The One Thing I Don't Miss

I don't miss the traffic in Vancouver. Today I attended a conference in Richmond and at 4:40pm, I called my mom to say that I was on my way home for supper. I start leaving Garden City Road when I hit bumper-to-bumper traffic on the 99, just before the bend. Along the bend are two merging lanes.

Ok, I'm a total stickler for rules, except maybe for the posted speed limit, but I think I'm a fairly good and courteous driver, so I really get annoyed with discourteous drivers. To me, a turn signal sort of means "Excuse me" when changing lanes. Only one car out of the hundreds that were near me signaled. Am I just being really picky or has driver's courtesy gone down the toilet?

Not only were people not signaling, but also they weren't following the one-in, skip, one-in, skip, etc. rule when merging. I let in one car merging from the left (of course, he without a signal), but then the lady behind him wanted to push forward to get in front of me, too! Perhaps the godly thing to do would have been to just let her in. But, I like to play Devil's Advocate from time to time and since I was already feeling annoyed with the non-signaling behaviour, I devilishly closed the gap between my car and the car in front (I hate to tailgate, by the way), forcing the lady in the van to get in line behind me. Apparently, she tried to do it again when we got on the Oak Street bridge because another "advocate" who had let me in honked the van lady to remind her of the rules.

After forty minutes, I arrived at my parents' house finally. According to Google Maps, it should have only taken me 17 minutes.