Rules of the Road

Rules of the Road By Sybil Barnes

I’ve had a Colorado driver’s license for more than fifty years.  Not many things make me feel as old as that sentence does.
Back in the day, one could get a learner’s permit at 15 and that meant driver’s ed was on the curriculum for sophomore or junior year in high school.  One day a week we watched those gruesome state patrol videos with totally mangled cars and police officers giving us a serious look and a sonorous lecture about how dangerous it is to drink and drive. Or drive with a car full of teenagers trying to distract you by asking who your current crush was or whether you were going to the basketball game or the wrestling match. 

The other four days three of us at a time actually got to go out in a car with the teacher, who was also the football coach and the counsellor.  The rest of us had study hall. Since there were more than twenty of us in the class, that meant we had a chance to be in the car every two weeks.  And since it was a 90 minute period, that meant we each had about 20 minutes of time behind the wheel.

Some days we drove around the downtown practicing how to parallel park and how to stop at red or yellow lights. Other days we went out in the country and learned about how to pass other cars or change a flat tire.  The driver’s ed car had a “three on the tree” manual transmission, which was quite a challenge for some of us. Towards the end of the quarter when we all had mastered the basics, we each got a full period to be the driver on Skyline Drive, a one-way scenic loop along a hogback to the west of town. That was a challenge for those of us who felt  the road was a little too narrow and winding on the way up. And we all had to learn to use a lower gear instead of riding the brake all the way down the steep east side, which we used as a sledding hill in the winter.

I think about driver’s ed a lot when I go to Boulder or Loveland or over to Allenspark or Grand Lake. One of the first things we learned was “look at least three to five car lengths in front of you and scan both sides of the road as well as the traffic lanes.”  This tip comes in handy when the elk or deer pop up from the ditch to cross the road and also when the car, two cars in front of you, decides to stop to turn into an unmarked driveway.  
Another tip was “try to keep a consistent speed.” My favored speed is 40-50 mph on dry pavement.  There are only a few places where this means I am going under a posted speed limit of 55. Many times it means I am going over the posted speed limit of 35 for a curve.  
I have driven the four egress routes from Estes Park at least once a week and sometimes up to once or twice a day for many decades. I have some muscle memory about where those curves are.  As long as the road is dry, the posted speed limit is conservative.  When the roads are icy or snow-packed and/or when there’s fog, 35 mph is possibly too fast for any section of the road.
My father used to say “Don’t take your half of the road out of the middle.” People who aren’t used to driving on curvy mountain roads tend to hug the center line and sometimes slide over it, so I usually tend toward the fog line on the outside of the road. 

It takes 30 minutes to get to Lyons. Plan for that.  Once upon a time I had a low-slung muscle car which one of my friends described as moving like “a swift gray rain cloud.”  In that car, late at night when there was no traffic, I’ve gotten to or from Lyons in 22 minutes.  But I’ve also been in a line of traffic from Lyons to Estes for the Scottish Festival or some other event when it took 90 minutes to see Lake Estes. 
Now I have a Subaru. Even if you pass all the looky-loos going down/east  on the straightaway at Meadowdale, you will probably end up behind somebody else before you get to the round house or Tedderville.  And you will definitely end up just in front of  the same car at the stoplight in Lyons.  Or maybe you’ll be the lucky one who catches the attention of the Colorado State Patrol or the Larimer County Sheriff. 
The next place to pass legally is about nine miles out of town, near the house on the hill which used to have an entrance gate marked “Ensenada.”  (There’s another way to identify yourself as “of a certain age.”  You tend to make references to places and/or things that don’t exist  anymore.)  You can hope that the lollygagger in front of you in the rental car with fleet license plates will be intimidated by your aggressive tailgating and pull over before that at the Homestead Meadows trailhead parking lot, also known as Lion Gulch.  But if you’re behind me and I’m already going 15 miles over the speed limit, I don’t think you need to pass.  Cool your jets and enjoy the scenery.

Just this past week there have been two crashes at the passing lanes just west of Lyons. Both resulted in fatalities. Considering the volume of traffic that uses this road, it surprises me that it doesn’t happen more often. As they used to say on some 1980s tv show (maybe Barney Miller or maybe Hill Street Blues) - Be safe out there