on the road

Big Jim and I always look forward to driving our visiting friends and relatives up the 10-mile mountain road to the village: who will sit clutching the handbar, frozen in fear; who will hurl/toss their cookies/vomit; and who will actually sit back and enjoy the ride? To be fair, we were not always so comfortable with the roads around the village, but at least the main road is paved and now there are many more guardrails, which was not the case when we first moved here. And we've learned a trick from one of our motion sickness-challenged passengers, Ma., which is to suck on a lollipop (which incidentally were invented by the Spanish). Now we take a brief medical history from our passengers while still at the airport and send likely victims to the shop to pick up some chupas before we set off. The road rises more than 2000 feet from the sea to our village. From the passenger seat, it looks more narrow than it really is. Two cars can pass comfortably at most places, and most locals know the spots where it's not and kindly pull over to allow the person heading up the mountain through. It only really gets interesting when you encounter the buses and the oversized (and illegal) quarry trucks. There are even three fairly straight bits where one can safely overtake and scare the living daylights out of the tourists in their rental Ka cars. That said, there are always close calls. Most locals do not wear their safety belts on the mountain road, the feeling being they'd rather take their chances being thrown out of the car than accompanying said vehicle over the side to the bottom of the valley. Our wing mirrors have the tell-tale scrapes of an almost-near-miss with a German in his Mercedes SUV. A brief sidebar on Germans and their SUVs: I don't usually believe in making generalized statements about people; however, occasionally they are true. Most of the Germans who have settled near our village come with a giant SUV, which they have no idea how to drive. The people who think nothing of driving 160 miles/hour on their autobahns morph into 85-year-old blue-haired great-grandmas at the mere hint of a curve in the road. It's highly amusing until you get stuck behind one of them. There are also the strange laws of the road and how they are interpreted by natives. For example, we cannot go anywhere without Big Jim's knapsack. It contains the wooden cigar box with the myriad papers and receipts for paid road taxes that we would be required to present should the Guardia Civil care to pull us over to check papers, which they regularly do. Our trunk is loaded down with the required safety bits: two orange triangles, lime green reflective vests for all passengers, first aid kit, replacement bulbs and fuses, spare pair of prescription eye glasses. Now many of these are perfectly practical, so I'm not complaining. What I do find interesting, though, is how specific certain aspects of the laws of the road are, whereas others are a bit more ambiguous. The classic example is the helmet law. Assuming of course that the rider has a helmet, which is only the case about 50% of the time, it is not uncommon to see people riding their scooters or motorcycles with their helmets hanging from the wrist or resting between their legs. I am told this is because the current helmet law only states that a helmet needs to be worn; however, nowhere does it state on what part of the body. Apparently it also does not stipulate requirements for types of helmets. Equestrian helmets are popular choices, although our personal favorite is a local farmer who wears a straw hat with a sun-bleached yellow construction hardhat propped on top. We have also seen three people riding on a scooter (although I also achieved this feat several times as a student in Seville), a mother riding a moped with a young child in front clutching the family dog, and a farmer driving with his burro in tow. Motorbikes can also be outfitted for maximum carrying potential. One man in the village has an old green milkcrate strapped on the back and two wheelie suitcases bungied to the sides as makeshift saddlebags. Never underestimate the ingenuity of the local farmer. The modernization of Spain has outpaced certain aspects of life. For this reason, walking, bicycling, horses, and, yes, teams of oxen are all still permitted forms of transportation on our local highways. And our rare traffic jams are caused by the goatman leading his herd to a new pasture. I must confess I let Big Jim do most of the driving here. I'm still protesting his purchase of a English car. Well, actually it's a French car, but the steering wheel is on the right (wrong) side. He claims it's better because one can see the edge of the road more easily, but I'm not convinced. I'd rather not see how close I am to plummetting over the edge. No, I prefer to sit back, enjoy my cherry lollipop, and watch the world pass by. hasta pronto, mylifeinspain