Provoked

I don’t know about you, but when a dog walks up to me and sniffs my butt, it’s awkward. Perhaps even a bit violating, at first. But it’s typically excusable for a dog to do that, since to him it’s a friendly gesture. He’s just saying “Hello, human.” I turn around, then end up giving the dog a rub on the head after letting him sniff the back of my hand for a few seconds. He wags, I smile, we part ways. Life is good.

But what about when a fellow human comes up behind me and sticks his nose where the sun don’t shine? Very inappropriate, if you ask me, even when we’re each clad in well over a ton of rolling metal. I found myself in this undesirable situation a couple of nights ago while rounding my favorite two-lane cloverleaf. It’s my favorite because it usually means I’m less than five minutes from home. It’s also my favorite because it happens to be a wonderful strip of asphalt, thoughtfully shaped into a downhill, banked, 270-degree constant radius turn that can be fun at speeds far lower than the posted legal limit. In the Focus Electric, I typically coast down from 70mph to 50mph as I enter the cloverleaf, feathering off of the regen in the first part of the turn until my speed drops under 40mph. I maintain that speed through the middle third of the turn, then start applying more power such that I’m doing 45mph at the exit. Although faster than most other traffic that takes that offramp, it’s a pretty mild pace that induces some body roll, but is well within the limits of tire adhesion.  I take it easy because at $179 a pop from Tire Rack, I’d rather not shorten the tread life of those OE Michelins.

Unless, of course, I’m being dogged from the rear.

I saw him about a hundred yards behind in the left lane, coming in a little hot, and I was in the right lane behind a minivan doing about 60. I signaled and switched over to the left lane while he was still way back there and passed the minivan while coasting into the turn at about 50, like usual. That must have ticked him off because by the middle of the turn he was riding my butt. So I got on the throttle earlier in the turn than usual and he still kept riding me; all I could see through my grimy rear window were the top halves of his low beams. I figured he couldn’t be more than a couple of feet from my rear bumper. So I squeezed it to the floor and exited the turn at about 8/10ths.

For those of that don’t race, 10/10ths is as fast as you can go while still making the turn, usually in a 4-wheel drift at max adhesion. 11/10ths is when you end up in the weeds, or in this case, into opposing traffic, over a curb, through a chain link fence, and then finally in the weeds. So at 8/10ths I was playing it safe. I backed off  as I crossed under the freeway and glanced in my rear mirror – and it looked like the guy must have given up right away. He was way back there.

I was a little disappointed. Most folks that tailgate like that or try to out-accelerate me going up an onramp (usually Bimmers, not sure why) try much harder to keep up; some stay on it until they can pass me, which typically is after I back off near the FFE’s speed limiter. I’m thinking that this guy maybe knew a little something about EVs, and backed off right away once he figured I was at full tilt. Or maybe, like most others, he knew nothing of the instantaneous response of a single-speed EV with a flat torque curve that enables us to add another 10-20 mph much quicker than most ICE vehicles, which generally have to downshift to achieve max acceleration.

I wanted to see what kind of car he had, so I slowed way down, but he kept his distance for the next mile, staying maybe a couple of hundred yards behind me. Was he embarrassed? Stunned? Texting someone about how badly he got schooled by a freaking electric golf cart?

I finally caught a glimpse of him in my rear view mirror as I made a right turn into a mini-mall. The front grille and 18-inch factory alloys were unmistakable… it was a Ford Focus ST, the very car that had me salivating for Ford’s C-platform in the first place.

Life is good.