Armchair Drivers

The following is based on Fact, and sequenced in Fiction...

Jane herds her three maniac rug-rats into their 2009 Highest-Safety-Rated Mitsubishi Outlander; the Sport Utility Vehicle born to house the best of sibling food fights while shuttling kids off to soccer, dance class, scouts, and half a dozen other organized activities they may or may not cry at. After a sleepless night of fighting off monsters and her kids' bad dreams, Jane is wired on three cups of coffee, and has already covered her shirt in both orange juice with extra pulp and the J from her son's PB&J lunch time entrée. Her mind races; stop one is Kristin at Abe Lincoln Elementary, stop two is Tim at pre-school, stop three is a Save-the-Day move at her husband Garth's office which includes a Forgotten Presentation hand over and a quick peck-on-the-cheek good luck kiss, stop four is a drop off at a very important play date for her youngest, Jeff, and stop five is groceries, the bank, coffee, a DVD return, lunch with a potential new baby-sitter, more coffee, Pioneer costume shopping for Kristin's big school play, socks for Garth, prescription pick up for Jeff, another more-coffee, and then reverse herding of maniac rug-rats. Jane backs the Outlander out of the drive way and thinks to herself 'If Tim hadn't poured his bowl of cereal on the dog's head we would have been on time for the first time in... in forever'. Jane slams on her breaks bringing her rear bumper inches from the knees of a morning runner.

Ken sits down for the first time in 36 hours. He sticks the keys in the ignition of his 7-series and closes his eyes; he is a collapsed heap of exhausted MD. Ken longs for the comfort of his beautiful pillow. He opens his eyes again and sees that it is 8am. Ken has 12 hours to drive home, eat breakfast/lunch/whatever-meal-it-is-after-you've-worked-for-a-day-and-a-half, feed the cat, pass out in bed, give his wife a hug, and get back to the hospital for another round of Super-Doctor. Ken starts the car and leaves the parkade. A block and a half later Ken's doing everything he can to hold his eye-lids up. The window is rolled down, the bad music is turned up, he's reciting the Western Conference standings to himself out load, but he is losing the battle. His eyes fire open as the scream of a car horn crashes through the open window. Ken checks himself, but realizes that the horn wasn't for him; a flashy copper convertible had blown through a yield sign nearly parking itself in the passenger seat of a tiny 2-door Civic. Ken is sweating from the side of adrenaline that was served up with the spicy horn blast. He pulls up to a set of lights and tries to slow his racing heart. 'Shit!' Ken curses himself and thinks about how irresponsible it is of him to sleep-walk behind the wheel. He's a doctor, he's seen the fall out, he should know better. His eyes snap open again; he'd dozed off at a red light which was now green. The car horn was coming at him from behind. Ken jumps off the break and hits the gas and comes face to face with a bicycle. He catches the break again just before cutting the bike in half. He takes a deep breath, sees an image of himself throwing the cyclist off the bike into the intersection, listens to the car horn ramp up again, and then carefully pulls forward scared to blink.

Tara grabs her iPod and heads out the door. The iPod is the finishing touch to her very carefully crafted outfit. From head to toe, with her pink and black costume, Tara screams ‘Runner’. The morning run is a part of her routine that fits somewhere before 'eat breakfast' and somewhere after 'pack up school work'; it's all part of her receipt for surviving Wilson Memorial High. Tara starts her run at a good pace with the high energy of song one of her play list carrying her around the usual route. It's a fantastic morning. Tara has embraced the AM activity not only because it ensures that she can squeeze in some daily cardio, but also because it wakes her body up and launches her forward into the day with great energy. She picks up the pace a little more. She feels good. She smiles. Tara slows up and stops at a cross walk fifteen minutes into her half hour trek. She probably could have cranked out a mad dash across the intersection as the light changed but she was ready for a break, however short. She focuses on her breathing and turns up her musak. A bike slides passed her right shoulder sending her hair swirling. As a black Beamer shoots off the line, Tara is unable to do anything to stop the collision other than hold her breath and awkwardly contort her face. The car hit the breaks as quickly as it had jumped forward. Tara shakes her head and slowly blinks her wide eyes, shocked at the carelessness of the cyclist who tried to battle a few thousand pounds of Car. The bike clears the intersection showing no sign of understanding how close it was to becoming the new hood ornament for the 2009 BMW 750Li. Tara leaves the intersection without further incident, skips a slow song for a little Top-40 Pop, takes another break at the 23 minute point to tie her left shoe, needs to side-step a little fur-ball on a leash who goes for her ankles, and then without realizing it runs passed a driveway crossing paths with a busy Mitsubishi Outlander. Tara would later tell her friends at school about the cyclist who didn't even realize he was almost run over.

Cliff talks to himself in the mirror as he adjusts his silver and black tie. He sounds like a motivational tape gone wrong. “I look goooooood,” he says as he cracks a half smile. Running out the door in his power suit Cliff is equipped with a smart phone, a remote car starter, half an eaten Power Bar, a pair of black Ray-Bands, his Italian Man-Purse, and a BlueTooth headset pinned to his ear. Cliff doesn't skip a beat as he swings his purse into the passenger seat while jumping over the un-opened door of his convertible. He burns the tires as he guns the Mustang Cobra and tears off down the street. When he took over the right hand lane, ignoring the yield sign, he didn't even hear the Civic's horn. Cliff cackles wildly into his hands-free headset. With his conveniently free hands he finishes the Power Bar, shoots back a sugar-free Red Bull, and manages to kick out two texts and an email. At a stop light Cliff works the calendar on his cell. His day looks like a TV Times grid with a wide variety of programs planned out to the minute. He has set up conference calls during walk-and-talks after boardroom round-tables on his way to coffee breaks. He has planned the sending of contract confirmations via mobile, the booking of Tee-times with big-wigs, and the balancing of a risky portfolio with a gambler's blind confidence. All day he has planned out the juggling of ‘Personal’ and ‘Professional’ as he switches back and forth between Cliff-the-Socialite and Cliff-the-Suit, leaving a trail of charm in his wake. Now he is stuck behind a guy asleep at the wheel. “Eddie, hold on a second, I'm surrounded by idiots,” he beats on the Mustang's horn, “some douchbag is totally lost in life, messing with my situation.” Cliff hits the sleep-driver with his horn until they are through the intersection, at which point he punches it and rips around the slow motion car leaving only inches to separate the two fenders. That half smile draws itself across Cliff's face as the wind plays with his hair. “Eddie, the Stang’r is listening to me today, she's pulling off the moves before I can even think them up,” he gently touches the dash of his Mustang Cobra. Cliff cranks the wheel and slips between a pair of cars as he cuts directly across two lanes. He dodges back into the centre lane. Speeds up on the left and cruises passed a line of cars. Breaks and steers back into the centre lane, then the right, and over to the left. Cliff is feeling good. He laughs with Eddie, hangs up, peruses his cell’s Contacts list, and begins trying to set up a lunch date with half of his 'little black book of ladies'. He lobs the phone into the passenger's seat and looks for a little more beat from the radio. Head down, BlueTooth in, speed up, cell in and out of his shifting hand, Cliff makes his way to the 'Cliff J. Henderson' parking stall in front of the glossy office building. Cliff tells himself he is the Man!


Jim hangs up the phone and looks at the clock. His doctor’s appointment has just been moved from 2 in the afternoon to 8:30 in the morning. It was just before 8, he was going to need to survive rush hour traffic. Jim hates driving. He hates being that little old man who can barely see over the steering wheel. He hates needing to wear sun shields because of his sensitive eyes. He hates that no one drives the speed limit. He hates that he hates that no one drives the speed limit. He hates the sound of the car horn. He hates that people tail gate him. He hates that he is always getting lost going to places he has driven to a thousand times. He hates that he has to schedule his doctor’s appointments at exactly the right time so he can avoid needing to survive rush hour. Jim hates that he is THAT little old man behind the wheel, with the white hair, the feather-foot, the goofy shades, the signal light that is always on... he hates this because he has spent all his life ragging on what he has now become. Jim pulls out of his garage, asks God for strength and support, and creeps out into the morning rush. The one thing Jim doesn't hate about driving is his 1967 Cadillac Coupe Deville. The champagne coloured Cady sails along like a ship on calm open waters. Jim loves to stretch out and melt into the big bench seat. On a summer afternoon he will take the Cady out in the country, drop all the windows, and casually adjust the wheel as he watched the scenery cruise by. The thought brought a smile to his face. Just then a copper blur steals his smile and leaps from his rear-view mirror to the Cady’s passenger window to the full frame of his windshield. Jim jumps to his break just in time to catch a horn from a car that cosies up tight to his rear bumper. The copper blur disappears from his windshield and cuts across 2 lanes of traffic before leap-frogging a half a dozen other vehicles. Jim takes a deep breath, mutters to himself about how much he hates the new Mustangs, and spends the rest of the drive covering the break and working on his white knuckle grip. The doctor would later remark that Jim seems worn down and advises him to avoid over exerting himself.


It is environmentally friendly, it is great exercise, it is a real chick-magnet; these are all assumptions people have made for the motivation Craig has to cycle into work every morning. The truth is Craig just likes to ride his bike. He was up with the sun, had a great breakfast, and as he straps his helmet on and completes his superhero outfit with a pair of shades Craig thinks to himself 'what other reason do I need, this is a beautiful day for a ride'. Craig tears down a dirt trail through a small forested oasis hiding within the city. The winding path is his favourite part of the voyage; it's a great start to his day. Craig bends his bike through the woods and lets his mind climb the trees, touch the grass, and feel the warmth of the sun. As the forest thins and fades away Craig is thrown into the sanitized chaos of the down town grid. Traffic. Craig shifts mind sets storing away the wild Adventurer and letting the Driver guide him the rest of the way. Now it is a commute, now Craig has deadlines, now he needs to be ready to execute the 9-to-5. The light turns yellow. He leans right to miss a runner that has stopped at the intersection and pushes the pedals. The yellow disappears. Craig feels the building of energy as the intersection pulls half the cars to a stop and loosens its grip on the rest of the vehicles. The red light pops on. A horn blasts, an engine roars, and out of the corner of Craig's eye a black fender breaks the start line. There is no time to do anything except flinch. Craig clears the intersection. He's instantly exhausted from the panic that poisoned his body. He rolls to a stop, puts the bike down, and walks and thinks and thinks and walks and shakes his head and feels angry and scared and relieved. Craig jumps back on the bike and slowly continues towards the desk. A block passes without incident. A second block moves by with ease. Craig slows his bike as he approaches his building. He flinches as a battering of coughs and cries charges at him from his right. A Craig sized dog leaps up and chases after the string of barks that has hit Craig in the face. The leash catches the massive monster less than a foot away from the frozen cyclist. Craig rolls to a stop, puts the bike down, and longs for the dirt trail.

She skips to track five, rolls the volume from 10 to 18, and hits the gas. Whitney has the day off and is heading for the highway. The Girls Weekend has been the only thing getting her through the past few days. The plan is her, Sarah, Meghan, Shopping, Spa, Manis, Pedis, dinner, drinks, and the Timberlake concert. She rolls the volume up to 21, opens the window, and joins Justin for the second verse. As Whitney sings out the window at bumper to bumper misery, she feels giddy; the city is trudging to work and she is on vacation! She changes lanes and pushes a motorcycle onto the shoulder. She hits the breaks and stops singing. “Where did he come from?! I didn't see him! I didn’t even see him!” Whitney shakes her head with heavy self-loathing as she tentatively waves at the motorcyclist. The bike pulls back into the lane and speeds up creating a nice space cushion. “Stupid Whit! Stupid, stupid Whitney! Jeez...” she starts breathing again and drops the volume to 10. Five minutes pass. She hangs up her cell having told first Sarah and then Meghan that she would be another 10 or 15. Justin is back to level 18 for track 7. Whitney is humming along. Her smile is back. Without consciously processing the sequence of events Whitney hits the breaks hard, leans on the horn, and jumps back on the gas chasing after the copper Mustang. The Mustang ignores her Civic’s cries of anger. She hits the horn again, but the copper convertible has deked out a half dozen cars and disappeared. “D!ck!!!” Five minutes pass. Whitney and Justin perform a duet. Five minutes pass. Whitney pulls up in front of Sarah's apartment, and Sarah tosses two suitcases, a purse, three pairs of shoes, and a duffle bag into the Civic's trunk. 'I need a vacation,' Whitney tells Sarah. The Civic pulls away with Justin at level 21.

A moving van makes a sharp cut to the left just in front of Kevin and reveals a cyclist creeping along in the right lane. “Dammit!” Kevin breaks hard. He checks his mirrors and sees a solid stream of cars in the left lane. "Stupid bike! Doesn't he know I'm here," Kevin throws on his signal light after a block of puttsing along behind the bicycle. "What is this idiot doing on the road? Dammit!" Kevin finally sees an opening. He moves into the left lane and races his van forward swearing inaudibly at the cyclist as he passes.

Shelly watches the motorcycle in her rear-view. 'How can anyone do it?' she thinks to herself. A light up ahead turns yellow and Shelly eases off the gas. She checks for the bike in the rear-view - the bike is gone and there is the grill of a moving van filling her mirror. "Oh my God!" Shelly checks her side mirrors and find the motorcycle trying to create some space for itself again. "Horrible," she whispers to herself.

The car is at a stop light. Kristin can't believe what he just said. "You have got to be kidding me!? You're going to bring that up again after what happened Monday night?!?!" Kristin isn't even trying to hold back anymore, she doesn’t care about anything other than yelling at him. Brett glares out the passenger window, so angry with her he can't even handle the look of her face anymore. "Bitch..." he mutters. "What!!!!!" Kristin stares at him, "You're such a f&-king child." Brett notices the driver next to him has dozed off, he wishes he could just doze off and disappear.

Kerry pulls his taxi out of a merge and enters downtown. His shift is almost over and the beaten up driver’s seat is wreaking havoc on his back. He rolls into a right turn at the next intersection and veers left midway through the turn dodging a large dog pulling it's owner through the cross walk.

Missy woke Ted and his wife up ten minutes before their alarm. Ted hates waking up before his alarm, especially when it is Missy's growling bark and high pitched whine that does it. Ted throws some clothes on, grabs the leash, stubs his toe on the kitchen table, and wakes up after a block and a half of the Energizer-Missy dragging him at full speed, nearly dislocating his shoulder. Ted can't believe how loud downtown is at 8 in the morning. He wishes he could hit the snooze on the entire street. He wishes he was back in bed. He returns to the apartment and lets Missy off the leash. "How was it?" his wife asks. "I have no idea," Ted groans, "I need a coffee before I can process this type of stuff."

After three days of cold rain, wind, and flash attacks of hail, Jack is eager to start up his bike again. On his motorcycle, Jack's commute to the office is ten minutes, but when the sun shines he finds a way to make the trip closer to half an hour. It's just a taste of The Ride, but the idea of being on his bike as the morning sun floods the streets is what pries him out of bed. Jack straps his helmet on, tightens his gloves, and lets the bike purr as it warms up. Since Jack becomes a part of the bike the moment it starts moving he doesn't want any surprises. He pulls out from the garage and assumes that every vehicle wants to finish him off. There's no radio, no cellphones, no chit-chat, no distractions. And Jack wouldn't have it any other way. There's no time for distractions when every turn, intersection, and lane change has the potential to bring him inches from being eliminated. He doesn't fear the ride into work, but Jack respects the situation; a situation that involves his tiny two-wheeled 370lbs bike surrounding by hulking tanks of metal. Jack moves down his suburban street and enjoys the peace of a quiet road. He sways with his bike feeling the tires pull him from right to left and back again as he dips the motorcycle. The street is still asleep; Jack is riding in his own private world. It only lasts for a few minutes before he sees the end of the neighbourhood composure. The first set of lights turn from green to yellow to red as Jack slows to a stop checking to see if he is going to get pushed into the next wave of cross traffic by the car behind him. He isn't, at least not this time. He scans the intersection and sees a girl wearing a tremendous amount of pink nearly get clipped by a bicycle. The bike sprints in front of a line of cars where a black BMW who is being challenged by a loud horn jumps forward and almost crush the bike. A block later Jack slowly moves along with traffic and sees that the bicycle is a dozen cars away in the right hand lane. Jack watches as cars dart out of the right lane to get around the cyclist. As he closes in on the bicycle a large moving van forces its way into the nice little space Jack had made for himself. Jack eases on the rear break and lets the van do its thing; the van would bounce Jack and his bike off the road without so much as a dent to the van’s frame, leaving a piled up mess of motorcycle, Jack, and asphalt... no sense trying to battle. The traffic gets thicker. Jack strays from his route and tracks down another maze of neighbourhood tranquility. Along with several well nurtured flower gardens and too many mail boxes made of cute, Jack notices that the suburban houses are starting to wake up. Before rejoining the morning traffic Jack sees a busy SUV on a collision course with a set of jogging headphones, the same headphones that the girl wearing all the pink had been listening to when she was almost flattened by a bicycle. He enters the rush again and crosses through two more intersections of volume. Jack decides to take another detour, but not before a dog walking its owner grabs enough slack in the leash to force Jack to use his escape. In his mirror Jack sees the dog challenge a taxi who decides not to paint his hood with it and instead backs off. 5 minutes later Jack finds himself at an intersection with the same black BMW that had almost run over the bicycle that had almost run over the headphones and the girl in pink. The driver is 'resting his eyes' at the red light. Next to the Beamer is a small car with way too much angry woman yelling at a ticking timebomb of a man. Minutes later Jack sees a little grey car moving up in the right lane behind him. The lady driving the car is fully committed to the song she is listening to. The car pulls up next to Jack. He looks over at her as she sways her head wildly from side to side. She adjusts her grip on the steering wheel. 'Wow, she has no idea I'm here,' Jack laughs to himself. And then she moves left and slides right in next to Jack. 'Yep, here she comes. Awesome!' Jack covers up his panic with sarcasm. Mirror, Shoulder Check, Scan the road ahead. Jack edges into the right side of the shoulder, opens the throttle, pulls ahead of the singing, dancing, head bobbing lady in the grey car, and starts moving as far away as possible from her unpredictability. Jack winds his way through the down town grid and leaves the crowds for yet another detour. He catches up to a fantastic Cadillac, and lets himself look at it for an extra few seconds. After moving passed it he keeps track of the Cady in his mirrors, watching it casually glide along. This is how he sees the copper Mustang burn up onto the Cadillac's rear bumper. Jack wants no part of copper Mustangs and their flamboyant lane changes. Jack speeds up and finds a nice quiet space. Seconds later the Mustang has zig-zagged out of sight. Jack takes the next exit back towards downtown, he’s had enough fun for one morning. He manages to avoid anymore detours, parks his bike, and finds his cubicle. He sits at his desk and takes a second for himself. He is not surprised by the misadventures of the people behind the wheel, but he does wonder if any of them realize how close to disaster they stand.

Everyday. This fun fiction is fact everyday...