....I rented a small open land cruiser and with 2 of my buddies I drove up and down Norman Manley Blvd. along the 7 mile beach strip. No Problem Mon! It was a piece of cake! What was all of this chatter about how difficult it would be to adjust to left side of the road driving? To me it was easy as pie.
So we ventured on downtown. Again, no problem mon, just a little bit of traffic to deal with. Big deal! Then we decided to let it all hang out and explore the cliffs road, so off we went. When someone behind us would honk at us because we were going too slow, I'd merely pull over and let them pass. No problem mon! I quickly realized the secret for me to acclimate myself to left side of the road driving was for me to just go slow and not be a road hazard to those who are in some kind of a rush.
It was mid-day when we did this so the road wasn't too busy. Consequently, we were free to stop a few times to snap some photos of the interesting places along the road. Proceeding in this manner we gradually made it all the way up to the split in the road with no incidents. There I turned around and we headed back. Still no problem mon! By this time I was feeling quite confident in my left side of the road driving abilities which made me become rather smug about it.
So down from the cliffs we coasted, enjoying the ocean view and the road view and still no problem mon! When we were nearly at that place just before downtown where the road dips down and turns right to the HI-LO market (it has a long brick wall lining the right side of the road there) we began to hear the gradually increasing wail of a fire engine's siren. I didn't pay much attention to it thinking it was on some parallel side street, not realizing there really aren't any parallel side streets along there where a Fire truck could be driving!
All of a sudden, Surprise! This big-butt old Fire Brigade truck comes screaming up that hill right at us! Here's this insane gigantic metal monster bearing down on my little land cruiser loaded with 3 road ignorant tourists with no left road shoulder to speak of upon which to stop and let it go by! BIG PROBLEM MON!
Just then I spotted a big parking lot ON THE RIGHT HAND SIDE OF THE ROAD just before that brick wall starts. So rather than just stop on the far left of the road and let it drive around me, I instead gunned that little sucker and turned hard right in front of that Fire truck and we flew into that big parking lot barely being missed by it.
This was a knee jerk reaction from driving on the right side of the road all of my life and thank God no one got hurt when I did it. I surmised that this would be the best way for me to get out of the way of the Fire engine so it could proceed unhindered. But doing this scared the you-know-what out of all of us and, as they flew by, the bug-eyed firemen didn't look too pleased with me either!
Boy, all the rest of our trip did I take one heck of a tongue lashing for doing that fancy bit of maneuvering. My only defense was to protest over and over again that I saved all of our lives and we all lived through it to tell about it. But that rationalization just brought forth more hoots and some rather derisive comments about my driving in general!
So the next time I'm there in Negril driving, I'll try to not let pride and smugness over my great prowess driving on the left side of the road possess me because I think that God sent that incident my way to humble me for being so darned smug and proud of my driving. And it sure did and I wouldn't want something worse to occur!
14 years ago
