This is one of the reasons I got involved with Historic Preservation…

“The top priorities for economic development efforts are creating jobs and increasing local household income. The rehabilitation of older and historic buildings is particularly potent in this regard. As a rule of thumb, new construction will be half materials and half labor. Rehabilitation, on the other hand, will be sixty to seventy percent labor with the balance being materials. This labor intensity affects a local economy on two levels. First, we buy an HVAC system from Ohio and lumber from Idaho, but we buy the services of the plumber, the electrician, and the carpenter from across the street. Further, once we hang the drywall, the drywall doesn’t spend any more money. But the plumber gets a hair cut on the way home, buys groceries, and joins the YMCA – each recirculating that paycheck within the community.”

From a speech by Donovan Rypkema at the 2005 National Trust Conference

Things the Chittenden County Transportation Authority (a.k.a., the local bus) gets right:

1. To date, they have not (through negligence or other means) killed me.
2. End of list.

If fate conspires to move you away from someplace you like, it can be therapeutic to identify the peculiarities of the place that are less than ideal. Today gave me a hand in that department. Today I broke up with Vermont drivers.

Not that things were all roses and sunshine before. We hadn’t lived here more than six months before I invented the 40/30/30 rule of Vermont drivers. It went like this: 40% of Vermonters are perfectly fine, give-me-no-reason-to-notice-them types. 30% do bone headed things because they don’t PAY.THE.F.ATTENTION to what’s going on around them. the remaining 30% think the highways and byways are the places where they should demonstrate their own special brand of random acts of kindness. Behavior that should be encouraged in a kindergarten classroom but in the 50mph of the real world does a real good job at disrupting traffic flow at best and at worst causing accidents. Sorry Vermonters, it’s true. Most of you (not by much, but still most) are terrible drivers.

So I already had a less than charitable opinion of my fellow drivers today as I was driving up Shelburne Road. The stretch I was on had two lanes in each direction with a 5th middle lane for cars wanting to turn left or for cars to turn left onto the road in heavy traffic. (A good example can be found here.) I was more or less alone as I headed up the road in the left hand lane. On my left, I noticed a delivery van making a wide left turn out of a parking lot with teh intention of getting into my lane. He noticed me, sharpened his turn so he would enter the middle turn lane and blared his horn at me. Now I suppose I could have done a rapid lane change so that he could have exited his parking lot in peace, but there was literally no other traffic on the road, so at the time, I assumed he was aiming for the middle lane anyway. No reason he couldn’t have let me pass and then exit his parking lot. So, naturally, we happen to pull up next to each other at the next light, both with our windows down.

HIM (real sarcastic): Thanks.

ME: It wasn’t on me to get out of your way, you could have waited for me to pass and then turned onto the road.

HIM (extremely red in the face by now): I was just looking for a little courtesy……..  Asshole!

So thank you, random VT dickhead driver. Thank you for making it just a little easier to leave this beautiful state. Your scenery, your fresh air, your food, your sense of place will be missed.

But not your drivers.