During the chilly months you’ll occasionally daydream about the languid comforts of hot summer afternoons, but when they actually arrive you never seem to savor them. Mostly because you’re avoiding the heat in some air-conditioned space, at home or more often in a car and at the same time thinking “I can’t say I’m actually enjoying this…it would be nicer to be slightly sweating outside somewhere.”

We drove up to sun-baked Goleta yesterday afternoon, and most of the time I was trying — struggling — to suppress hostile thoughts about other drivers. The wisest approach to freeway driving is to blend in and go with the flow. Don’t drive faster than your fellows and make an extra-special point of not driving slower. For three-plus hours I was grappling with God knows how many drivers who couldn’t have cared less about this simple rule of civilized behavior. Especially those who couldn’t seem to understand that if they wanted to drive slower they needed to pull into the right lane. More considerate that way, but in the minds of too many it didn’t register. Hell is other people.