cars

CARS

You might have noticed a pattern in my last few blogs.  I am answering questions from “The grandparents Book” as I talk about my experiences traveling.   I don’t have a grandchild yet, but my mother told me about this book and said the questions were really thought provoking and sometimes even difficult to answer.  She completed the book for her first grandchild.  I don’t have any grandchildren yet, but as I perused the book, I realized there were so many things I have neglected to share with my own kids, never mind any grandkids.    So I’m kind of cheating by trying to kill two birds with one stone, as it were.  I don’t think it matters much if you can’t figure out exactly what the question was that I am answering.  Travel seems to lend itself to a kind of free flowing thought, and retirement seems to lend itself to a kind of period of looking back, so it works for me, anyway.

I can’t tell you what type of car my first car was.  I clearly remember that it stunk.   A lot.  Moldy.  I don’t remember if Dad paid onehundred dollars for it or if someone flat gave it to him, but in 3 days, it was dead and he made it go away.  So I was destined to learn to drive in the big family Chevy Suburban.  I was 16, like most new drivers then.  Took a course in simulator in high school.   I have only ever been in three accidents, and the first two hardly count.  (I pulled into the building of the drive up window at the local gas station as I went to buy cigarettes.  I mean right INTO the building, BUMP!)  The second was forgetting the boat was on top of the car and pulling into a friends carport and getting stuck.  I think we ended up letting the air out of the tires if you happen to do the same dumb-ass thing.

The third one was, driving the same car home from a highschoolers New Years party at church on a rainey dark night and actually hitting an inebriated pedestrian that walked out in front of me.  Fortunately she was only hurt a little.  Crutches for a few days.  She left a dent in the car.  It was in old town when all of the really crummy bars were down there.  I was freaked.  My brother was with me, and he was freaked too.   Cops and everything.  Her drunken friends coming and kicking the car.  I really think she must have been in my blind spot, but I should have gotten in more trouble than I did.  Thank goodness I wasn’t drinking.

So even up till now, I haven’t been in a REAL automobile collision or gone off the edge of the road or anything.  This is actually statistically quite rare.   I suppose it’s because I mostly have lived in the city of subdued excitement, and driven hardly it all in bad traffic.  So WHY I ask you was I white knuckling it when R was driving the heavy traffic with 6 lanes during rush hour in California or Seattle?  Why did I actually have to shut my eyes when we were going up the very wrong road to Boulder Colorado?  He’s got a good record and DOES have heavy traffic experience.  Poor R.  Here he’s got Moxy Mahem, panting like a steam engine in the seat behind him (she gets some kind of combination of carsick and anxiety when she is on unfamiliar roads), and me holding on and crying out in spite of myself when someone gets SOOOOOO close when we are hauling the trailer.  Even when D, his son in law VERY kindly drove us to San Diego from  their home an hour away, I still had to close my eyes.  Just can’t seem to let go sometimes.  Neither can Moxy.  We do try.  Sometimes we get tired of trying and choose better living through chemistry.    Particularly if it’s a long haul and my parts hurt.  I probably don’t even have to tell you that the deal was; if the trailer must come, I will not be driving.  Period.  As it turns out, I would have had serious trouble even just driving the truck and camper in some places!  Kind of odd, isn’t it, what scares or doesn’t scare us?  I love driving motorcycle, diving, paddleboarding in this sea of Cortez, things that at least a few of my peers would never do, but I come unglued in traffic?  Weird.