 |
Re: The Board is fine; just a few bad apples
Author: Bruce Kelly
Date: 10-19-2009 - 21:32
Think I may have encountered the rented gray SUV and its three occupants at the Spokane River bridge. No rude gestures, but who knows. What troubled me more was some of the behavior displayed by others, like the driver with CA plates who passed a cluster of cars already exceeding the speed limit and shoved his way back into the crowd just a few hundred feet short of a head-on, and the guy with NY plates who handled the road perfectly fine but had all the hand and facial gestures of a person going into emotional meltdown. There's only so much you can do when the train is doing 65 and you're on a road posted for 55 with a parade of foamers, local folks, and who knows who else ahead of you.
Folks, this ain't the wide-open of Wyoming or the Mojave up here. Mostly 2-lane through little towns and twists and turns on a Monday when truckers are trucking and school buses are stopping. Between the intermittent clouds, road traffic, and the BNSF track speeds, if you got two really nice photos between Libby and Athol, you were par for the course. Anything beyond that was icing on the cake. If it weren't for that long wait at Boyer for four eastbounds, and that detector stop before the Spokane River bridge, many of us would have been left in the dust.
As for those pacers, no they don't deserve a middle-finger salute, but yes, they are a pain to those of us who would rather get ahead to the next photo opportunity. If you insist on staying side-by-side with the head end, at least have the courtesy to slide SAFELY onto the shoulder when you can, so others can SAFELY get around you.
Most of the folks I saw, however, seemed very well behaved, and accommodated those around them whether on the road or at the photo line. And it's always a treat to bump into great folks like MRL's own Al Burns, and at a somewhat obscure photo spot which most of the chasers apparently couldn't find.
I'll close with a personal apology for the poor quality of most of the fall foliage across western Montana and north Idaho, which should have been really stunning today. We had several nights with record cold earlier this month, and it really whacked most of the leaves, some dropping to the ground while they were still green, others turning straight to a dull brown. There were some pockets of good color along the way, but not the mile-upon-mile of brilliant trees we normally see here this time of October.
Folks, this ain't the wide-open of Wyoming or the Mojave up here. Mostly 2-lane through little towns and twists and turns on a Monday when truckers are trucking and school buses are stopping. Between the intermittent clouds, road traffic, and the BNSF track speeds, if you got two really nice photos between Libby and Athol, you were par for the course. Anything beyond that was icing on the cake. If it weren't for that long wait at Boyer for four eastbounds, and that detector stop before the Spokane River bridge, many of us would have been left in the dust.
As for those pacers, no they don't deserve a middle-finger salute, but yes, they are a pain to those of us who would rather get ahead to the next photo opportunity. If you insist on staying side-by-side with the head end, at least have the courtesy to slide SAFELY onto the shoulder when you can, so others can SAFELY get around you.
Most of the folks I saw, however, seemed very well behaved, and accommodated those around them whether on the road or at the photo line. And it's always a treat to bump into great folks like MRL's own Al Burns, and at a somewhat obscure photo spot which most of the chasers apparently couldn't find.
I'll close with a personal apology for the poor quality of most of the fall foliage across western Montana and north Idaho, which should have been really stunning today. We had several nights with record cold earlier this month, and it really whacked most of the leaves, some dropping to the ground while they were still green, others turning straight to a dull brown. There were some pockets of good color along the way, but not the mile-upon-mile of brilliant trees we normally see here this time of October.
