Sunday, September 28, 2008

Driving home from church this morning, I was nearly run down by a motorcycle. How can a car be run down by a motorcycle? When you are going at 120 kph and he flies by you going about 250 kph. That's how. My dad calls motorcyclists "organ donors" because there is so little protection on a motorcycle in case of accident. I, however, would call motorcyclists like the one I encountered this morning, "road kill looking for a place to happen." At that speed, there would be no organs left to donate. Why is it that people get so impatient when driving? In their normal day to day lives they are patient, but put them at the control of a motor vehicle and the impatience factor goes up. This seems to be a morbid topic but it is part of life here in Portugal. The drivers are so fast and careless that Portugal is one of the countries with the most deaths per Kilometer in the world. (For those of you who don't know a Kilometer is a little over half a mile.) I thought Houston was bad, but the drive from my house to Aveiro (about an hour and a half trip) on the highway is like driving in Houston traffic on roads like the highways in West Virginia, hilly and curvy. Portugal has some very lovely things about it but the traffic is not one of those.

1 comment:

Nina in Portugal said...

Then...Sunday night on your way back to church you WERE backed over by a car.

Bless your heart....