A near miss for no reason

So last night I tasked myself with getting the grass mowed since the ground was too wet over the weekend.  Very early on I had a very dangerous and infuriating moment.  Several weeks ago the county came around and filled low spots in the road shoulder with limestone.  The fill they used included a lot of rock.

Vehicles running onto the shoulder on the street is very common, hence how I have had my mailbox hit three times.  Well a side effect of this are the rocks, sometimes very big rocks get kicked into the grass.  Many of the rocks are big enough that they could instantly destroy the blades on the mower if not the deck itself so I have to move them out of the way every time I mow.

So that was what I was doing as I rode the tractor along the roadway reaching down and removing stones from my path.  As I am reaching down grabbing one close to the size of a tennis ball a truck flies by me, it’s tire only inches away from the edge of the asphalt.  He literally missed me by less than a foot.  I was instantly infuriated.

I shot up and uttered a verbal tirade as I tried to identify the particulars of the truck.  I could tell it was a GM truck that was brown or gray.  It was hard to tell much else since it was already a couple hundred yards away.  I was so f’ing mad.  I could not believe an operator of a vehicle would not move over even a foot to give someone a safety barrier.  I just got more and more angry as I mowed.  I kept looking at the returning vehicles, hoping to spot the same truck although I’m not quite sure what I would have done.  I later realized the incident should be captured on our security DVR which it was.

As I mowed into twilight I just kept thinking how the incident encapsulated for me just why generally speaking, I don’t like people.  It would have taken the driver a couple seconds to adjust the path of his vehicle to avoid such a close call but they couldn’t be bothered.  F common courtesy, f safety, f common sense, I need to check my incredibly important Instagram post now!    As I closed out my video with, people suck, plain and simple.

I can tell we are inching towards fall as it took every last shred of daylight for me to finish mowing, a sign of the shortening days.  Despite the asshole in the truck, it felt good to get the mowing completed.  Doing it on a Tuesday should mean I can push the next mowing session off until two weekends from now.

Man I feel badly for the people in the path of Hurricane Florence.  Not only is it forecast to have Irma like strength but it is forecast to stall as it hits the coast for almost a day which could bring just an unreal amount of devastation to that area.  I can imagine the sense of panic and dread they must be feeling, because I have lived it myself, a few times.