Southern efficiency strikes back

In my quest to furnish our new apartment, I've been doing a lot of driving in the Northern Virginia area recently. I know I've been spoiled by Irvine roads, but I find myself somewhat ...troubled... by the state of vehicular operations in my new hometown. Or more accurately, by the state of the vehicular operators.

Now I’m sure there will come a day that I settle into the genteel Southern lifestyle, a day when I will be unbothered by the youngish man, seemingly with all his faculties intact, driving along a perfectly straight road at a mere 20 miles per hour, but that day is not today.

It’s like 99% of Virginia drivers are engaged in some sort of conspiracy…a conspiracy whose only goal is to make me look like a lunatic on the roads. A lunatic with California plates, of course. I’m sure that I’m fulfilling some sort of deep, culturally satisfying stereotype.

I find myself weaving between lanes here, constantly passing streams of slowpokes. I am at once frustrated and terrified, because as if it’s not enough that these people are driving at speeds well below the already shockingly low limits, but they also have a tendency to drift disturbingly over the lane dividers from time to time.

And I always glance at them as I pass, expecting to see say, an elderly Chinese grandmother, or some dipshit on a cell phone, or maybe one of those gentlemen wearing what can only be described as old person sunglasses. And unfailing, I’m shocked to find a perfectly normal looking person with both hands on the wheel, clearly not senile, but inexplicably happy to be driving behind a bus for the handicapped.

As I review the evidence, one potential explanation occurs to me...but, they can't all be drunk, can they?