't attempted to create their own version of the erotic masterpiece (Anne Rice may be the most notable of said authors, though I'm wondering if she's feeling guilty about the Sleeping Beauty books now that she has returned to the faith she grew up in). Unfortunately for us, most of those writers are not Anne Rice and they should have found some other way to spend their time. There are huge volumes of dreadful erotica out there, not just regularly dreadful, but disturbingly, horrificly dreadful.

I have standards (even if they're not very high). I even have standards for smut, and it seems that many of the writers of smut have a firm grasp on something other than the English language. Here are three things guaranteed to make me stop reading any story.

That beautiful young woman you're about to ravage does not have a taunt body (unless of course her body has found a way to mock you). While her body is definitely not taunt, it may very well be taut.

A submissive girl is not looking for a Dominate male (or female for that matter, depending on how she swings). It's quite possible she is looking for someone to dominate her, that she wants to experience complete domination, and that she wants to be dominated over and over again. The correct person to accomplish those tasks would be a Dominant male (or female depending on how she swings).

Am I the only one who learned this last one in PE class in elementary school?

When you take that beautiful young woman with the taut body who wants you to be the Dominant in her life and toss her on/in the bed/couch/table/boat dock/back seat/hay/floor, and she looks up at you with vast quantities of lust in her eyes as she lays back, she is not lying prone, she is lying supine. If she were prone she'd be having a much more difficult time looking up at you with vast quantities of lust in her eyes, it's not impossible, mind you, but it would be more difficult.

I'm sure there are many more things that peeve me, but those are the three that most bug me. What makes you stop reading?

I don't get it. How does a tiny nail, with almost no head make it's way straight into the rear tire of my bike? I could maybe understand if it was one of those nails with a big broad head that actually had a hope of standing upright on an uneven street, but there's no way this nail was standing upright, yet there it was, buried in my rear tire. It was a thoughtful nail though, it didn't let all the air in one fell hissssss, in fact it let me get to the service station to put some air in the tire.

I worked at that station one summer when I was home from college (it's also starting point for a wonderful story about a naive little preacher's kid I'll share sometime), and I was surprised to find out that even all these years later the same gentleman owns it. He was a good employer, I'm glad he's done well. Disappointingly, the fact that I had worked there couldn't induce the pump jockeys on duty to plug the tire on my bike (I can't count the number of tires I plugged when I worked there). I shrugged it off, knowing the leak was slow enough I could get home safely.

I didn't have to ride much over the long weekend, and by Tuesday morning the tire was a bit low, but not scary low. I got up early (for me) and started calling around, no one would plug the tire on a bike, not even those experts in all things tire related at Les Schwab. I found myself a bit discouraged.

I am mechanically inept, not just slightly inept, but appallingly, horribly inept. I'm not sure why that is I just am, if it's mechanical I have an innate ability to make any problem worse, and far more difficult to fix than it originally was. I guess I'm just lucky that way. Plugging a tire is easy. I've done many of them, the result is usually a tire that is pretty much as good as it was before the puncture occurred. Well since it's such an easy job I decided to buy a plug kit and plug my tire myself.

I got to the auto parts store where the nice clerk quickly pointed me in the direction of what I needed. I shelled out my $4.99 for the kit (I'm trying not to think about the fact that my life may now be in the hands of a plug that was a part of a kit that cost a mere $4.99), walked out to my bike and adjusted it so I could see the nail. Sometimes nails are difficult to get out of a tire, but this one was very cooperative and it came out very easily. It was then that air started to hiss out of my tire, and I started to think maybe I'd made a small error in judgment. Having come that far, I had to continue. I got out the auger and reamed out the hole, giving the plug clean rubber to seal to. Of course, the new, improved, much larger hole leaked air even faster. It was then that I knew for certain I'd made an error in judgment. Moving as quickly as I could, I got the glue on the plug and the plug in the hole...of my now completely flat tire.

I sat back and sighed. I supposed I could go back inside and buy a can of fix-a-flat. The stuff does work, but it's also expensive and it was just before payday and being almost completely broke I didn't really want to incur that expense. I knew there was a mechanic a couple of blocks up the road, so I walked over and asked him if he'd let me use his air compressor. He was a very nice man and told me it wouldn't be a problem. I returned to my bike and pushed it (not an easy thing to do with a completely flat tire) along the sidewalk to the mechanic's.

His air compressor was very good and I had my tire filled to the correct pressure in no time. He let me borrow his sink to wash up and I was back on the road, lesson learned.

Don't plug a tire when you're nowhere near an air compressor.

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I've got to add a postscript. After I got to the mechanic's with my bike, he was on the phone and I had to wait for him to finish. On his counter was report binder, and in it he'd included customer letters. The thing that really impressed me was that he hadn't only included the positive ones. He'd included the negative ones as well. I think that takes a lot of guts and I told him so. If I had a car and needed a mechanic, I'd take it to Integrity Automotive on 122nd.