What Ever Happened to the Courtesy Wave?

I'll be brief today.  I've been working some crazy hours, and I haven't had my usual sled for almost three weeks, so its been a bit of an awful February.  Here we go...

Flash Returns
So, I got my car back from the mechanic that my wife usually uses.  Her family goes to him, and with Justin unavailable, I thought I'd try him.  In my last post, I lamented all the stuff I had to pay for, but he gave me a fair deal.  Unfortunately, when I got the car back, the turbo doesn't turn on anymore.  I think its a simple case of a vacuum line failing or the N75 going bad.  It just seemed peculiar to me that the turbo was working fine when Flash went into the shop, but now (many dollars later), I still have to do something on it.  Grr...

Traffic Patterns
Over the years, I've driven lots of miles.  From following the Dead around parts of the country, to delivering pizzas to basic commuting, I've driven many miles.  I'll make jokes about how I learned to drive in NY, and that meant you only needed 2 fingers: a middle one to communicate visually and one for the horn.  There's a spark of truth in that, though.  There is a whole means of communicating through your horn that many drivers don't understand.  There's the "hey buddy" short toot, the "wake up" long blast and the repeated medium-length "you're an idiot" honks.  All I hear anymore are the one-shot medium length "I'm pissed because I think you invaded my personal space" honks.  Boo.  Learn more.

Hand Waving
Take away the middle-finger-for-communicating joke, and there are many ways to communicate with just hand gestures.  We "palms up" to show no-harm-meant and wave someone in front of us with varied degrees of condescension: the holier-than-thou single waft over the wheel, the frantic I'm-in-a-big-hurry waving, even a frowny faced one-wave come-hither.  They all effectively say the same thing: I'm letting you in, but I really don't have to.  What has all but disappeared, though, is the response once they have gotten in front: the in-front-of-the-cabin-rear-view-mirror big-arm wave of thanks.  This is perhaps the biggest indication of traffic politeness decay.  When traffic merges, and you slide into a spot that barely fits, you big-arm wave.  Most drivers will give you about 2 seconds to do so before they retort with tailgating, headlight flashes or the poorly-spoken "you're an idiot" medium length honk.  Please make the extra effort and help calm everybody down.  Its not a race...

That's about it for today.  I think I found the true source of the leak on the bus a couple of weeks ago.  I'll post on that individually later.  Thanks for following along...