With Norm Park somewhere on the plains of Africa trying to avoid being eaten by a lion, you are stuck with me filling this space for a few weeks.
In honour of our friend Norm, I would like to touch on one of his favourite subjects - Highway 39.
I personally try to avoid that road at all costs, but sometimes there's no choice. Thursday I had to drive to Weyburn for the South East Cornerstone Public School Division monthly board meeting. Honestly it might have been safer to get a revolver and play Russian roulette.
First off, the road was garbage because of a storm the night before that left a nice layer of ice and snow caked on the highway. It's never fun to drive on that, but hey, we're from Saskatchewan. If we didn't drive on bad roads we would never drive at all in the winter. You take a little extra time, exercise some common sense and slow down.
At least that's how it used to be.
My trip to Weyburn, which took 90 minutes, was a front row seat to stupidity at its finest. The drive to Macoun was fine, but that is where traffic got bunched up in a convoy behind a plow. It's never fun being forced to drive 80 km on the highway but it's far from the end of the world. Just outside of Midale the plow, which really acted like more of a Zamboni than a plow, pulled off the road to let traffic by.
The result was similar to when the green flag comes out at the Estevan Motor Speedway. About six of the 12 or so vehicles in the convoy pulled out to see if the road was clear for a pass. Even with a steady stream of semis bearing down on them, three went for a pass.
Once I got through Midale, the road got even worse. In some places it was glare ice. By this point, the convoy was about eight vehicles long and I was the sixth vehicle. I was in no rush so I just resigned myself to staying where I was as did the majority of other drivers. Except one. There's always gotta be one, right?
This donkey planted behind the steering wheel of a semi ripped by all eight vehicles at easily 120 km/h and just barely slipped back into the his lane to avoid an oncoming vehicle.
The rest of the drive was uneventful but that semi stuck in my head. This driver could easily have caused an accident with his brilliant manoeuvres. And whoever he hit would have been dead on impact while he most likely would have walked away. Why? All to save what? Twenty minutes?
I know there has been a lot of talk about twinning Highway 39 and I am all for it. But until that happens, if it ever does, people need to stop driving like idiots on that road. It will be a minimum of 10 years before we see twinning occur. It makes my stomach turn to think about how many people will die in that time because of idiots like the one I encountered Thursday.
Believe it or not, Norm Park really is somewhere in Africa right now and given his hatred of technology, I'm not entirely sure he'll ever come back. In the meantime, if you have any comments send them to editor@estevanmercury.ca
