CenterLeft.net

I’ve finally done it; I’ve gone off and become a card carrying member of society. That’s right I, Jesse Doerr, got a drivers license. Despite my best efforts to resist, it still happened eventually. Well, okay… truly it has less to do with any sort of active resistance than the fact that I just didn’t care up until now. But now I have a need; that and a license is required for my motorcycle instruction class next weekend.

It really is no wonder that drivers in Iowa suck; their test to get a license is a cake walk. I’m not tying to say that I’m a great driver or anything. I just feel that there were a few more skills that they probably should have double checked I have before giving me the right to drive a couple tons of steel at 70 miles an hour down the highway.

Now please understand, I’m not badmouthing the state merely because it’s flat and the people who drive here are from the Midwest. No, I have seen some things on the roads that you wouldn’t even believe. I have heard people warn their siblings when they come to visit about Iowa drivers, to expect them to be aiming for you. And it is true. For whatever reason, there seem to be a few sets of skills that just aren’t common in Iowa. To name a few: merging and parallel parking. To better help anyone that may come to visit, I thought I would put together a bit of a guide on how to drive in Iowa.

Merging:

Merging onto an Iowa highway is a delicate procedure. On must be careful to never exceed the posted onramp cautionary speed. In fact, it would probably just be better if you went well under this speed. Never mind the fact that you will soon be sharing a road with vehicles traveling much faster than you are. There’s a reason why they pave these roads and put a fancy extra right lane in, it’s to give you lots of extra room to get up to speed.

Parallel Parking:

Be careful, if you read the warning on your mirrors, you will know that they are completely unreliable for seeing how close you are to the car behind you. To help you find where the car behind you truly is, the fine people that made your car installed bumpers. Like feelers on a blind mole, your bumpers are intended to help you feel your way into the parking spot. So just throw your car into reverse, ease back gently, and when you feel that little bump, you know you are lined up and ready to swing your nose into the spot.

So my advice to anyone coming to visit the Midwest is: watch your back. Expect to be hit, and if you are walking the streets, don’t look for traffic to stop for you.

Enjoy your day, and enjoy those crazies out there on the road.

College dating

What is this? This is Flunk Day! Or it was, and I think this set of pictures sums it all up. If you are blind and can’t see the pictures, put your hands on the screen and I’ll spell it out in brail for you. :..:::”;;;::.:@;**,,!::: (For those of you that can’t read brail, I’ll translate: “Freshmen get beer, freshmen drink beer, girls have fun.”)

Now, we all know that the Princeton Review uses the word party at least a half dozen times to describe Coe, but Flunk Day is just something you have to see to believe. The day starts early in the morning with a howling pack of seniors running through the halls, banging on doors, and generally just letting people know that Flunk Day is indeed today. Though I do have to say, there is nothing quite as frightening as being invited to come out and drink by a pack of lushes pounding on your door so hard that it sounds like it is going to fall in. (Yes, there have been broken doors in the past) We christened the new day by cracking a beer and sitting back to read the annual Flunk Day Paper (tabloid trash). By 6 am the adrenaline had worn off and we were able to fall back asleep again until the kegs were tapped at 11.

The rest of the day was full of eating, drinking, and bouncing on inflatable obstacle courses. The night cap to the event was a live band playing long into the night for the drunken and sun burned students.

Below I’ve put up a few more telling photographs. (The truly fun ones aren’t being show to protect the innocent and leave me the possibility of blackmail later.)

No beer and no TV… (Wait, maybe I have that backwards.)