Driving back from the Monterey Bay yesterday afternoon, my wife

remarked that we were very lucky that no police caught me, as I was driving
at a higher rate of speed than is legally suggested.

I told her that years of being on the road had caused me to develop certain
habits in order to minimize my interaction with the local gendarmerie. I just
don’t enjoy the interchange and it always takes time and costs me money. I
hate when that happens. So here’s what I do:

I don’t do more than ten miles over the limit. I try to stay with the flow of
traffic, though usually at the head of it if at all possible.

I do this because like all energy sources, traffic pulses. If you pay attention
you can discern as it bunches up and as it spreads out. If you were able to
fly a thousand feet above the highway, you would easily see the traffic
pulsing; clustering together and spreading apart, over and over again.

By noticing this phenomenon, you can accelerate when you sense the
bunching is about to begin and that way leave the cluster of cars behind you.

You simply drive through them before they bunch up and then stay just
faster enough to maintain your place ahead of them.

And watch out for rubber neckers. There is an element of the driving
population that simply should not be allowed to mate. We experienced to
stopped dead traffic jams and when we finally got to the source of the jam, it
was and accident ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FREEWAY.

These boneheads had to stop and look at it before driving on. Don’t do this!
It is beyond stupid; it is pretending that no one else is on the highway but
you and that your mindless braking for no real reason could cause an
accident.

Spay all rubber neckers! Get them out of the gene pool, they’re just
polluting the water. I don’t know, maybe it’s a little draconian, but it just
seems right to me, but you probably see that?

Another tip while driving is with regard to on ramps. When you pass an on
ramp, look in your rear view mirror and ascertain that no policeman is
driving down that on ramp. I check every single one, every single time.
When I am driving at night, I always use the cruise control and I never set it
for more than six miles above the limit. So far, that seems to be okay with
the powers that be.

And should you be stopped, remember the attitude test I talked about before.
Police always give you the attitude test. If you fail it, your world is going to
suck for the next little while. If you pass it, you might even get waved on.

Bless these fellows, we need them out there, but we don’t need to actually
TALK to them, okay?