Picture This

I'm driving to my writers group meeting. It's been raining, so the roadbed is wet. It's nighttime, so it's dark. Not just regular dark, but out-in-nature-overcast-with-no-moon DARK. The only illumination comes from my headlights. It's cold and damp, so the highway is occasionally wrapped in patches of fog. I'm watching out for animals. I have 18 miles to drive, and there's a four-mile stretch of construction where the highway width is constricted and the speed limit is restricted to 35 miles per hour. There are a couple of nasty curves onto and out of detours, curves that I don't want to take faster than 35 mph, especially in this enveloping darkness, so I don't much appreciate the yahoo behind me who is trying to get up my tailpipe. This is white-knuckle driving, but because said yahoo has forgotten to dim his brights, I have to deal, not only with dimming my own bright headlights when oncoming 18-wheelers approach, but with the intense light from behind, which reflects off, not only my rearview mirror, but my side mirror, as well. I can do something about the rearview--one snap of the adjustment and it's on the night setting that cuts my rearward vision significantly. I can't do much about the side mirror, though. Except one thing.

Picture this: me steering with my right hand, holding up my left hand to block the searing light from my side mirror, while squinting against the brights of the truck coming toward me on the two lane highway through the mountains, up hill and down, and around the curves.

And I'm wondering if a tire is going flat.

I think I need a sedative!