As I’ve talked about before (yeah, I looked but couldn’t find the link), when it rains in Seattle, my commute to work takes on nightmarish proportions—we’re talking the devil has risen from Hell, hide your children because he’s hungry-proportions. People—and I’m talking about those who wanted me to move and work here—told me that rain in Seattle was mild. Yeah, they said, there would be rain, but it would be of the drizzle variety. People don’t even use umbrellas here, they went on. The rain is that gentle. What they forgot to tell me is that when it rains, people forget how to drive. They decide that the normal 60 mph speed limit (which is ambitious, since most people feel more comfortable driving at a cozy 40 or so mph) drops to around 20 mph, causing traffic backups on each of the three highways I traverse to get to work.

I occasionally suffer road rage. I know what it is, I’ve felt it, and I’m disgusted with myself for succumbing to it, but it happens. After the red mist (I saw it described that way, so I can’t take credit) evaporates, I see how foolish it was. For the extra three seconds that my commute takes, I create all sorts of dangerous conditions, raising my blood pressure and turning what should be a calm, restful drive into a horror show. But, as you will see, I was completely in the right.

I take Rainer Avenue to the entrance of I-90 east on my way to work. At the entrance ramp, the highway flows through a tunnel under a hill and onto a floating bridge. Before entering the tunnel, the three lanes of I-90 east break up, with two of the lanes remaining on the left of a divider, and the third lane merging with the entrance ramp on the right of the divider. In the rush-hour traffic, the entrance ramp and the right lane in the tunnel are slow.

There is an unwritten (but highly effective) rule that controls what happens when the right lane of I-90 west merges with the entrance ramp. The drivers in both lanes are supposed to use the Zipper. The Zipper is the most efficient way of merging two lanes. When used effectively, the Zipper eliminates almost all traffic problems caused by the merger. It is the Holy Grail of driving. I hear, and this is only hearsay, that it cures cancer. For those who don’t know what the Zipper is (and if you don’t and drive, you should be ashamed of yourself), the Zipper is when cars use the every-other approach to a slow merge of two lanes. You let one car in front of you, and then the next guy lets one car in front of her, until you have an effective and highly coordinated merging of traffic. Lest you get confused, you should not use the Zipper in every instance of a merger. A prime example of a non-Zipper moment is an entrance to the highway. The drivers on the highway have the right-of-way and the driver merging has to wait for his opportunity. Unlike that situation, the tunnel merge on I-90 west can move efficiently when the Zipper is used.

I’m sure you see where this is going, but I will explain the details, since that’s what I do, explain things. I’m driving. The commute has already been a bit difficult because of the slow moving traffic on Rainer caused not by the Seattle drivers, but by large puddles in the right lane. The light-controlled entrance onto I-90 west is moving well, and I get through it with little hassle. I accelerate to the tunnel and I’m driving next to the right lane of I-90 west. Up ahead, the cars in both lanes go through a single-lane tunnel that leads onto the floating bridge. I watch the cars in front of me, marveling at the effective use of the Zipper, when it becomes my turn at the end of the dotted white line (the Zipper should occur at the last possible moment for it to be most effective), the car in front of me falls into his spot and I allow the car in the other lane to zipper behind him. I prepare to take my place in the Zipper, when I notice that the next car, the one that, if he understood the Zipper, would zipper behind me, is tailgating the car in front of me, not allowing me into the Zipper. The car is a small red Toyota, with an after-market two-pipe exhaust.

I think that maybe he doesn’t understand the Zipper. He is from Seattle, and I know that the drivers here are, to put it lightly, deficient. I pull my car up until I am driving next to the red Toyota and signal for him to move back. It’s clear that he does not intend to let me in. There are rules on the road, important rules, and this red Toyota, with his cheap exhaust, is breaking those rules, causing mayhem, destroying traffic patterns, threatening the very social standards that we must live under for society to function. I drive next to the red Toyota toward the tunnel, both tailgating the car in front of us, looking for an opening. I see red mist and I’m yelling at the guy, even though he can’t possibly hear me through the closed window. Finally, we reach the tunnel, and I risk either hitting him, or the tunnel wall, and I pull back. I slam my window with my palm as I let him pass, just to signal that he’s an asshole. I turn on the bright lights on my car and tailgate him through the tunnel, leaving a little distance to ensure that he can see my headlights in his rearview mirror.

As you can see, my reaction and the situation were ridiculous. Yes, the red Toyota should have abided by the Zipper. But what did I lose? We both ended up at the same place at about the approximately same time. It was just the principal of it, the principal and the road rage of the situation.

This leads me into my next story idea: the zipper story, slightly embellished, told from two competing points of view.