I used to drive semi’s. I was in a long nose W900 Kenworth, it had a Cat engine and no mufflers on the engine brake. It also had various settings for the engine brake, from obnoxious to really obnoxious. The pipes pointed straight up. When I got it on the highway it would roll, my boss liked horsepower in his trucks.
I was stuck in traffic in Atlanta on the 285 going around Atlanta. I hate 285, its crazy at the best of times.
Middle of the day, it was hot, it was bumper to bumper, we would move 20 feet and stop. It was killing my paycheck, I got paid by the mile. Then the Fartcan showed up. The Fartcan was a little yellow convertible with the top down, a guy laughing and talking on the phone. He would wait for the traffic to move and stop, run the Fartcan up in first gear and then drop the throttle making a loud obnoxious sound.
The first 20 times it was just irritating. The next 10 started to get on my nerves. The next dozen times I had had it, then I saw it, a concrete overpass. He ran up and was just under the overpass when I got the chance. The traffic had moved just right for me to run that Cat up in 2nd and drop the throttle, engine brake set on “really obnoxious.” The pipes pointed straight up at the concrete made the sound even louder, echoing down in the cars.
Then I almost wrecked.
See the guy dropped the phone, looked over his shoulder with sheer terror on his face and tried to climb out of his car, which remember is a clutch. It lurched forward and he struggled to get it stopped almost hitting the car in front of him before he killed it. Digging for his phone he stopped looking at me and tried to get it started again.
I felt bad, a little, wait, no that’s a lie.
OK, really, I laughed so hard I almost lost my footing on my clutch and was in danger of peeing my pants. Amazingly he didn’t run the car up and make noise anymore, I didn’t either.
The rest of my day seemed pleasant for some reason.
