22 Hours is my limit
I proved I'm no Jack Bower this weekend on my road trip to Detroit. When I announced I was no longer safe to drive, I had been awake for 22 hours, and had spent 11 of those behind the wheel. This is probably a lot for most people and it was certainly a lot for me, but I knew my limits, I knew to stop when I reached them, and I knew I wasn't going to be penalized for not going all the way. (I actually gave up the wheel, 1.5 hours from our hotel in Detroit.)
I am not the sort of driver who sits behind the wheel of a giant tool which takes me from point "A" to point "B". When I drive I don't get behind the wheel so much as wear the vehicle like a shirt. I stretch out and ooze deep down into the electrical and braking systems, right down to my four rubber soled shoes. Armor, raincoat, and spacesuit, with wings on my feet.
Many drivers use the energy they have to go as far as they can, and what they have is what they bring with them. I augment my own energy with that of the vehicle, it can't replace my own, but it can help make mine last longer. This ability doesn't come without a price. In the end I always seem to end up writing an IOU for energy and it always takes days to pay back.
Thus, the night went smoothly, from our pull out of Greensboro at 8pm, until the following morning, where I was hoping for a boost from the sun, instead I got danger, and I mean that spooky kind. The information from the vehicle never stops, but when the micro sleeps come all of my personal senses go away. Because I'm still getting so much information from the vehicle it takes longer for me to realize that for just a moment I was completely blind to what was right in front of me on the road.
I've got 13 in the vehicle, I'm doing 75 miles per hour, I'm effectively blind for a few seconds at the time. That's a long way to go without knowing what's coming. When I realized it I knew it was time to act. The lead vehicle was a spot on the horizon, not because I was slowing down, cruise control kept me up to my speed, but the driver of the lead car is comfortable speeding at a higher rate of speed than I am, therefore they are always ahead and gaining.
I need to catch them. I need to catch them right now, and I need adrenalin to stay up long enough to handle the boost of speed, and keep me safe long enough to intercept them. Done. I won't tell you how much faster I went, but lets just say that the vehicle we were in did have a built in top end. However, mission accomplished, I caught the lead vehicle, lead them to a rest stop and turned over the wheel to someone who had been sleeping on the way.
Best of all none of the passengers even knew how dicey things were at the end of my shift. My secret, I know my limits, and I act quickly when I've reached them, even if I lose personal man points for not finishing the job. They don't know that either.
