Latest update: March 28, 2008: HTML Version 1.1
Original report: August-September 1997

When another vehicle did something annoying, like cutting us off, tailgating, or whatever, this went on the Annoying Vehicles list. The driver, in consultation with the passengers, would rank each incident, and the day's top three were entered in a little notebook. First place rated three points, second place got two, and third got one, and the competition was partly to see what make of car was most likely to be annoying.

The gravel truck incident described in the trip report impelled us to set up a system of bonus points -- each of these counted as one additional point:

• Duration bonus: Any vehicle that was annoying for an unusually long period of time, either by tailgating for several miles, being involved in several separate incidents, or whatever.
• Graveling bonus: Spilling sand, gravel, or other such detritus on the road.
• Collision bonus: If the annoying vehicle hit anything.
• Inversion bonus: If the annoying vehicle turned over.
• Ghastly color bonus: If the vehicle had an especially ugly paint job.
• Police bonus: If the annoying vehicle was later spotted pulled over by a state cop, or if the activities of the annoying vehicle resulted in any sort of police presence.

There may have been a few others.

The gravel truck placed second, but got two additional points for Graveling and Duration. Later that day a moving van racked up Ghastly Color and Duration as well as placing third. A car that was otherwise barely in contention got the Police Bonus.

Fortunately, the inversion bonus has never been awarded.

For those who somehow stumbled in here by accident -- hi! I'm Lawrence Watt-Evans. I'm the author of more than two dozen novels and around a hundred short stories, as well as innumerable articles, comic scripts, poems, and other miscellany. This is my personal website, the Misenchanted Page; the name is a reference to my bestselling novel The Misenchanted Sword.

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