The Horseless Carriage

Some of my in-laws live in Sydney, BC. It’s a lovely little tourist / retirement town set along the water on Vancouver island. It is a surprisingly busy little town. No one there works. The population is almost entirely retired or wandering tourists. So at any time of day you are likely to find the few blocks that constitute the core of the town busy with people meandering through the coffee shops and bookstores that make up the main thoroughfares.

It is a great town to walk around in, but I swear if I have to drive through it much more I’m going to grab the first blue haired driver I can find and shout “You may die at any minute! Does this not give your trip some sense of urgency! Can you not just go for fuck sakes!”

The drive from my mother-in-law to my sister-in-law takes you through the tiny center of the town where the residents have seen fit to lower the obviously reckless 50 kph speed limit standard in every other municipality to a blistering 30 kph. Regardless of the route chosen you must travel through no fewer than two 4-way stop intersections. The trip is excruciating torture undertaken at a glacial pace. I think some of these people knew Jesus when he was a baby. When four of these codgers ease up to one of the four way stops I swear time grinds to a halt. They just stare at one another wondering who the bold bastard is that will break the deadlock. Eventually someone does, but the other three are not prone to just jump on any old bandwagon. Of course by the time one of them does set foot to gas the other two have plum forgotten that they were there first so we are back to the four way staring contest. I swear Sisyphus made more fucking progress with his rock.

So if anyone finds me slumped over the steering wheel in Sydney, BC you will know the cause of my aneurysm.

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