Whitneys <whitneys@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>With some determination, caffeine, and maybe a co-driver, you
>can do most in 2 vac. days, leave after work thursday, and try
>to get in 300-500 miles before crashing for a few hrs. Then
>catch the remaining 800 to 1000 miles on friday. Get in late it friday,
>and do early registration and tech sat. morning.
As the resident "expert" on driver fatigue, let me pass along
one *major* caution. The first hour or so after sunrise and
the last hour or so before sunset contain a hidden danger,
especially on north-south roads. What is it??? Tree shadows!
Those nice pine trees that the gob'ment planted next to many
interstates to make them look pretty cast rhythmic shadows
across the highway. You are getting sleepy...very sleepy...and
next thing you know, you're waking up in a ditch surrounded by
water moccasins. :-( Whenever I'm on a long trip, I always
stop for breakfast in the morning when I notice the tree
shadows starting to form. Other sources of road hypnotism
are the dotted line and your windshield wipers. Make sure
to make a conscious effort to look away from both from time
to time.
>This is not necessarily the best method for optimum driver
>performance - at the harrisburg pro sat. afternoon (left from
>dallas at about midnite thursday - trying to get the new tow
>vehicle prepped) I was trying to red light, but could not react
>and launch fast enough - even when I thought I was leaving
>before the last yellow came on :)
Been there, done that. During the One Lap, I had to drive the
drag races in Memphis after leaving a nice warm bed in Las Vegas
about 35 hours earlier. I've got a stack of .50x and .51x
reaction time slips (.500 is perfect), and yet the best that I
could manage was a 1.68 at Memphis! I was out-launching
the competition with 1.8's! There was just no way that
I could bring myself to leave on the *first* yellow..... :-(
-Arthur ("Drove 2900 miles over a weekend for a birthday party
last month" edition.)
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