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Boston drivers are in the minor leagues when compared with the drivers
we dealt with on our recent vacation in St. Martin. Drivers in St Martin
are aggressive, careless with their lives and their vehicles, and less
than tolerant of first time vacationers feeling their way around the island.
The steadily deteriorating condition of many of the narrow main roads adds
additional challenges for less experienced island drivers. A huge influx
of illegal immigrants who are driving for the first time, many without
driver’s licenses and formal driver training, makes getting around safely
a significant accomplishment.
Our nearly new rental car, a Peugeot hardtop convertible (a very nice car by the way), seemed out of place on an island where most cars displayed signs of vehicle bumper tag. Our first trip into Marigot for groceries and dinner gave us a taste of what we’d experience all week. We encountered a little traffic jam caused by a seriously pot holed main road at a popular intersection (where great croissants could be found). As we waited for traffic to move motorcycles zoomed by on both sides of our car, weaving in and out between cars to avoid oncoming traffic. The road was further narrowed by haphazardly parked cars jutting out into the traffic lanes. Of course cars coming from side roads were constantly trying to force their way into traffic, and pedestrians were busy darting across the roads dodging cars and motorcycles. After that first driving experience subsequent trips featured me driving in constant fear that if my concentration lapsed for a second I’d pick off a motorcycle rider, or miss someone darting into traffic, or get squeezed between on coming traffic and the trees along side the narrow roads. On Sunday evening we headed out to dinner not knowing most restaurants were closed, we eventually found ourselves headed into Phillipsburg on the Dutch side of the island. I thought I knew where we might find more options for dinner, but what we found was a narrow side street that you entered at one end and exited eight to ten blocks latter, only to encounter road construction that forced us into a loop that lead us back to the same street a few minutes latter. We eventually found a way out of that loop, and headed back to our lodging, finally giving up the “good” restaurant hunt in favor of immediacy in the form of a Burger King – noisy and far from acceptable food. The rest of the week we never strayed far from what became our main route into town. I learned the short cuts around Marigot, which roads had the worst pot holes, where people tended to be walking on the road, and where to expect unusual parking technique. I wouldn’t have bet on it at the start of the week, but at the end of our stay we turned the rental car back in none the worse for wear. Surprisingly we did see two Porsche Boxsters on the road, daring owners for sure! The predominant vehicles of choice were European and Japanese econboxes. Small and maneuverable and easy to park in cramped quarters obviously are the key sales attributes. We didn’t see any big Mercedes, BMWs or Lexus’s – they wouldn’t survive on the cramped streets of the island and surely wouldn’t fit into most parking spaces. I spent the past weekend prepping the trailer and race cars for our trip to Virginia International Raceway the first weekend of April. As I’ve come to expect when I start projects like this, what should take a few hours inevitably takes a lot longer. The first thing I needed to do was to pump up the new race slicks I’ve been storing over the winter. I have three tire gauges to select from for the job. My Griot Garage in line gauge I like the best because I can check a pressure and add air with the same device, but that gauge seems to read four to five pounds high now and is accordingly not sufficiently accurate. The next gauge I pulled out of course had a dead 9-volt battery, and the two extra batteries I located also were dead. The third gauge is brand new and is very accurate, but needs to be reset each time you bleed air from the tire, slowing down the process of setting the correct pressure. Four tires into the process I’m unable to add air to a tire as the tire valve is too short and is angled in toward the center spokes of the wheel. I can’t get a regular fitting onto the stem, so I’m forced to use a bicycle tire pump. Fifty or sixty pumps later I’ve added maybe four pounds of air. Definitely not the fast way to get air into a racing slick! I move onto cleaning up the cars using my favorite QuicShine 99 product, the last can I locate of course is all but empty. I scrounge around for alternatives, which of course are less effective at removing rubber and grease smudges on the paint. Loading everything back into the trailer that I removed last fall proceeded smoothly once I determined where I’d put those items. Of course I’ll have forgotten something critical, but will not realize that until we’re in Danville, but that’s what makes a trip to Wal*Mart a part of every DE event. Hopefully by the time you read this column we’ll be back home, having had a great time driving on one of our favorite race tracks. I’ve decided to do something very different for me this fall. I’ve enrolled in a four-day photography workshop to be held in Vermont. The focus of the training will be on landscape and wildlife photography. The literature says we’ll be up early taking pictures as the sun rises, work in a classroom on our notebook computers during the day, then be back in the field taking pictures as the sun sets. Then back in the classroom for more homework. I’ve not done much landscape photography so this should be educational at a minimum. I’m sure a lot of the technique taught in the course will have application to my automotive focused photography efforts, and who knows maybe I’ll discover there is something other than cars worth photographing! |
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