Leave it to the Professionals

Ah driving, we have only touched on this topic. When we moved to Ukraine, it was a drastic change to the way we drive in the States. The people in Ukraine drive very aggressive (sidewalks count as vehicle paths), Speed and “cutting” and even driving in the wrong lane for a “smoother” trip is the norm. I have had many trips to Kiev and the things I’ve seen still amaze and freighten me. I pray for the sure hand of the drivers and I’m always thankful to return home safely…….Egypt was a whole new experience, what I thought was crazy driving in Ukraine couldn’t hold a candle to these people. I think the only thing that is familiar is they drive on the “right” side of the road. Pedestrians do NOT have any type of right-of-way and hearing a hand slapped against the side of the bus was all part of the experience (we think it was on the side and not on the bottom of the bus…hee, hee...we think). One of our first clues of the insanity should have been after leaving the airport to the hotel (it was dark out); Nichole and I noticed that some people didn’t drive with headlights on and then “flashed” them at different times, very peculiar but we were too tired from the trip and excited to get to the resort that we didn’t think too much of it. But heading back from Luxor we learned a lot about Egyptian driving (more than we’ll blog about, we don’t want to scare the Grandparents). There is a middle lane on a two lane road, this is where you align the vehicle dead center of the faded painted center line and push the oncoming and ongoing traffic over (during a simultaneous pass of all the vehicles there’s all of six inches on either side of the middle vehicle). During night time driving Headlights are optional and actually not preferred to use.

The headlights are only used during passes (which occur at all times). This headlight thing also made for an interesting event called “crossing the street”, we noticed that as people started to cross the dark unlit street that all of a sudden multiple cars started “flashing” their headlights, warning of the approaching danger. This got us thinking what happens when you’re already in the middle of this road crossing? I think ultimately we didn’t want to know and didn’t bother to ask…..we figured somehow they made it without incident. The bumper sticker, “I don’t drive fast, I fly low” certainly came to mind multiple times as when there was a straight section of road; I think the speed rating on the tires was far exceeded. I am confident the Lord was keeping us safe and we had a lot of exhausted angels up there. All I can say to put in perspective was when we got home, it was a breath of fresh air to have “normal” driving with headlights and we commented on how nice it was to be driving back in Ukraine….yikes!