Day One: How To Cut Someone Off At A Toll

Okay - so I'm sitting in traffic on the way to the Bay Bridge. The Supreme Court has just issued what has to be it's dumbest ruling in a decade, I've just had another excellent lunch at Ben's Chili Bowl, and I'm once again considering that I need a new online outlet since I've stopped posting to Usenet when this jay-hole in a BMW SUV cuts me off in line.

Normally, I have my EZ-Pass, and I'm blithely slipping past cars in line for the manual lanes (TIP FOR READERS: when approaching the Bay Bridge Toll Plaza, the EZ-Pass lane on the Far RIGHT is your best bet - there's normally very little line, and on days when there's an additional Eastbound lane you're not locked into a solitary and much slower lane going against the Westbound traffic), but I'd traded cars with my wife in order to take my girls home early on Friday afternoon.

So I was stuck in the "Cash Only" lanes like every other amateur, and someone who didn't realize that that the big yellow sign above the empty lane said, "EZ-Pass Only" decided to cut me off. It was at that point that I realized that I ought to start putting down these tasty nuggets into a Blog - to catch that wave, albeit, what, two years too late?

But I get up to the toll plaza, and I notice that the driver of the SUV is gesturing towards me to the booth operator. I think, "he can't be!" But sure enough, he was.

Damn if the guy didn't pay my toll.

I caught up to him on the bridge, pulled up alongside, smiled and saluted.

And that leaves me with a tip for all you campers as the Summer season starts: if you find yourself in the unenviable position of having to cut someone off at a toll because you've made some dumb mistake, follow the example of my friend here. A little gesture like this goes a long way.

That's how we're going to begin things here on the Liberty Blog. It's going to be a smattering of what's on my mind (aren't all blogs like that?) at any given point in time: the little things that get me going during the day, big political issues that have transpired, reviews of restaurants that I've been to (I'm a bit of a "foodie"), perhaps a discussion of something that has caught my ire.

As I mention above, I used to write a great deal on Usenet - largely on the groups "sci.environment" and "alt.support.breast-implant" (no, I don't have implants. It's a long story.). Feel free to go and look at some of my posts: http://tinyurl.com/c3hso . I've sharply curtailed that writing, largely because I've become disheartened at the sharp decline in civil discourse. I've also grown tired of having to have the same discussions of the same issues with the same people, over and over and over again.

But I look forward to your readership - and to reading your comments.

Sincerely,

Andrew Langer