I had to drive Traci up to a doctor’s appointment yesterday in Springville. Luckily for me, the doctor’s office just happened to be open late on Tuesdays, and her appointment was for 6:00 pm, so I didn’t have to miss any work.
On our way back, the weather was pretty nasty. Right after we passed Tucker and started heading up the hill towards Soldier Summit (where there was quite a bit of snow, I might add), I encountered one of the dumbest drivers I’ve ever had the displeasure of driving near. It was an old lady, driving a dark blue Lincoln Town Car, license plate J·AND·JW. In front of this woman was a white Grand Am GT that was only doing about 55 MPH, and I had just gotten in the left lane to pass them both. It was raining hard, and the visibility sucked in front of me because of all the spray the other cars were kicking up. Right when I got about two car-lengths away from the old lady in the Lincoln, she hit her left turn signal for such a short time that it only blinked one time, then she started moving over into the left lane in front of me. I don’t know what her problem was, but she never fully got into the left lane–she just straddled the white-striped line, so I couldn’t pass on either side. After about a full minute of me flashing my hi-beams at the bitch, she finally got all the way over to the left and passed the Grand Am, but I had already lost all the momentum that my Subaru had, and I wasn’t able to catch up and pass her for another two miles or so. Not a mile later, she sped up and passed me again, right before the passing lane ended, so I wasn’t able to pass her again until the passing lane near the Scofield turnoff. She sped up by 10 MPH while I passed her, so I had to do almost 70 MPH in that shitty weather to get around her. After I passed, she stayed behind me until I was able to pass a few more cars that she apparently didn’t dare to pass. It was really unnerving having such a stupid driver anywhere near me, knowing that she might do something stupid at any moment.
Anyhow, after all that, as I was driving down Price Canyon, I noticed that they had re-striped the lanes. UDOT is always saying how they’re making safety improvements to US-6, and besides widening the road, I don’t think any of their safety measures actually make the road safer. They’ve actually painted double-yellow lines where there used to be passing lanes, which I think makes the road much more dangerous. There used to be six passing lanes for eastbound traffic in that area, and now there are just two. After following a slow motorhome through where the first few passing lanes used to be, I finally was able to pass on the last remaining passing lane before Helper, which is pretty inadequate for passing anyway. There were two other passing lanes that no longer exist that would have been much safer for me to pass in.
When we got back into Price, we went directly to Wal-Mart to fill a prescription for Traci. Their pharmacy closes at 8:00 pm, and even though we got there at 7:55 pm, they’d already closed their drop-off windows. The pharmacist was still there, and Traci asked if we could still drop a prescription, and he said, “No, we closed at 8:00.” So we said, “Ok, we’ll just go to Albertson’s,” and did just that, where they filled the prescription in just two minutes. It’s just sad that Wal-Mart is willing to lose business in order to close five minutes early.