Bad Karma Driving

We were driving along the main road through town a few weeks ago when a woman in a black Toyota decided to turn onto the road right in front of us. There was no break in traffic and no reason in the world she should have thought she had right of way, but then she wasn't really looking. My husband had to slam on the brakes in order to avoid plowing into her. Even with the screech of brakes, the woman didn't really seem to notice us, so he gave her a good long blast of his horn. Only then did the woman glance into her rear view mirror and slowly register our angry faces and rude gestures.

And she did not say sorry.

She could have cringed in her seat in the universal driver's gesture of apology; she could have rolled down the window and acknowledged her potentially fatal error, but no, she just kept driving. Badly, I might add: her road position made us think she might be talking on her mobile, but on closer inspection, she wasn't. She was the only person in her car too, so it wasn't as though she was distracted by a conversation or quarrel going on in the background. No, she was just a crappy driver, and an inconsiderate one too.

Strangely enough, the traffic slowed to a snail's pace shortly after this, and we ended up right behind this woman. She seemed anxious to get away from us. Maybe my husband scared her: with his shaved head and powerful build, he does look a little intimidating. Whatever the case, this woman put on her turn signal at least four times, always in the stupidest possible place to pass, perhaps in an effort to get away from us. There was a solid stream of traffic, though, and it was obvious to anyone that there was no chance to pass, but that didn't stop this woman from trying. At first we thought we must be imagining it, but when the traffic finally picked up and she drove straight past a turn, her signal still blinking away, we were pretty sure she was trying to shake us.

We saw her glance fearfully in her rear view mirror a few times, and we decided that just for the heck of it we would follow her, seeing as she seemed to be going our direction anyway. For a good five minutes, we followed her black Toyota past mosques, shops, and schools, through streets lined with eucalyptus and lemon trees, over pot-holed asphalt and stretches of dirt road. Finally, she hared up a narrow lane that wound itself into the hills, and we decided to let her go; we'd made our point, and we were only five minutes away from home anyway.

As soon as we pulled into our own street, one of our daughters suddenly pointed out the window. "Hey, it's the lady in the black car! She's parking!"

She saw us, too. We finally gave her the fright she gave us, and without even trying. And it's always nice to meet the new neighbors.

Taking The Cake

Early this morning, my husband got a phone call from one of his new colleagues. There was a car for sale at a fairly reasonable price, parked in front of a hotel in the next town. Were we interested?

Personally, I don't want a car. Cars, in my opinion, are unnecessary luxuries. The house we hope to rent is not far from a good grocery store, and there are small vans, called dolmas that run from our neighborhood to our respective schools. Why buy a car when you can get around so easily on public transportation? My husband, though, has pointed out that a car will be useful when we want to tour our new country, and all the girls are keen.

So I have given in. We've been lucky enough to borrow a colleague's car, and, after very little discussion, I capitulated on the car issue. I figure it's all about picking your battles. There is little recycling in this country; maybe I can encourage everyone to start a compost heap this way. God knows the soil has little enough organic matter in it; if I agree to turn the stuff, maybe everyone will go along with this again.

We bought the car from a man called Mahmout who runs a small coffee shop surrounded by date palms. My husband, youngest daughter and I drove out in our rented car to look at it and although I was intellectually aware that there was a tiny likelihhood I might be needed to drive one of the cars back, my heart sank when I heard my husband tell Mahmout what he'd already told me -- that yes, he wanted the car. "My wife will drive it back," he said with a certain nonchalance.

And suddenly, the enormity of this hit me.

Now, I am proud to have passed my road test two years back the very first time, after a mere three years of intensive and expert instruction. That might sound like self effacing humor, but I'm dead serious. I'm not a natural driver; I'm scared stiff of machines, have utterly no sense of direction, and I have a far too healthy sense of mortality. Learning to drive trumps lots of other things I've done in my life. But driving in our new country leaves much to be desired, and I am someone who has witnessed rush-hour traffic in Paris.

"You'll be fine," my husband assured me after watching me run through the gears in our rented car. I had my doubts; just a week earlier it had taken us ten minutes to turn onto the main road we were on. I'm awful at doing things like merging and knowing when to turn off a roundabout. Still, I nodded gamely and watched as he and youngest daughter got into our new car and turned onto the main road, pulling in by the side of the road to wait for me.

It took me ten minutes to get across; the first chance to go I got, the damn engine stalled.

In fact, it did that a lot. The clutch stuck like nobody's business, and no sooner would that miracle occur -- a break in the traffic -- than the nasty thing did it again. Finally, after many false starts, I made it, but after the signal buzzer clicked off, there was still an irritating bzz bzz buzz that would not go away. I checked the signal hastily, my heart in my throat as a motorcyclist passed me suddenly, weaving between me and my husband in daredevil fashion. No, the signals were both off! It took me a nerve-racking two minutes to realize that I'd been driving with the handbrake on.

Drivers here do not seem to have heard of the 'tires and tarmac' rule that my driving instructor took such pains to drill into me. "Now are you sure you can see both rear tires and road?" my instructor must have asked me half a zillion times as I pulled up behind another car, and even now, whenever I've gotten too close to the guy ahead of me, I can hear his voice in my ear. In my desperation not to lose sight of my husband, I threw the tires and tarmac rule right out the window. I followed him so closely my heart was in my mouth lest I rear-end him. But I was so nervous about losing sight of him and spending the next several hours circling the crowded city center, I'm sure a lot of other drivers must have assumed I was being towed by an invisible line.

I'm hard put to remember when I've spent a more miserable thirty minutes. Well-fleshed ladies in head-scarves dashed out from between parked cars right in front of me. They might have been less nonchalant if they had taken in my expression of frozen terror or my white-knuckled death's grip of the steering wheel, but the looks they wore were so provokingly blase that I marveled that they had lived so long. Trucks tried to cut ahead of me; children -- off school for the Bayram holiday -- swerved crazily on their bicycles, nearly side-swiping me. My heart was in my mouth every inch of the way, and I am very sorry to say that for part of the way, I drove like an asshole. An apologetic, timorous asshole, but an asshole nonetheless. I jumped the gun entering a roundabout and got honked at, and had to put my brakes on fully when a man with an enormous bundle jaywalked in front of me. I stalled and used up every foul word I know, and when an ambulance came shrilling along behind me, damned if the engine didn't go and stall yet again.

But the ambulance made it past me -- thank God! -- and I made it home safely. Thank God, really; I certainly have -- many times over.

And when I got back to our guest house, guess what was waiting for me? In all fairness to the baker, it had spent two hot nights in the trunk of my friend's car and the jaunty bow has melted into a rather wilted mess. But who cares?

I know a miracle when I see it.

Goodbye, Old Pal

Yesterday, our car died. Spectacularly, and in the line of duty.

My husband and I were only a few miles from home, on our way to the big town for a clinic appointment and perhaps to do some shopping. An elderly Vauxhall we bought secondhand in 2001, our car has been showing signs of age and making a shrill, protesting whee whee whee sound in low gear that our kids can now imitate with eerie perfection. We were overjoyed and amazed when it passed its annual road test last year, but deep down inside we knew its demise was near; despite repeated trips to a mechanic, the engine light has flickered on and off for the past eight months.

Quite suddenly, the car began to make an entirely different sound: first a whap, whap, whap -- giving us hope that it might be something annoying but innocuous like a faulty fan belt -- then an ominous clunking junk-a-junk-a-junk as black smoke began to billow out of the tailpipe. Miraculously, we were within a few minutes of the car's doctor, a local mechanic. Heads turned as we limped along in second gear, our car's dying voice now an agitated thump-thumpa-thump. Everyone knew where we were headed.

We've been in denial over the possibility of our car giving out. Since New Years, we've been having rotten luck with machines: first, a computer exploded on us, then our audio system refused to produce the right sort of sound. Before Christmas, the seal broke on our washing machine, requiring the judicious placement of a dish towel to prevent leaks, and our oven, like the stove top, must now be lit manually, the person lighting it on all fours, one hand thrust into the bowels of the beast, the other stretched in the opposite direction, to simultaneously press and turn the gas knob. Our vacuum cleaner bit the dust ages back and only does its job with grudging inefficiency, and don't get me started on the blender.

I am a Luddite. I hate machines. I don't even want a computer, and I resent feeling as though I have to have things because everyone else does. The more energy things use or the trendier they are, the more I loathe them: I have never owned a tumble drier; I towel my hair dry, generally ignore my iron, and up to this point, have managed to resist buying a cell phone. But although I walk, cycle, and take the bus whenever possible, I have given in on the car. We have to have one. We don't have to use it for little trips all the time, but we do really need one just the same. And I'm not ashamed to say it: over the years, I fell in love with ours.

I'm not a car conscious person. I once had a boyfriend who drove a fancy sports car (if I could remember the name, I'm sure you'd be impressed), and I didn't even realize what a big deal it was until after we broke up. I've never cared one way or the other what sort of car others have; never even cared whether they had one. But this car, with its rattling doors, ugly grey upholstery, and dull-as-dust blue paint, this car has won my heart. Sure, the gears have always stuck a little, the acceleration is crap, and it has to be locked manually -- a real pain for arthritic old fingertips. It's the sort of car you see everywhere, so it's not even special. Notice how I'm using the present tense? Because I can't bear to think it's really gone.

That car has driven us all over the U.K., from Somerset straight up to the Highlands. It's taken us to France and back twice now, proudly sporting a UK sticker on its tail, waited patiently by the side of country lanes while we scrambled about looking for blackberries and collecting grasshoppers with the kids, had its wing mirrors and antennae savaged by the local youths, and been our little refuge from the elements on countless occasions.

"Dad, can we go back the pretty way?" a kid would murmur wistfully, and my husband would turn onto a side road and drive us carefully, respectfully through a forest of aging oaks. We would gasp as an owl suddenly fluttered overhead or a deer stepped quietly out of the mist. Our car was a warm, snug little coccoon. "I feel so happy and safe in this car," our youngest once said.

And now, here we were, listening to the mechanic tell us our car was nothing but a piece of junk. I stood there with my hand resting on its side, willing myself not to cry. I remembered stepping out of the car after passing my road test. How my husband, seeing my astonished, over-wrought expression, had given me a sympathetic smile, which quickly changed to an expression of astonishment as I gave him a triumphant thumbs-up. I remembered my first successful hill start; the first time I backed the car out of a muddy ditch; my recent trip with our eldest to Stirling and back.

That car was my very first car, and now it's gone. And I am convinced that it had, if not a soul, something like one.

Because it could have been so much worse. The car could have died the night I drove my daughter back from Edinburgh, in the midst of a sleet storm. We could have stood there freezing, shuddering as the road gritters sprayed gravel over the soon-to- freeze highway, waiting for help. It could have played out when we were on the motorway, passing one of those huge articulated lorries, or the day we rushed my youngest to the hospital for a broken arm. Instead, it picked a tame road on a sunny day, a convenient distance from its mechanic, when we were using it for no pressing errand.

I can't believe I'm mourning a car, but I am, so there it is. Our Vauxhall did us proud, folks. May it drink deeply from the great petrol bowl in the sky.

Driving Each Other Crazy

Recently, I did something that was reckless, selfless and brave: I drove my eldest to Edinburgh and back so that she could attend applicants' day at a university there.

I am not an experienced driver and part of me wants to keep it that way. I believe in taking public transport and keeping my carbon footprints as shallow as possible. I'm not someone who needs to be behind the wheel; I vastly prefer being a passenger and enjoying the scenery. But the university in question, located on the outskirts of Edinburgh, was not easy to reach by train or bus and in either case involved many inconvenient changes. My daughter has gone to other applicants' days by bus, but in this instance unless someone took her by car, she would obviously not make it in time. When she pleaded with me to drive her there, I gave in and said yes.

As it turned out, the weather was awful. It was rainy and windy to begin with, but on the way back, it got much worse, with gale-force winds and driving sleet. But the weather inside the car was truly horrendous.

My eldest daughter is sixteen, and bless her, she was born knowing more than I. It is possible that there are sixteen-year-olds out there who aren't bossy, willful know-it-alls who diss their mothers and treat them like imbecile handmaidens, but I wouldn't know about it. I love my girl and she loves me, but sharing the same car space for hours each way was a sore trial for both of us.

Whether she will admit it or not, my eldest has inherited my poor navigational ability. Neither of us could find our way out of a paper bag. Our relationship has always been a stormy one, so please imagine the two of us on the Edinburgh ring road in the pouring rain, not knowing where the hell we were, unable to comprehend the maps that my husband had thoughtfully provided. Just to give you an idea, here is an example of our conversation as we tried to find the road to Musselburgh.

Daughter: (Gesturing vaguely) Umm...turn here.

Me: (Shouting) Left or right?

Daughter: Don't shout at me!

Me: (Raising voice) LEFT OR RIGHT?

Daughter: (Hesitating) Left!

Me: (Not turning, as massive articulated lorry veers into our lane and sprays us with muddy run-off) £%+&$-ing truck!

Daughter: I said turn LEFT!

Me: (Maneuvering car around roundabout again; waving desperately to apologize to driver behind me; speaking with clenched jaw) If I'd turned left there, we'd be toast. In order to turn left, I have to be in the left lane, and that truck made it impossible.

Daughter: (Huffily) Well, I didn't know that!

Me: You have to tell me well before the turn or I cannot turn safely. Got that?

Daughter: All you had to do was tell me!

Me: Actually, I was counting on you to be able to figure that out.

Daughter: Don't talk down to me!

Me: (Turning left) Okay, what now?

Daughter: (Stricken silence as she studies map) Umm...actually I think you were supposed to turn right back there.

It could have been worse: I could have made a stupidly quick lane change into that lorry's path and you would not be reading this blog posting. And in my own defense, I didn't curse or yell (or at least not on that particular occasion). In my daughter's defense, she's only sixteen, and she doesn't have a driver's license. But it wasn't a fun moment, and there were many more like it. Dozens, in fact.

The fact that we got to the university safely and almost on time still amazes me. We got through applicants' day successfully, and finally it was time to go home.

We started quarreling. I won't bore you with the quarrel itself; suffice it to say that she, being herself, started it and refused to accept culpability, and I, being myself, wouldn't let it go. An hour later, we were still sitting in the parked car, thrashing it out. In the middle of our angry dispute, a woman with a toddler got into the car in front of us, strapped her little girl into her childseat, then drove off -- but not before I heard a snatch of the child's sweet, innocent prattle and saw the happy smile on the young mother's face. This brought tears to my eyes. For one awful, fleeting moment, I felt like gesturing to the young mother; pointing out my obnoxious, sulking adolescent and yelling out the window "Mine used to be just like yours!"

But just as the weather can go from stormy to sunny, our quarrel finally ran its course and we reached a shaky, exhausted, temporary detente. We took the long way home, driving over rushing rivers, along winding country roads that cut through forests and fields. We oohed and ahed when we saw birds of prey, were delighted to find an abandoned lime kiln, and my girl clapped and cheered when I managed to reverse the car out of a muddy ditch I'd gotten stuck in. We stopped for a meal at a restaurant and enjoyed baffling our handsome waiter by speaking entirely in Japanese (we don't normally do this, but we felt it was important in this case: if he'd understood us, he might have blushed or gotten stuck up to hear all our compliments). And best of all, we enjoyed each other's company and made it home safely.

Next week I'm driving her up north for another applicants' day. Wish us luck.

Middle-Aged Woman's 'Parking First'

Laugh if you will, this actually happened a year ago, and I'm still pretty proud. I sent it to the local paper, but they must have had a lot of juicy stuff that week because it never got printed. Any Californian will tell you that the first paragraph alone contains a Guinness-Book-of-World-Records-standard shocker: a middle-aged native Californian who has just gotten her driver's license isn't something you happen to find every day. In truth, a reporter did not interview me, but everything else happened just the way I've written it. Sadly, I still haven't managed to further my goals, but I never stop trying.

Ms Mary Witzl, a middle-aged native Californian and driver’s license holder of some four months, successfully parked her car in the public car park in the middle of Loch Maben’s High Street this morning at 9:48 A.M., just before the arrival of the first bus to Glasgow. Ms Witzl, who was seeing off an old friend from university, was particularly pleased with her efforts, as she managed to park her car between two cars, both of which were correctly parked.

Bystanders were amazed to note that both Ms Witzl and her passenger were able to exit the car through their respective doors, with absolutely no risk of a dent to Ms Witzl’s car or the other two vehicles, even though both doors were opened to their fullest. Several witnesses were present, though sadly none had cameras, so no photographs were taken.

“I’m feeling very pleased and proud,” Ms Witzl said. “We’d been worried because there didn’t seem to be any places free. Someone was right on my tail and all of a sudden I spotted an empty space. Up until today, I’ve had to pass by similar empty spaces and drive around the car park a dozen times until two adjoining spaces became vacant, but we were pressed for time and I decided to go for it. I just checked my mirror one last time, flicked on my left indicator and parked – just like that! And the best part is, I did it all in one go!”

“I’ve been doing a lot of parallel parking recently,” Ms Witzl told reporters, “and my family and quite a few of our neighbours have been concerned because I haven’t made much progress. But after this, I’m not going to give up. In fact, I might even try parallel parking between two cars. Maybe even uphill.”

Neither Ms Witzl’s driving instructor nor her husband could be reached for comment.

Too Many Roundabouts

I believe myself to be one of the most expensively educated drivers in Scotland. When I finally passed my test, I felt a little sorry for my driving instructor: I'd suddenly dried up a huge source of his income. Still, I'll bet the amount of money he saved on gin and aspirin after he parted company with me went some way towards compensating for the loss.

Having a learner's sticker on our car got to be so embarrassing. "Is your daughter already learning to drive?" people would ask me. "Is she actually old enough?" And no, she wasn't anywhere near old enough, though at one point I figured we might as well leave the sticker there until she was: I started lessons when she was twelve and proudly peeled off that sticker shortly after her 15th birthday.

One of the reasons it took me so long to learn is that I refused to listen to the wisdom of the ages (and all my women friends) and allowed my husband to give me my first few lessons. This put us both off the idea of getting me licensed for years. But I’m also an unapologetic greenie. So even though I come from California, where not having a driver’s license is like not having running water, I’ve resisted learning how to drive for decades. I’m a great believer in using public transport, walking and cycling. All my life I’ve gotten around on buses, trains, trams, bicycles and subways – and Shank’s mare.

When we moved to a small town in Scotland, though, I knew I’d finally have to crack. I made it plain to my kids that even if I did pass my test that didn’t mean I would ferry them places they could just as easily walk to. After this face-saving gesture, I signed up for driving lessons. I figured I’d have my license in a couple of months, tops.

The first inkling I had that it might take longer was on my second lesson, when I was told to turn right at the roundabout. The problem was, I did. Turn right, that is. I don’t mean that I turned left onto the roundabout and then exited on the right, but rather that I executed a right turn into the roundabout, eliciting my instructor’s screams and speedy use of the dual control steering. In my own defence, I did exactly what he told me to do; it wasn’t my fault that I didn’t get the underlying concept.

Once I got the basic idea, I still had the problem of figuring out ‘left,’ ‘right’ and ‘straight ahead’ – especially when there were more than three exits. Directions have always been a problem for me: I got lost on my way home from kindergarten, which was only a block away from our house. As a child, before shaking hands I had to do a quick mental check of which hand I used when I wrote my name. I’ve since gotten over my early dyslexia, but roundabouts helped me revisit it. My driving instructor learned to issue clear, slowly enunciated instructions to me: "Turn left onto this next roundabout, then take the third exit."

I had dozens and dozens of lessons. I drove on icy streets, through snow, and over flooded country lanes. We idled on rural roads waiting for cattle and sheep to get out of the way, and in the evenings, when I learned how to emergency brake for badgers, foxes and deer. And there is one particular corner in Dumfries that really should be named after me considering the hours I spent there – and the fact that I first successfully backed around its curve. But still I was not ready to pass my test. Roundabouts – that’s what was holding me up.

All I had to do was see a roundabout up ahead – or that horrible, telltale roundabout sign – for my heart to fill with terror. When to enter? When to exit? Which way to look? It’s no big deal now, but back then, roundabouts made every driving a lesson a misery.

At some point my driving instructor decided that I ought to take my road test in Lanark and not Dumfries due to the fact that there were fewer roundabouts in Lanark. I was all for this, of course, but during one of my subsequent lessons, I was confused to hear my instructor say that the good thing about Lanark was that it had too many roundabouts.

Having spent two hours a week with my instructor for the better part of three years, I flattered myself that I could finally understand his toned-down Glaswegian dialect. But when he told me that all I had to worry about in Lanark was too many roundabouts, I suddenly felt like we were back to square one. I’d been doing so well up until then, both with my driving and my understanding of his spoken directions, that I hardly dared question him about this. Then he said it again and I just had to ask.

"I thought that we were going to Lanark because there weren’t so many roundabouts there," I ventured. He agreed: quite right, so we were. "But you just said that there are a lot of them there. Roundabouts, I mean." My instructor gave me a sidelong glance. "I never said that."

I frowned. "You did, though, you said so just now."

A long awkward silence followed, then my instructor spoke again in a father-to-idiot- daughter voice. "What I said was that in Lanark there aren’t very many roundabouts at all. That’s why we’re going there and not Dumfries."

We drove along in sullen silence for a few moments. From the way we were quarrelling, my instructor and I might as well be married, so no wonder I was starting to regress.

"Look," he said a little shortly, breaking the strained silence, "there are only too many roundabouts in Lanark, and when we get there, I’m going to have you go over them as many times as possible until you’ve got them sussed. Okay?"

"You just said it again!" I cried triumphantly. "You said that there are too many roundabouts in Lanark!"

This was followed by a brief silence, then a bark of laughter.

"Two, as in one-two-three! And mini as in mini and maxi! Two mini roundabouts!"