This past weekend my freelance work took me to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for Big East Basketball at Pitt. The forecast for snow and sleet kept me from flying to the gig, and instead had me driving from Indianapolis. I don’t mind. I love driving. Even when a trip from Muncie to Cedar Point (Sandusky, OH) takes me in to Michigan. Go ahead, look it up on Google Maps.

Idiot, right?

Right.

Anyway, the trip this past weekend took me on I-70 through eastern Indiana and all of Ohio. Here are the things I noticed:

• Pennsylvania drivers are either:
  • Crazy fast
  • Crazy slow
• Ohio drivers love the left lane. I mean, they’ll go to the courthouse and marry the thing. 60 MPH in the left lane. Being passed on the right. By trucks. WAKE UP BUCKEYES!
• Indiana drivers with the “In God We Trust” plates are the rudest drivers on the highway. Some of those Christians aren’t very Christian-like. I got cut off by two different drivers with that plate, was tailgated by three other (and note that I drive damn fast, so to tailgate me is impressive) and more than half of them didn’t use their turn signals at all.

So, here are a few tips I would like everyone to remember.

Get out of the left lane! It’s for PASSING not for DRIVING. Aggressive driving would decline significantly if some of you would get that through your heads.

Get in your car and look at your steering wheel. That stick that comes out of the left side? It’s called a “turn signal.” Oddly enough it’s used to signal turns, not just to drive around town with your brights on like you already do. Instead of pulling it towards you, try pushing it up or down, it might take a little bit of force since you haven’t used it ever. If you push it up, it signals a right turn, down signals a left. I know it’s confusing, but I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it eventually.

We get a lot of comments on the blogs over at rtv6blogs.com. Most of the comments we receive are great: political, insightful, fun. Occasionally we get spammed on posts, or hit with spammed trackbacks. The worst are the readers who actually take their time to tell us that it’s a waste of space:

A new comment on the post #591 “A New Addition” is waiting for your approval
http://rtv6blogs.com/rtv6_toddandtrisha/2008/12/26/a-new-addition/

Author : Anchor fodder
E-mail : anon@anon.com
Comment:
Good Lord, this is a waste of space.  I can’t believe that WRTV pays these two bubble-headed goofballs to post every rambling thought that comes in their heads.  I’ll avoid reading their “blogs” in the future.

So what do they hope will happen because of their comment? That we’ll tell the anchors to stop blogging? That we’ll approve the comment and tell you that you’re right?

If you don’t want to read the blog, then don’t. Websites don’t have the pervasive presence of television or radio. When you turn your computer on, you don’t automatically get sacked with websites (unless you have a spyware or adware problem). So why complain about something you can avoid? It’s not like we’re pushing religious or political views (except on the Capitol Watchblog, and there that’s expected).

Just because you don’t think the content is worth your time doesn’t mean it’s not a blog. It’s still a blog. So watch where you put those quotation marks.

I just don’t understand the point of sending this e-mail.

Oh, and we don’t pay the anchors to blog. We pay them to be on television.