newjerseynewsroom.com

BY ROGER WITHERSPOON

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

CAR REVIEW

It was a raining on a Friday evening – a really bad time to be on the Taconic Parkway.

The scenic highway starts about 20 miles north of New York City and winds its way to the Massachusetts border. But about 40 miles north of the City limits it narrows from three lanes each way to two and the wide shoulders are abruptly replaced by imposing, encroaching concrete walls. The transformation from a scenic, six-lane, rustic highway to a narrow fast-moving blind alley is akin to forcing a wide, placid river through a steep canyon, transforming it in the process into unruly rapids. In this case, rapids with wheels and bumpers.

Traffic was comprised of an unholy mixture of tired motorists hurrying to get home after a week’s work, including some who were afraid of water and didn’t drive faster than a brisk walk; and a dangerous few had already started their weekend partying and shouldn’t have been allowed behind the wheel.

The Dodge Charger getting ever larger in my rear view mirror was easy to spot. The driver was evidently one of the early party crowd, whose car moved faster than the other vehicles on the Taconic and he could not manage to color within the white dotted lines. His weaving was forcing one car after another to squeeze either dangerously close to the concrete wall or the puny center divider while the Charger weaved obliviously past.

It did not take long to realize the fast moving drunk driver in the sports car was likely to hit me unless I found a way to make room. Unfortunately, that meant accelerating from about 50 miles an hour to about 80 and weaving past two cars in the left and right lanes while on a wet S-curve on an unlit, rain-soaked highway. That was not a normally sane option, but the idiot driver with the fine muscle car didn’t leave much choice – he intended to barrel through whether I got out of his way or not.

So I downshifted the six-speed Volvo C-30 from 5th to 4th gear and hit the accelerator. The turbocharged, sport hatchback jumped forward in the right lane as if kicked and the speedometer spun past 80 as I zipped around the first car and then moved left into the fast lane in the middle of a sharp rightward curve. I noted gratefully that the Volvo’s 18-inch wheels were hugging the road as tightly as a newly minted NBA player hugs his signing bonus, and there was daylight between me and madman in the Charger. So I slid the transmission into fifth gear, accelerated to 85, zipped past the second car while on the leftward curve and then passed the second car and moved into the slow lane. I had slowed back to 60 before the Charger caught up, straddling the middle line and rolled by, picking up both speed and attracting the attention of a State Trooper.