The Road to Armenia

I can't quite get used to the traffic laws here in Cali, or should I say the lack of observance of the traffic laws. In the USA, traffic signals, stop signs and double yellow lines have special meaning in the minds and pockets of it's drivers. I'm not sure of the reason, whether it be the Colombian police force being busy with more important things or just indifference to the laws by the general public, but it seems as if laws became guidelines then guidelines drifted to suggestion in a way that has made ground travel within this country a whole new way to trust God.

Take for instance our recent 2 day vacation to Armenia, the birth place of one Tatiana Jones. We decided to take a 2 1/2 hour bus ride to get away from the city and stay in the beautiful rural Colombian countryside. It turns out that our bus was actually an extended minivan. The trip was mostly two lane highway in which our driver seemed to have some sort of death wish with oncoming traffic. Time and time again our van passed slower moving vehicles by crossing double yellow lines in clearly marked "Do Not Pass" zones. He passed on blind corners, cresting hills and directly into oncoming traffic as if he had recently seen a James Dean movie.

So brazen were his feats that I caught myself reminiscing of my paramedic days recalling numerous drunk drivers emerging virtually unscathed from horrific fatality accidents. Studies find that their bodies are so relaxed at the point of impact that the kinetic forces of the collision are evenly distributed over the entire surface area of their body, thus reducing the chances of isolated major organ trauma.

OK. Maybe I wasn't reminiscing as much as I was distracting my mind with the laws of physics.

Anyway, the chances of me being inebriated enough to survive an imminent head on crash were more remote than the areas we were traveling through. So I tried thinking happy thoughts. I thought so many happy thoughts that I think I started to fly. Not wanting to alarm my wife and kids by flying around the inside of a careening van I decided to try and relax my entire body instead through some sort of mind over matter dreamlike state in which the goal was to convince my body that it was asleep whilst my mind entertained regrets of not getting our wills in order before we embarked to this country.

Alas, try as I might, my thoughts kept returning to a Jack Handey quote. "When I die, I would like to go peacefully, in my sleep, like my grandfather did. Not screaming and flailing like the passengers in his car."