Wind, Near Death Experience, Women

I drove to Arizona this weekend. 360 Miles one way. Not surprisingly the Arizona Highway patrol pulled me over. I was going 81 in a 75 zone. The cop and I had a long conversation about the housing prices in San Diego and how 100 people a day are moving to Arizona from California, I think they get reallly bored out there, patrolling the desert. Anyway, he let me off with a couple of warnings and I was back on the road again.

Monotony will do strange things to a person. I stuck my arm out the window doing 80Mph and started to wonder what it's like to be in a major hurricane. The odds of getting pulled over twice are pretty slim right? Well my car will go about 135Mph. It only does 130 with the roof down as I found out. The overriding sensation of 130MPH winds is the noise. It's deafening. I also realized that although you're going twice as fast as normal, you use more than twice the gas which I guess isn't all that surprising. I averaged 73 MPH on the way back with a couple of pit stops.

I don't have a death wish, I race my car every once in a while and I'm pretty good at it so going fast isn't completely maniacal. I almost drowned once in some big surf when my leash broke. It's not a lot of fun being convinced you're going to meet your maker. I have a funny feeling that my "maker" would just be a primordial bowl of amino acid soup. My life didn't flash before my eyes but I did get very calm and relaxed before someone dragged me out of the impact zone.

And on another completely unrelated note, I was thinking about how I never have relationships longer than 6 months. That's right about when I decide that I need my space back and I head for the hills. Part of the problem is that I tend to date the wrong women. When I go to the local dance club I typically get inebriated and stagger to the dance floor and flail about until the alcohol and exertion conspire to erode my sense of balance. Keep in mind that I'm a quirky uptight white guy. I sometimes with someone would video tape me out there so I can see if I'm making a total ass of myself but then again there is the old Mark Twain quote: "Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth." While I'm writing about dance quotes, here's a good Leno observation " Scientists are complaining that the new Dinosaur movie shows dinosaurs with lemurs, who didn't evolve for another million years. They're afraid the movie will give kids a mistaken impression. What about the fact that the dinosaurs are singing and dancing?
--Jay Leno

So I met this girl a while ago while "dancing". She told me she didn't want a serious relationship which was good because I figured that when I inevitably moved on I wouldn't feel as guilty. So the time comes for us to go our separate ways and I just assumed she didn't have any feelings for me so I told her over the phone that the time had come to seek greener pastures. I heard silence then screeching tires and then CRUNCH. She crashed her car on the freeway seconds after I broke the news to her. She wasn't badly injured but I still feel like a jerk about it months later. I think I'm going to take a college class, something other than computer science, something like philosophy where I might meet someone I can talk to without focusing on not slurring my words. I'd prefer to know someone a little bit before jumping through the bizzare hoops known as dates. That's impossible in my current situation.

I need to grow up, get over my shy tendencies and try my hand at a non-dysfunctional relationship. Even if it's just to figure out if I'm cut out for that sort of thing.