The Stephen King Truck Driver

After we got home from North Carolina, we went into medical mode.  First I had really fun diagnostic tests on Monday and Tuesday.  On Wednesday was Janet's quarterly appointment with her rheumatologist.  This is an appointment to which I always look forward.  This guy is so efficient, communicates so well and has done so much to make Janet's life more livable that each trip seems to do something wonderful.  The disadvantage is that he practices in Brunswick which is well over a hundred miles from Statesboro.  The drive is not bad.  Most of it is either on I-16  or I-95, and along the way are a couple of outlet malls, and we know some good restaurants in the area not to mention that the salt marshes and inlets from the sea are really lovely no matter what the season.

We had just turned from I-16 to I-95 and I was in the outside lane when a long eighteen wheeler passed me and came up behind a box truck.  I was going faster than the box truck, so I went past them and noted that the big truck was tail gating the box truck so closely that there wasn't five feet between them.  I went past them and began to work my way into the center lane when the big truck went past me, still in the same lane, so I was really curious about what happened to the truck he was tailgating, I never saw it again) as if I were standing still (and I was only a very little bit above the speed limit.)

I probably would not have thought anything more about it if I hadn't rounded a curve  and found him again tailgating a truck very closely (this time a tanker), by coincidence I ended up beside him again because the car ahead of me was driving beside the tanker at about the same speed, so the  big truck beside me was boxed in behind the tanker and beside me.  This continued until the driver of the big truck got frustrated, moved over close to me and began to blow his air horn.  I really had no place to go, but the tanker turned off at an exit  and the big truck blew past me and down the road.  I had a chance at this time to look at the side of the cab and noted that the truck was from either Darnel Trucking or Darvel Trucking from some town in Florida that began with an S' .  ( I will refer to that truck as Darnel because "big truck" is a little non specific in a world filled with big trucks.)

For the next thirty minutes, Darnel was in view, sometimes  ahead of me, sometimes behind me.  I came to the conclusion that the driver was crazy, drugged, or obsessed with the Stephen King (I think) book about the truck that pursued someone down the highway.   He switched lanes shifting between traffic pockets like a grand prix driver (or someone in a sports car on the Atlanta bypass), yet he never seemed to gain any time on me.  He was almost constantly in view, sometimes in front, sometimes in the rear view mirror.  He seemed to intentionally drop into pockets where he could tailgate some other car or truck and twice he came up behind me so closely that I couldn't see the top of his grill in the rear view mirror.  I thought at first he was playing some kind of "I'm bigger than you, get out of my way" sort of bullying playground game till I remembered that the first two events like this that I saw, he was tailgating fairly big trucks.  Eventually we came to a State Weighing Station and he pulled off into it.  I was relieved not to have him on the same highway with me.   I buzzed on down the highway about five miles faster than legal (it is a Georgia thing) until we entered a construction zone near where we turn off for the doctor's office and, just as we turned off, he came barreling down the road at high speed in a place that was marked 40 mph (with signs that fines are doubled in a construction zone).  I assume that he had very good radar, or good into about where the State Patrol would be stationed.  I was glad to see him blow by.  If he had turned off where I turned off, I might still be cowering behind some billboard or service station in South Georgia.