A Different Kind Of Douche Bag, It's Regional

I know, I don't post very often these days.  It doesn't mean I'm dead or that I've totally given up.  Ideas for blogging come to me every day, but these days I just let them pass.  I was thinking of my March 2015 Sick Day post, the one about how I hate Toyotas because their drivers have no concept of the evils of driving up on you at a high rate of speed and tail gating.  Still to this day any bad driver I see coming up on me in the rear-view mirror is in a Toyota.

My point here is that this seems to be a regional malady.  I went back to New Jersey last October for my mother's 95th birthday.  More stories about the trip may come up in the future, but for now I want to talking about driving in the Garden State and in the Empire State.

Having lived here in Oregon for the last 27 years I had forgotten what toll roads were.  Actually I had forgotten how to get anywhere after all this time and I relied on the GPS for every move.  There are people there that refuse to ever take a toll road.  I gave in and let the GPS take me from point A to point B on the shortest route.  Though the toll roads have an Easy Pass system I paid cash at every toll.  There was one exit  from one highway that exited onto the Jersey Turnpike where I paid 60 cents to drive three hundred feet to the next exit off of the Turnpike.

We also drove on the Garden State Parkway which has toll boots set up every fifteen miles or so.  I think it is so cool that the only toll road in Oregon is the Bridge of the Gods in Hood River.  I think it is also very cool that once the Astoria Megler Bridge was paid off they removed the toll in Astoria.

But I digress... The point of this post is Douche Bag drivers. I found that the drivers in New York and New Jersey were oddly very courteous; even the Toyota drivers.  You don't see many casual pick-up trucks back there so there were no little trucks with big tires.  Those with pick-up trucks were contractors.  These are working trucks, not show trucks with untethered dogs and a half rack of Hams.  Those who drove Toyota cars were actually OK.  The Douche Bags of New Jersey drove Ford Mustangs.  When I lived there the Douche Bags drove Camaro IROC-Zs, but times have changed.  The new muscle-stangs bring out the beast in the drivers and these folks can easily stand proud with the Toyota drivers of the Pacific Northwest.