10.31.08
There are days which, by the end of it you just feel so glad it’s over, and you don’t wanna relive it once more.
Today is one of those days.
Well it has been a necessary trip but things just didn’t turn out as well as planned.
First of all this “cu do mundo” (excuse me…) turned out at least 100 kilometers further away than expected. So even when we started out in the middle of the night we still ended up arriving in the middle of the day. There were so many bad parts of the road being fixed and so many worse parts needing to be fixed. It took 6.5 hours to get there, 7.5 hours to come back. Just 2 hours for the actual work. (including lunch) Anyway, as I said, it was a necessary trip and it couldn’t be done differently.
So…altogether Gordo had driven for 14 hours in one day. ( I said I wish driving was a sport…)
There was a hiccup on the way back–someone was just putting the first cone for repairing part of a road and at 110 kilometers/hr auto-pilot Gordo reacted quick enough to slow down and stopped before the cone. However, almost at the moment we stopped, there was a “bang” that came from our behind and I felt the shake of the car.
“Oh no.” I thought.”Did it really happen?”
First thing in my mind was: shit, this is gonna set us way back in getting home. We were doing good timing there!
Second thing that came to my mind: Oh yeah, gotta get out and check on the damage.
To my relief I didn’t find anything too ugly. It was an Ok picture, visually. We were about 20 meters away from the other car.
“It looks OK to me.” I said,”You think we could go?”
Gordo:”See if the other car is Ok…”
One guy from “the other car” came up, and I was bending down checking on our car for the 2nd time and deliberately waiting for him to talk first.(always wait for the other guy to talk first, because you never know if he is a bully, a bum, or just someone nice like us,who has better things to do than staying there arguing whose fault is that and trying to hassle you for as much money as he could…so just wait and see.)
“How is your car” He asked.
“well…not…too bad…”,”what about yours?”
“oh, ours is bad.” he said.
Then we pretended to examine our car again, and by this time I figured I could propose now:”Listen, it looks like our car is OK. We are kind of rushing somewhere, so if you’re ok too, I guess we’ll just let it go.”
The guy was pretty relieved and as we were about to leave, from far away,the driver, a younger guy,a much more stupid one, who obviously doesn’t know tailgating is wrong, made a different decision.He came up and sort of threw his attitude towards me, which did not bother us except the fact that we really wanted to be home earlier and he was obviously gonna make a fool of himself by wasting our time.
A few minutes later the highway patrol came. I greeted him and finished explaining the situation in like 3 short sentences.
The police took a look and immediately told the young guy he was at fault. He was protesting but I thought the policeman asked him to take a hike..something like that.
The police did it beautifully, and we left gracefully(considering easily, he could have paid 400rmb on sight, and afterwards fixing the scratches at our rear and correcting the gas tank that now is so crooked it will hold maybe 2 litres of gas less! Oh yeah and one of our mud-guards is gone). All we asked is more time to ourselves.
Regarding the old volkwagen, well let’s just say now the car and the driver deserve each other. er…it was flying and break so suddenly the whole front of the car squeezed under our car and kissed our gas tank. It was all banged out of shape.The front hood is a very 3-D inverted”V” shape now.
Conclusion is , Peugeout 307 is good. It stands the test of “bom”. You’ll see the difference.
Well that explains the 1 hours more time spent on the way back.
P.S. Lunch time we were taken to this restaurant where they keep alive porcupines and wild cats(maybe not cat, wild something) for cooking purpose. Poor animals–they were so trapped and helpless. They had the same innocent eyes like Xiao Tan, but instead of naughtiness, there is so much sadness. To think they are still caged in a damp, dirty place waiting to be slaughtered as I am sitting comfortably in home with the A.c now, just makes my heart ache.
We made a quick stop at this lake. It is supposed to be a reservoir, but hard to believe, because it is sooooooooo big!
Perhaps it was the best moment of the day. To think hours later we would bump into an asshole and the road to home that seemed so endless.
Anyway, we made it.