Passing the Buck
The road from the mountains to the beach was a real eye opener to what level of inconvenience people will put up with. But then again, I'm not all that old and my memories from childhood do recall that the streets in the US weren't always paved with gold. As a matter of fact NYC had serious pothole problems right through the seventies.
But thanks to Ike and the US congress, and federal matching funds, the interstate highway system and any road resembling a main drag is for the most part passable; or under construction. I had to retrace about thirty miles of highway number one, or the Pan American Highway, for the trip home from the beach. I got an early start, and after a twenty-kilometer detour down a series of less than paved thoroughfares, found myself headed south.
It wasn't long before I found the beginning of the wako stretch that had taken me and my suspension by surprise a couple of days before. I was ready for it and adjusted my seat belt accordingly. Traffic was relatively light at first, which enabled me to get into a dodge and pass rhythm and correctly gauge oncoming traffic. It's a tricky dance, which requires judging when the car in front is going to swing around a wako, which will buy you the ditch on the side of the road if you happen to be in the wrong spot when that happens.
My relatively underpowered Daihatsu also needed a bit of a running start to pass, especially the trucks and buses, and it wasn't a wise idea to start a pass on an upgrade. Pretty soon I was traveling at around a hundred klicks, which translates to around sixty-two mph, but feels like a hundred under the circumstances. I started to pick up a train of like-minded runners, which looked like a mechanized sectional snake in the rearview mirror as we took a serpentine route around the less inclined motorists.
Things were going like a dream until I looked to the left and found a radar gun pointed in my direction-with an accompanying officer emphatically pointing to the side of the road. Needless to say, I lost my place in the entourage, but the excitement was getting to me anyway so a break was in order. The officer and I introduced ourselves.
It was a pleasant and civilized exchange, with his electronically armed amigo arriving forthwith to display the incriminating numerals: 101 klicks. It was explained to me that 'one hundred' is a magic number around these parts and that its accomplishment (indeed the exceeding of it) qualified me to receive a summons celebrating the event. I politely inquired into the details surrounding the ritual using one of the more useful words in my Spanish lexiconic arsenal, "Cuando?"
This was a winner, as I found out that there was a special discount for immediate remittance. Not only that, but the pesky paperwork and reporting to the local rental agency was also waived. Huzzah…er…Feliz! My virginity intact, the officer and I exchanged cash for passport, and we parted the best of friends.
I learned a valuable lesson in cross-cultural exchanges that day; be polite, ask questions, and value the 'other.'
