One of these years, I must watch Steven Speilberg's "Duel"

It was raining from the first/ and I was dying there of thirst/ so I came in here...

Bob Dylan

Another day of driving for hours on end. The "highlight" of the day was almost getting run off the road by a truck.

When I started out, it was raining heavily. That soon turned into one of those massive downpours where you can barely see 50 feet in front of you. So despite the fact the nominal speed limit was 65 mph, most vehicles were going way under the limit.

I was on a two-lane highway, passing a truck, which was probably doing 45 or 50. I wasn't going too much faster, but really wanted to get around it. When you're behind a truck in that sort of weather, it kicks up billions of droplets, swamping your windshield wipers at even the highest setting. There's a big difference between almost no visibility and no visibility.

I'm not sure if I was in the truck's blind spot, or something happened in the right lane, but suddenly it began to swerve into my lane. I started heading to the left, off the road, into the median.

Fortunately, the trucker realized what was happening (or the right lane became safe again) and swerved back; I was only halfway off the road at the time. Nobody was hurt, though I was shaken enough I decided to pull over at the next exit and take a lunch break, even though there was only a Burger King.

Other than that, not much happened. Here are two observations about the radio stations I heard.

South Carolina has a lot of public radio stations. More specifically, they have one public radio station, but it broadcasts on something like six frequencies, depending where in the state you are. It was strange; I'd be listening to a program, and when it got out of focus and I started flipping through the channels, I'd hear it again a couple of stations over.

Also, while it's not the mos headbanging song ever written, "Rock Me Gently" is very clearly a rock song. It even uses the word "rock" in its very title. But I heard some country cover while flipping through. It's not a song that can be toned down much from the original and still work, and the watered down country version was frighteningly bad.