Driving Shoes

 I used to think the notion of buying driving shoes was pretty ridiculous. I would see ads for them in car magazines. Ridiculous, that is, unless you are racing then you needed flame-resistant Nomex shoes. But for everyday driving, a good pair of running shoes would work.

Then I got the wrong shoes. For casual use, I always buy Asics Gel running shoes. They fit my feet and if I get the right size, I don't even have to try them on. They just fit. It's great.

Then I accidentally got a pair whose bottom looked like this:

(I think these are "trail running shoes.") And the way the bottom was made affected my driving.I'd go to brake and the car wouldn't slow as fast as I thought it should. I'd have to adjust my foot to get full braking power. I still don't understand why. But they definitely made driving more difficult.

So I recently replaced those shoes with shoes that look like this:

And the difference is amazing. When I brake, the car slows as much as I intend it to. 

So maybe driving shoes are not such a strange idea. But they are expensive.

Have you noticed different shoes affect your driving? Let me know in the comments below.

All Work and No Play....

Back to the 52-week blogging challenge. Today's prompt is "Work + Play." I'm not sure if that's supposed to be "work plus play" or "work and play."

I talked about rest here. But resting isn't playing.

Ever since I left the corporate world, work and play are a lot a like. I get to my hobby as work, i.e., writing. Now, sometimes writing is hard work, especially freelance writing. But I love doing it.

I guess my only pure forms of play are watching movies and driving. Although lately I haven't been driving as fast as I used to. I've sort of lost my desire to risk jail for the joy of going over 100 mph. (Of course, now that it's winter, driving fast is out of the question). I've thought about returning to the racetrack, but it is so damn expensive. Not the fees so much but you can go through tires and brakes in a couple of days. And tires on my car are very expensive. Plus I think I'd need to buy a new helmet.

But I am so thankful that I get to do what I love as my work. Just wish it paid better.

What do you do for play, and who does that relate to your work? Let me know in the comments below.

Winter is Coming

Back to the 52-week blogging challenge. Today's prompt is "Winter." Which is timely because we are into fall now and winter is coming (apparently that's a Game of Thrones reference).

(Okay, technically, fall starts on September 22nd, which is nine days away.)

I used to like winter. But now it just annoys me. The winter of 2016-17 was awful. We had snow for months and just as the roads would get clear, it would snow again. We had freezing rain twice (I think) and once it was so bad I didn't even leave my house for a day. And then there's trips over Snoqualmie Pass in the winter. Snoqualmie Pass sits between where I live and the greater Seattle area. My son goes to school there and he doesn't drive. So I had to go get him for winter break. And every time I went over the pass, the State Patrol decided it needed to be chains required except for all-wheel-drive vehicles with snow tires. Luckily, my car is all-wheel drive and I put on Blizzak tires in the winter. So I didn't have to put on chains. But that's an indication of how bad the roads were.

(Once, before I owned this car, I had a car that was rear-wheel drive. And it was chains required. I put on chains, drove for a while, and then took them off. It wasn't nearly bad enough to require chains. Another time, in the same car, it was chains required. I didn't put them on and knew if I could make it up the steep hill just before the pass, I'd be fine. I made it. The car slipped a couple of times but I got up the hill, more due to my skill and the Blizzaks than anything else. It's a $500 fine if you get caught without chains.)

And the roads aren't always just bad on the pass. Sometimes they are bad from where you start going up the pass until home. So you're going 35 mph the whole 180 miles, almost. Makes for a long trip. People would pass us and then a couple miles down the road they'd be in the ditch.

I like to drive, but driving in slick conditions take the fun out of it, and makes it work.

Don't know what this winter will bring. I'm hoping it will be more like '17-'18 than '16-'17. But you never know.

Slow Kills

Last Monday I talked about driving fast and why I do drive fast.

Today I'm going to talk about why driving slow is dangerous. That is, slower than conditions require.

I am constantly amazed by people (usually in Subarus) going 10 - 15 mph under the speed limit on the interstate. I think that they believe they are being extra safe. Or maybe they are "hypermileing" (tying to get the best possible gas mileage). In either case, they are more dangerous than the person going 10 - 15 mph over the speed limit. Look at this chart:

(Note that "zero" is not the speed limit, but the average speed, which in many cases is over the speed limit.)

According to this data, going 10 mph under the average speed is more dangerous then going 20 mph over the average speed. Thus, despite the propaganda of the Safety Nazis: slow kills.

But the funny thing is, most states do not enforce going too slow, but will gladly write you a ticket for exceeding the speed limit.

As I said last week, I tend to drive 5 mph over the speed limit. In my heavily speed-enforced state that puts me just slightly above the average speed, it seems (I pass more cars than pass me). Which, according to the chart, is the safest place to be.

The safest speed to drive is not slow. It's not the speed limit, it's around the average speed of traffic. That means speed limits could actually be decreasing safety, not increasing it by being set too low.

Another way speed limits that are set too low decrease safety is they switch enforcement from those driving dangerously fast (or slow) to those exceeding some number a politician or bureaucrat came up with.

But, all too often, speed limits are set to maximize revenue, not safety. And all drivers pay the price.

Yes, I Drive Fast

George Carlin had a routine where he explained that there are two types of drivers on the road: idiots and maniacs. Idiots are anyone going slower than you, and manics are anyone going faster than you.

Well, on behalf of all maniacs, I'd like to explain myself.

I drive fast. Sometimes very fast but I pick and choose where I do that. I have driven on a racetrack (the essence of fast driving).

I usually drive 5 mph over the speed limit. This is slow enough most cops won't bother you. But, this puts me in the "maniac" range for the majority of other drivers, at least were I live.

I consider speed limits to be a random number chosen by some politician or bureaucrat not to maximize safety and convenience, but to maximize revenue. Most speeds limits are set about 10 - 15 mph too slow to maximize safety. How can that be?

Highways are most safe when cars are travaling similar speeds. It's the "speed variance" that is dangerous. Michigan studied a highway that had a 55 mph speed limit. The average speed on the road was 73 mph but some were driving slower than 55. That was a very high speed variance. They raised the speed limit to 70 mph and not only did the average speed drop to 72 mph, the speed variance dropped. The speed limit went up and the safety increased. But probably speeding ticket revenue from that road decreased.

To me, there's three types of speeding:
1) Exceeding the random number the government puts on the speed limit signs.
2) Blatantly ignoring the speed limit and driving as fast as conditions permit.
3) Driving too fast for conditions (i.e., driving stupidly fast). To me, people doing this are the maniacs.

I do #1 all the time (5 mph over the speed limit). I do #2 occasionally in select places where I consider it safe to do so (and there probably is a small possibility of having a cop around). I don't do #3 (which would be, for example, going 100 mph on the interstate when everyone else is doing 70).

But why do I drive fast?

For #1 type of speeding, it's because driving the speed limit is boring. I need faster input than that allows. For example, I was driving in Wyoming where the speed limit on the interstate was 75 mph. I was doing 80 (of course). But I'd been driving all day, it was late, and was getting tired. My ability to handle the input went down. So I slowed down to 75 (I eventually turned driving duties over to my son).

For #2 type of speeding, my only excuse is: it's fun. It's a blast to push a car's limits and the limits of your own skills. This is why I so loved driving on the racetrack. It's not about speed, but it's about control and skill. But it takes speed to test both.

I've done 155 mph on the racetrack. It was glorious.

Now, when I drive fast, I do it in a way that doesn't endanger me or other people. I'm not suicidal. But at 5 mph over the speed limit is often boring. But I bear with it because tickets are expensive.

But when I let loose (in a safe place to do so), it's the most fun I've had with my clothes on.

Driving . . . Faster

I heard a rumor that Montana might raise it's rural speed limit to 85 mph. My first thought: How can I find an excuse to drive in Montana? I might not even do my usual 5 mph over the speed limit. Although 90 mph on some of those long, lonely stretches of highway in Montana might not be so bad. Come to think of it, back when Montana didn't have a speed limit, I was doing over 100 mph on some of those roads.

Utah and Idaho (at least) have raised some interstate speed limits to 80 mph. Unfortunately, they did that since I was last in Idaho.

I've often thought the speed limit on I-90 between Ellensburg and Sprague here in Washington State should be 80 mph (it's now 70).

But (except maybe in Montana) speed limits are not set for convenience and safety, but to maximize revenue. Michigan did a study and found that raising speed limits from 55 to 70 increased safety. Why? Because with a 55 mph speed limit, the speed differences between cars was as much as 20 mph (some were going 55 or slower, some were going 75 or faster). Raising the speed limit to 70 meant fewer cars were going slow so the speed difference between cars (a large factor in automobile crashes) decreased. And the average speed on the road with the 55 mph speed limit was 74 mph. With a 70 mph speed limit, it was 72.

A study also found that it's safer to drive faster than traffic then slower than traffic. You're more likely to be in an accident at 10 mph under the speed limit that at 10 mph over the speed limit. But who gets tickets?

Now, admittedly, I like to drive fast. But I try to drive fast responsibly. I used to drive on a racetrack but the costs got to be too much. Not so much the fees, but the replacement costs of tires and brakes which you wear out very fast on a racetrack. So if I do drive fast I pick empty roads. Luckily, where I live, there's a few of those. Unfortunately, they tend to be straight and taking curves fast is so much more fun.

And now maybe I'll have to find an excuse to go to Montana. There's this curvy part of I-90 between the Idaho border and Missoula . . .

Flash Fiction Friday: The Chase

(This is a true story.)

I had the cruise control set for five miles per hour over the 70-mph speed limit.  And I was bored.  The interstate highway was long and straight.  Ahead to the south I could see the next small city that the interstate cut through.  I planned to stop there and get a drink and fill up the gas tank.  The needle was brushing the E.

I saw the police lights on the northbound road.  There were a lot of them, I realized, three cars running with red and blue lights flashing garishly even in the bright afternoon sun.  I wondered if there were an accident somewhere behind me or maybe they were just late for a donut run . . .

Then I saw the car they were chasing.  It was a older model sedan, so beat up and indistinct I had trouble identifying the make and model (and I know cars).  And I realized I was watching a real-life car chase.

The sedan was slowing, I could see.  I watched, fascinated, my cruise control still on, still driving on mostly auto-pilot.

The sedan was trying to turn at a cross over, the type labeled "Authorized Vehicles Only."  Even I could tell he was going too fast.  The car turned, slid, clipped a reflector and with a crunch of gravel flipped off the cross-over road and into the median where the loose dirt and weeds flipped the car over more. It tumbled over three times, popped up into my road, the southbound road.  I realized it was going to hit my car.  I braked and tried to swerve right to dodge it but it was too late.  The car, upside down, slammed into the rear left fender of my car, spinning me around at something like 70 mph.  My car flipped over, spinning down the highway.  The world went crazy as my seat belts held me tight against the seat.  I let go of the steering wheel knowing I could do nothing and that, if hanging on to it, if it spun suddenly it could break a wrist.  I was just a passenger.

My car landed on its wheels, the engine incongruously still running.  I was dazed, almost unconscious.  I felt wetness on my scalp and reached up to touch it.  My hand came away bloody.  I thought I was going to pass out.

The gunshot woke me up.  I turned toward the sound and saw a man beside his wrecked car shooting at police cars that were screeching to a halt.  I decided I needed to duck but the seat belt still held me.  I reached for the release but couldn't find it.  Blood was getting into my eyes.

I felt and impact as a bullet hit my shoulder.  Crying out involuntarily in pain I grabbed at the injury only to feel more blood, more pain.  The car was also burning, I realized.  I tugged at the seat belt, feeling the flames and heat get closer . . .

The cops zoomed by on the northbound lane.  I thought this was not a good time to be daydreaming at 75 mph.  I hope the cops were on a donut run, not heading for an accident.  I kept driving.

Drive Time: Write What you Love

Lamborghini Countach

(This is my 300th post on this blog)

Today is, in the US, Memorial Day.  Yesterday the Indianapolis 500 race was ran (as was the Coca-Cola 600 but that's NASCAR so who cares?).  As is my tradition, going back to 1969, I watched the Indy 500.  And in 1969, I decided Mario Andretti was my hero/favorite driver (and I didn't like the Unser brothers).  Now Mario's grandson, Marco, came in third yesterday and his son, Micheal, is a team owner who owned the winning car.

I'm not a big fan of watching racing on television.  I find it boring.  That is especially true NASCAR which I call "rednecks turning left" and is like your interstate line up going 150 mph.  Yes, the crashes are spectacular but I worry more that someone might get hurt.  I tried hard to like watching Formula 1 (when they show it on US television) but while the precision driving is interesting, there seems to be missing the wheel-to-wheel competition to keep it interesting.  It's sort of like baseball: moments of action separated by hours of tedium.

I've always like cars.  I can't remember a time I didn't like cars.  I didn't want to work on them and I didn't want to modify them, I just wanted to drive them . . . fast.  And I still do, occasionally hitting felonious velocities on back country roads or watching the speedometer brush against 155 at the end of the straightaway on the race track.  I once described driving on the racetrack the most fun I've had with my clothes on.  Talking about driving on the track I wrote a blog post called "Zen and the Art of Driving Fast."  Since driving on a racetrack I have tremendous respect for professional race car drivers, even NASCAR.

In my writing I've not spent a lot of time dwelling on my love of cars.  In my Adept Series novels, the heroes generally disdain cars, don't drive, and have someone drive them if they need them.  They use taxis a lot.

That changed a bit in Gods of Strife, my latest Adept Series novel that is set in 1976.  I indulged myself a bit by including a Lamborghini Countach and a Ferrari GT4 BB (both 1970s "supercars") in the plot.  There's even a car chase of sorts with the good guys in the Lamborghini and the bad guy on a flying carpet (well, it is an urban fantasy).

What is it you love?  Do you include that love in your writing?  You should.  You want your writing to be passionate and if you write about your passions, it will be.  I was frustrated writing some of the Adept Series books because I had to shuttle my love of cars (and other things such as airplanes) to other characters.

They say "write what you know."  But I would add "write what you love."

Beautiful Day

It's a beautiful day here in Central Washington State.  First thing this morning I noticed I could see Mount Rainier, which is 121 miles away but at 14,410 feet dominates a lot of the state.  The sky is blue with nary a cloud.  It's still a bit crisp outside with temps in the mid 40s but it's expected to reach nearly 70 today.  And, miracle of miracles, the wind is not blowing.

When I left the house I also saw Glacier Peak but I can't see it from the house because my neighbor's tree is in the way.

It'd be a perfect day to go for a drive but my car is making a funny noise.  And it doesn't sound like the kind of noise you want to ignore.  I called my mechanic on Friday and he said he'd get me in as soon as he could.  I'm seriously thinking of having it towed there because I'm not sure how good it is to drive it with the awful noise its making.

I'm having my wife read my WIP (work in progress) to me now that it's pretty much finished and been through four proofreaders (including me, and I'm a lousy proofreader).  I'm finding this very useful as I hear things that I don't notice while reading it.  Such as word repetitions and awkward constructions.  We got through Chapter 2 last night, or about 15.8% of the total novel.  I tried to get her to continue this morning but she wanted to do other stuff.  And for some reason she didn't want to do it at Starbucks.  The novel is titled Gods of Strife and it's the fourth book in the Adept Series which includes Hammer of Thor, Agent of Artifice, and Book of Death.

UPDATE: With the help of my son, I took the wheel off my car and found a rock jammed between the brake caliper and the brake disk.  Removed the rock, problem seems to be solved.  And my wife has read to me through chapter five, now.

Zen and the Art of Driving Fast

(Editor's note: I wrote this in 2007 in response to someone saying my driving fast-even on a racetrack-was irresponsible.)

Nirvana.

The ears are overworked with wind noise, road noise, engine and exhaust noise.  Only the wind can be ignored.  The road noise tells you that the car is stable.  When you hear a whine is when you worry.  Engine and exhaust noise tell you the engine is healthy and when it's time to shift.  There's no time to watch the tachometer so you must rely on your ears and experience.

The eyes are sweeping.  The pavement coming at them at over 100 miles per hour is ignored.  You know this sheet of asphalt like you would know a lover's body.  The eyes are looking for visual cues to turn-in, apex, and exit of each corner.  Here it's the blue part of the stands, there it's a wooden structure called a "turn station" and there it's a telephone pole.  Being a class there are cones demarking these things but due to hills and weeds, they are not always visible.  But the eyes are also watching the other cars.  While looking through them to find the corner markers, it is watching them for sudden unexpected moves and slowdowns.  Here as nowhere else do you  dare be this close to another car at highway speeds.

The inner ear, felt in the ass, tells you the car is tacking straight and the  tires are not sliding over the asphalt.

The right foot is planted against the firewall, the left hovering over the clutch.  Both hands are on the steering wheel, probably at "nine and three."

Your brain is processing all this information.  The baud rate is enormous and the limited bandwidth of your brain becomes selective.  The itch of your nose, the discomfort of the helmet, the cold of the wind coming in the window all fade away.  Your mind is completely and utterly concentrating on its task, on piloting a powerful car at speeds over one hundred miles per hour around a track that twists and turns seemingly at random.

Your mind has reached "speed nirvana."  Gone is everything other than driving, other than moving your body to make the car move as you wish, observing, listening . . .

Driving.

Not commuting, not "operating a motor vehicle," but DRIVING.  The skills were acquired in years of back-roads speeding and days of track training.  Talent plays a role, the ability to process the information coming in fast enough to react.  To hear the screech of tires and know you need to look for a car sideways in the road.  To smell brakes and know you need to slow down and give your over-heated pads a break.  To run your eyes over the instrument gages on straight aways to make sure the beast under the hood is not suffering.

This is driving.  This is speed nirvana.  Gone are the worries of work, relationships, money, whatever.  It is you, the car, and the pavement coming at you at 220 feet every second.

Nirvana

Driving as Fast as I Dare

In winter I've noticed a phenomena, at least with my driving.  When roads or slick or conditions not ideal, I drive as fast as I dare.  This could be 35 mph on the Interstate but it is as fast as I dare.  Then, suddenly, road conditions approve and I keep driving as fast as I dare and quickly I'm doing 85 mph on the Interstate (where the speed limit around here is 70).  This happened to me coming back from Portland one time.  I was driving in the Columbia River Gorge on the north (Washington) side and it was very foggy, so I was driving as fast as I dared for the foggy condition which was well under the speed limit.

Then the fog lifted and I forgot to stop driving as fast as I dared.  I think I was doing 72 (in a 60) when the cop got me on radar.  Luckily he didn't give me a ticket (my luck ran out two years ago in June when I was doing 48 in a 35 on a country road that has, in my opinion, a too low speed limit, anyway).

Or, the roads will be bad for weeks so you really get in the habit of driving as fast as you dare, then suddenly they're clear and you're speeding everywhere (because, by and large, speed limits are set too low, anyway).

Other times, during the summer, I drive as fast as I dare and hope there's no cops around.  I'll plead the fifth if asked how fast I go.

Do you drive as fast as you dare?

Winter Driving

I like to drive.  I guess I'm weird that way.  Now, I prefer to be driving fast, but even tooling down I-90 with the cruise control set at 75 (five over the limit) is something I enjoy.  As I get older it is getting harder for me to drive long distances without a break.  I used to drive 20 or more hours and only stop to fill the car and empty me.  But now I pretty much don't want to drive more than 6 or so hours straight at a time.  Last summer I did a 650 mile drive in one day which was about 11 hours of driving.  The next day I was wiped out.

Now winter is approaching and I'm also, in my old age, becoming a wimp about driving in snow.  I used to be the guy for whom nothing stopped me.  I was the guy who drove over Snoqualmie Pass in a Mustang GT without snowtires when the state patrol had chains required and did fine.  But lately it's sort of like driving in slick conditions makes me nervous and just doesn't seem like its worth the hassle.  Oh, I'll still do it if I have to be somewhere.  But I won't enjoy it.

This worries me a bit.  Will the time come when I no long want to drive fast?  Yesterday I drove to a town about 70 miles away.  The pavement was bare and dry the whole way.  But for a long time I was stuck behind a cop so I had to do the speed limit.  And I was bored to death.  So so far I'm not turning into a slow driver on dry pavement.  And I still enjoy the occasional burst of felonious velocity, although I haven't had the courage to repeat my highest speed ever (I'll plead the fifth if you ask)(but I have done 155 on a racetrack).

I guess getting old sucks.  I do know my reactions have slowed (I don't play video games anymore).  But I hope I never become one of those people who drive slow and block traffic.

Driving

Anyone who knows me knows I like to drive.  And when I drive I prefer to drive fast.  I just got back from a little excursion that probably burned $20 worth of gas on basically entertainment.  I know of a back road near here that is very little traveled, mostly straight, and has nothing built up around it.  Perfect for exceeding the speed limit.

I've always liked driving.  I'm old enough I drove when the National Maximum Speed Limit was 55.  When they raised it to 65 (circa 1986) in rural areas it was wonderful.  When they eliminated it, it was amazing.  I even got to drive in Montana when they didn't have a speed limit (lasted about two years, I think).  Here in Washington State rural interstates are at 70 but really, there are places it could be 80 easily.

Driving can be a chore such as in traffic, around town, or stuck behind a slow-moving vehicle.  It can be a challenge that I admit I enjoy when the weather gets bad.  But mostly I enjoy it and the faster the better.  This is why I don't welcome driverless cars.  And they are coming sooner than I ever thought.  It may be a boon to safety and reduce congestion, but it will eliminate the fun, too.  If I couldn't drive I would miss it.

Tired!

Not exactly what I would call a relaxing weekend.  Years ago I promised my son when he was 18 he could go the the high performance driving school (driving on a racetrack) that I let his older brother go to and that I attended many, many times.

I decided not to drive this time so I ended up sitting outside in the sunshine (not something fair-skinned redheads should do a lot) while my son drove on (and twice off) the track.  Because of his second departure from the track today, the car is filthy inside and out.  I said we looked like a couple of rednecks who drove their Camaro off the farm.

So I'm tired.  Just thought I'd let you know.  But boy, I heard the roar of the engines, smelled the hot brakes, felt the ground-thumping of massive power being applied, and I so wanted to be out on that track.

So now I'm tired, and sunscreen is getting into my eyes, and I just want to rest.  How was your weekend?