The Coolest Thing on the Road

So I'm not a huge fan of driving, much less driving on the freeway, much less driving on the freeway to work in the morning. It's a wall of gray, with cargo trucks lumbering from the port to the railroad tracks (why are all the railroad tracks not connected to the port?), and sleepy people lumbering to their jobs with their radios turned up and their conscious turned down. Much as car makers try to spice up the color options we have today, driving, all I see is dirt on boring.

I was driving to work this week, in not-my-normal lane (second to left), when I noticed that regardless of all the open space in front of him, the speedy car in the far right lane was not speeding up. This is HIGHLY UNUSUAL. Speeding up when you can is law, and will get you honked at for not abiding. I wondered to myself "I wonder what he's doing?" And then I saw this THING in front of his car - it looked like the proverbial carrot in front of the rabbit, or the rabbit in front of the racing greyhound. Only the proverbial carrot-rabbit was grey (like everything else) and it was going exactly 50 miles per hour and it had wings.

It was a PIGEON. I know pigeons don't exactly have the best reputations, but I for one have always had a pigeon fondness. Which has been exponentially increased by the fact that this pigeon was flying in a straight line at FIFTY MILES AN HOUR, not swerving erratically, following the traffic lane, and not losing speed. My jaw literally dropped. If not for the herd of cargo-bearing trucks surrounding me, I would have looked that sports car driver in the eye and mouthed the words "WHAT THE HELL IS HE DOING?", and for the first time in the history of freeways it would not have been about some non-normal driver.

Did you KNOW that pigeons could fly at 50 miles per hour?!?! I did not know this - I assumed they spent their days bobbing gently on sidewalks, descending on dirty wings from the rafters of unoccupied buildings, and generally being like I want to be when I retire, only with more disease and creepier-looking eyes. This pigeon was obviously a high-achiever. I just witnessed the Michael Phelps of pigeondom on my drive to work in the morning. My morning drive will never ever be as good.