I'll Take the Low Road
I like to drive. I like to take the car and go for a long drive along sweeping roads and lanes, listening to the motor and feeling the road beneath through the steering wheel. There are
some mornings when I will go out for no reason at all, just to breathe in a change of scene and think my own thoughts in the driver's seat. How far I drive depends on what time I leave the house and the cost of gas. I've gotten used to driving with a stick shift and I've gotten used to the vagaries of Spanish roads and Spanish drivers. I had an easy start after all, I learned to drive in Boston.
I don't know why, but Boston drivers have long been known as aggressive and inventive drivers. More so, even, than New York drivers. Even so, when I was learning to drive I thought I would never be able to drive in Spain. From vacations I had spent here during my childhood my impression was the Spanish drivers were worse than Boston drivers. And there was a time when I thought getting a license was impossible. When I was sixteen and a half I went to my first driver's exam. I didn't even get in the car because I had forgotten to ask one of my parents to sign the consent. At the next exam a car passed just as I was preparing to look to see if any cars were coming and I didn't even leave the starting line. The third time was the charm. Just four days before moving to Spain I finally got my license. So I faced the dilemma of learning to drive by myself on Spanish roads after all. I was trembling. You could say I was a twenty-two year old coward at the wheel.
First order of the day after moving here was buying a new car. I had learned to drive with an automatic transmission and no way was I getting in a driver's seat with a stick shift next to me. My parents acquiesced and bought one of the rare automatic cars on the market. The next thing to do was get used to driving. My parents wouldn't let me go by myself at first, and being a new driver with my father sitting next to me was not conducive to becoming a confident driver. I was more of a trembling jelly. "Slow down!" "Don't turn like that, open up!" "You're going to scratch the car!" "Stop! Can't you see what's by the road?" "Don't do that!" "What are you doing??!!" You can imagine I thought I would never drive by myself.
But one day my parents let me take the car alone. I was dying of nervous prostration. So nervous I wouldn't go above sixty kilometers, despite all the irate drivers following me. (For those who think that's fast, it's about thirty-six miles per hour. Take kilometers, divide in half and add ten percent to get miles. At least that's what I read a long time ago.) But nothing strange happened, I got no scares, no close shaves. And I started to like it. I liked it so much I became a typical Spanish driver. I lost my fear of driving here and started to blend in. I used the little tricks I learned in Boston and added some local shortcuts to the driving code. I blended in so much that, once, a friend who still hadn't gotten her license mentioned she wanted to drive like me one day. The two guys in our group looked at each other but said nothing. It's not that I drove - or drive - badly, it's that I tend to scare the s**t out of people sitting in the passenger seat. There is still a lot of machismo and men tend to assume all women drive slowly and over-carefully. Not me. To give a hint, one of my favorite sports to watch is Formula 1 racing. And yes, I've had some speeding tickets, but I've avoided more than I've been given.
The truth is, you need a driver's license if you live in rural Spain. There are interurban buses but they only touch the bigger towns and the villages along the main roads. They pass by only every hour (at best) and they're quite expensive. The best invention for the elderly who had to depend on the bus, a taxi, or a relative with a car, was the enclosed motor scooter. I call it that for want of a better word. They're called locally "cars without a license" or coches sin carnet. The law says that to drive a motor scooter you don't need a license. So an entrepreneur decided to put a scooter's motor into a small, light chassis that can seat two with a little room for shopping bags. Perfect for those who have to move around locally to go to the doctor's or the supermarket and want to have the freedom of movement they can't find from the local or interurban bus. Just don't get stuck behind one of those sin carnets. The maximum speed most will go at is sixty kilometers per hour and most elderly don't like driving at such speeds, even.
Another car to avoid is a car with a green and white L in the rear window. Everyone who gets his license has to have that sign hanging in the rear window for the first year that they drive. It's to let everyone know that a novice is at the wheel. There are some over-cautious novices and then there are the novices that think the little piece of plastic with their name and picture on it gives them supernatural powers and converts them into Kimi Raikkonen. Unfortunately, the Formula 1 racer has had his share of accidents on the circuits. These nutjobs on our roads also provoke a few beauties of their own. Once, my brother-in-law found himself driving behind a small car with the L in the back window, the CD blaring dance music and the male driver wearing dark sunglasses. My brother-in-law decided to slow down and leave a prudent distance between the two cars. Good thing. On a stretch of road, with another car coming from the other direction, the youngster decided to make a u-turn. Yes, my brother-in-law called the police and an ambulance.
There have been a few accidents in front of our house, too. That's because it's just around a curve connecting two stretches of road that are nice and straight where cars pick up speed. Sometimes a car will come whistling around the curve and I can hear a rocket go by. So far no one has been gravely hurt, but it's only a matter of time. Wild animals add their share of danger. Boars and foxes have hurled themselves in front of cars. Once I even rescued a young fox that was lying, stunned, in the middle of a lane. Once, driving home, I saw a boar waiting for the cars to pass to cross the road. Some animals, at least, show some urbanity.
Yes, despite all the pitfalls to driving here - the twisting, narrow lanes; the drivers who think no one else is on the road; the wild animals trying to live with humans - I like driving. Anyone care to go for a ride?
I don't know why, but Boston drivers have long been known as aggressive and inventive drivers. More so, even, than New York drivers. Even so, when I was learning to drive I thought I would never be able to drive in Spain. From vacations I had spent here during my childhood my impression was the Spanish drivers were worse than Boston drivers. And there was a time when I thought getting a license was impossible. When I was sixteen and a half I went to my first driver's exam. I didn't even get in the car because I had forgotten to ask one of my parents to sign the consent. At the next exam a car passed just as I was preparing to look to see if any cars were coming and I didn't even leave the starting line. The third time was the charm. Just four days before moving to Spain I finally got my license. So I faced the dilemma of learning to drive by myself on Spanish roads after all. I was trembling. You could say I was a twenty-two year old coward at the wheel.
First order of the day after moving here was buying a new car. I had learned to drive with an automatic transmission and no way was I getting in a driver's seat with a stick shift next to me. My parents acquiesced and bought one of the rare automatic cars on the market. The next thing to do was get used to driving. My parents wouldn't let me go by myself at first, and being a new driver with my father sitting next to me was not conducive to becoming a confident driver. I was more of a trembling jelly. "Slow down!" "Don't turn like that, open up!" "You're going to scratch the car!" "Stop! Can't you see what's by the road?" "Don't do that!" "What are you doing??!!" You can imagine I thought I would never drive by myself.
But one day my parents let me take the car alone. I was dying of nervous prostration. So nervous I wouldn't go above sixty kilometers, despite all the irate drivers following me. (For those who think that's fast, it's about thirty-six miles per hour. Take kilometers, divide in half and add ten percent to get miles. At least that's what I read a long time ago.) But nothing strange happened, I got no scares, no close shaves. And I started to like it. I liked it so much I became a typical Spanish driver. I lost my fear of driving here and started to blend in. I used the little tricks I learned in Boston and added some local shortcuts to the driving code. I blended in so much that, once, a friend who still hadn't gotten her license mentioned she wanted to drive like me one day. The two guys in our group looked at each other but said nothing. It's not that I drove - or drive - badly, it's that I tend to scare the s**t out of people sitting in the passenger seat. There is still a lot of machismo and men tend to assume all women drive slowly and over-carefully. Not me. To give a hint, one of my favorite sports to watch is Formula 1 racing. And yes, I've had some speeding tickets, but I've avoided more than I've been given.
The truth is, you need a driver's license if you live in rural Spain. There are interurban buses but they only touch the bigger towns and the villages along the main roads. They pass by only every hour (at best) and they're quite expensive. The best invention for the elderly who had to depend on the bus, a taxi, or a relative with a car, was the enclosed motor scooter. I call it that for want of a better word. They're called locally "cars without a license" or coches sin carnet. The law says that to drive a motor scooter you don't need a license. So an entrepreneur decided to put a scooter's motor into a small, light chassis that can seat two with a little room for shopping bags. Perfect for those who have to move around locally to go to the doctor's or the supermarket and want to have the freedom of movement they can't find from the local or interurban bus. Just don't get stuck behind one of those sin carnets. The maximum speed most will go at is sixty kilometers per hour and most elderly don't like driving at such speeds, even.
Another car to avoid is a car with a green and white L in the rear window. Everyone who gets his license has to have that sign hanging in the rear window for the first year that they drive. It's to let everyone know that a novice is at the wheel. There are some over-cautious novices and then there are the novices that think the little piece of plastic with their name and picture on it gives them supernatural powers and converts them into Kimi Raikkonen. Unfortunately, the Formula 1 racer has had his share of accidents on the circuits. These nutjobs on our roads also provoke a few beauties of their own. Once, my brother-in-law found himself driving behind a small car with the L in the back window, the CD blaring dance music and the male driver wearing dark sunglasses. My brother-in-law decided to slow down and leave a prudent distance between the two cars. Good thing. On a stretch of road, with another car coming from the other direction, the youngster decided to make a u-turn. Yes, my brother-in-law called the police and an ambulance.
There have been a few accidents in front of our house, too. That's because it's just around a curve connecting two stretches of road that are nice and straight where cars pick up speed. Sometimes a car will come whistling around the curve and I can hear a rocket go by. So far no one has been gravely hurt, but it's only a matter of time. Wild animals add their share of danger. Boars and foxes have hurled themselves in front of cars. Once I even rescued a young fox that was lying, stunned, in the middle of a lane. Once, driving home, I saw a boar waiting for the cars to pass to cross the road. Some animals, at least, show some urbanity.
Yes, despite all the pitfalls to driving here - the twisting, narrow lanes; the drivers who think no one else is on the road; the wild animals trying to live with humans - I like driving. Anyone care to go for a ride?
You are a brave woman-I waited to learn to drive when we moved to Florida :)
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