No, not the lies and confusion of the current political campaigns. I’m talking about the things a mild-mannered motorist might encounter in a single day as he, oh, I dunno, runs an errand in Bloomington and makes his way toward downtown.

First, there was the latest in the series of Deceptions in Orange:

You might not be able to tell from the CrapCam photo, but the lane was open all the way to Iowa. And of course, in a rolling vote of no confidence, none of the drivers moved over after reading the sign.

With some time to kill, I took a highly circuitous route to downtown Minneapolis. This included another visit to I-94’s new “DO NOT CROSS DOUBLE WHITE LINE” section:

Oh, well. At least enforcement appeared to be on the scene:

I then wound my way southward and eastward on surface streets, where there was the minor annoyance of this strangely plate-less Jeep:

The guy’s driving seemed fine; the cigarette butt he dropped out the window was the problem. It was bad enough that he disregarded the well-being of our local waterways, which is where much street litter ends up. What made it worse was the little green “e” (for Enterprise) that I noticed near the left taillight. It was a freakin’ rental car — the Moron wouldn’t have even had to clean out the ashtray himself. I found myself hoping that he lives in some southern state along the Mississippi and that, two months from now, that very same cigarette butt pops out of his kitchen faucet.

Down the street was another Sign of Dismay:

Um, what’s 500 feet ahead? A giant eraser? The poor sign is nearly denuded of its black arrows, and marked with bullet holes to boot. An indignity all around, and an indication of a city not exactly bursting with cash. The giant eraser may have also attacked this nearby sign, which is literally halfway helpful:

So much for choices — guess I’ll take I-94 west. Across the street is this:

No parking, and not much paint, either.

With all these discouraging sights, poor CrapCam was starting to get too depressed to focus (the tears were welling up on its lens), so I put it away for several hours. On the way home, though, its services were required again.

Some people have certain traditions as night falls — reading a book, perhaps, or sipping some cognac. Roadguy, however, likes to end his days with a Moron parker sighting:

… and this was a good one: The back wheels were nearly three feet from where they should’ve been, with the trunk of the car sticking out past the sidewalk on the corner. Don’t mind the rest of us — we’ll just walk and drive around you.

So, a full day of lies and confusion — maybe the woes of driving are just like the political campaigns. If only they’d miraculously end on Nov. 7, too.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 18th, 2006 at 6:05 am and is filed under Moron Patrol, Scenes and stories, WUWT?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.