Channeling Grandpa Again...No Zen Here

My paternal grandfather grew up in an area of western Pennsylvania riddled with winding two-lane roads.  As the family story goes, whenever he'd get stuck behind a truck in a no-passing zone, which apparently happened often, he'd start mumbling under his breath about "bastards," his epithet of choice for slow-moving vehicles.  

For the last twelve years, I've lived a good seven miles from the nearest real form of civilization on a winding, two-lane road.  In those seven miles, there are a grand total of two passing zones, neither of which is very long.  For various historical and logistical reasons, a number of older people live in my area, and to add insult to injury, this road also has a lot of truck and tractor traffic.  (What, your neighborhood roads don't have tractors and hay wagons and combines--along with sturdy Buicks--rolling along them regularly???  Ha--welcome to the boonies.)  Anyway, my recollection from Driver's Ed is that it's ok to drive as slowly as you want (within reason) as long as you pull the hell over and let people pass you if they want to drive faster than you're going.  Yeah, I'm that soccer mom in the Volvo impatiently sitting on your ass if you're poking along at 35 in a 45 zone, unless it's raining hard or snowing or there's some other good reason to be poking along.  The flip side of this is that I do actually let people by me if they want to go faster, too...after all, they might as well flush out any speed traps for me.  :)  Yes, patience is not exactly my strong suit, but we knew that.  I figure that I'm doing ok as long as my kids don't learn any new epithets from me!!  So far, so good (I think.)