Bad Karma - No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

I have returned from a fabulous trip to lovely Albuquerque, NM, but I had an adventure on the way there that I would like to vent about.

Heading north out of Phoenix on Friday afternoon I had one of those annoying experiences that I'm sure anyone who drives in Arizona has shared.  In the right hand lane, traveling just over 75 mph, I caught up to a truck who was clearly not going 75 mph and had not been for some time.  I moved left to pass said truck.  Said truck immediately corrected the situation by accelerating to the same speed I was traveling. (The infamous, "you can't pass me because I'm not going slow" maneuver.)

So there we were, essentially corner to corner, but with perhaps half a car length between us in the forward direction.  I held my position, because my experience has been that people who speed up so as not to be passed usually forget that they sped up simply to foil someone else, and drop down to their original speed in a matter of moments.

This was the situation when I saw in my rear view mirror that there was another truck approaching.  I waited a little further but when truck #1 did not slow back down, I thought it would be considerate to move back over behind truck #1 so that truck #2 would not be boxed in when he caught up to us.  You know, since we were going the same speed in different lanes.

Truck #2 caught up to us and moved left.  He pulled up alongside my car and matched our speed.  As soon as truck #2 was in position, truck #1 slowed back down.  Of course.  But... so did truck #2.  I was understandably frustrated by this.  We were the only three people for miles, for heaven's sake, did we really need to be going slower than the speed limit all within inches of each other?  I turned and glared at the driver, who looked straight ahead without flinching.  Fine.

Truck #2 then decided to increase speed by approximately 1 mph.  As soon as the cab of his truck had inched past the windshield of my car, he MOVED OVER into my lane.  Now I'm sure that he was bluffing, because I'm sure that he knew perfectly well I was there, having put me there himself, but on a curving mountain road at somewhere near 70 mph is it prudent and safe to assume that someone is bluffing and won't collide with you?  It is not.  I did the predictable, stomped on the brake, leaned on the horn and gave voice to some very unladylike phrases.

Truck #2 pretended not to notice and continued to move over until he was behind truck #1, who had slowed down even further when he heard the honking.  As soon as he was all the way right and I was all the way behind him, truck #2 moved left again and resumed his original speed.

There had been enough time for me to notice the bumper stickers on this truck - "Once a Marine, Always a Marine", "Proud Veteran of the U. S. Marine Corps", etc.  But not time enough for me to get the license plate number.  So I caught up to our esteemed Marine Veteran just long enough to get a good view of the number.  It was an AZ Veterans plate, 0R783 (maybe OR783).

First of all, how proud the armed forces must be to have someone like that representing them to the general public.  Second of all, as much as I would have liked to stalk him to his destination and inflict some sort of damage, I did recognize the opportunity to leave his rude response to my courteous action to the karma police.  Go get 'im, karma police.

For crying out loud.
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