" - Winnie the Pooh
Need to rethink this driving thing
I am not having much luck with driving here. In the US, I consider myself a pretty decent driver. I've been in a couple of wrecks, but they were in my teens and deemed "normal" by my dad. I've had 2 instances of over/under compensating in snow that resulted in some minor damage to 2 cars (paint, no body). I've put a hole in a tire on road junk. Nothing major, though.
Here...I just suck. I've blown two tires. I blame this on the curbs here being very sharp (squares, in fact). One, I pulled in to a parking lot too tight and just nicked the edge. The second I had to dodge two old men standing in the street when I rounded a corner (granted a bit too quickly, but I want to know what they were doing in the middle of the street).
I've also turned too tight and caught the tiniest bit of body on a mid-calf high planter. It mucked up the hub cap, but I'm not the first to do that. Turns out, it scraped some paint off of the underside of the body that the rental folks had to point out for us to find.
Today, I had to dodge some guy that came from a few cars back to make the unprotected turn into the same lane I was turning in to. He was making the right (here, that's across traffic) and I the left. I saw him coming at me (quickly...as he wasn't the first car in line) and pulled tighter. I ended up bouncing the passenger side of the car into a (roughly) window high railing that lines the street. The damage isn't visibly that bad, but it shook me up. Chrys says I kept us safe and shouldn't kick myself, but that's not helping much. For the rental company to stay happy, we had to fill out a police report and Chrys was nice enough to take care of that for me.
Yeah...I think I just need to turn in my keys some days. On the other hand, I rarely see a car here that doesn't have some damage on it so it may be some sort of karmic imbalance in the country. Or maybe the roads are just too small for a car and that's why all the crazy folks stick to scooters...too bad I can't get 4 people in one of those things.
Here...I just suck. I've blown two tires. I blame this on the curbs here being very sharp (squares, in fact). One, I pulled in to a parking lot too tight and just nicked the edge. The second I had to dodge two old men standing in the street when I rounded a corner (granted a bit too quickly, but I want to know what they were doing in the middle of the street).
I've also turned too tight and caught the tiniest bit of body on a mid-calf high planter. It mucked up the hub cap, but I'm not the first to do that. Turns out, it scraped some paint off of the underside of the body that the rental folks had to point out for us to find.
Today, I had to dodge some guy that came from a few cars back to make the unprotected turn into the same lane I was turning in to. He was making the right (here, that's across traffic) and I the left. I saw him coming at me (quickly...as he wasn't the first car in line) and pulled tighter. I ended up bouncing the passenger side of the car into a (roughly) window high railing that lines the street. The damage isn't visibly that bad, but it shook me up. Chrys says I kept us safe and shouldn't kick myself, but that's not helping much. For the rental company to stay happy, we had to fill out a police report and Chrys was nice enough to take care of that for me.
Yeah...I think I just need to turn in my keys some days. On the other hand, I rarely see a car here that doesn't have some damage on it so it may be some sort of karmic imbalance in the country. Or maybe the roads are just too small for a car and that's why all the crazy folks stick to scooters...too bad I can't get 4 people in one of those things.
posted by Wynnie | 16:53
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