On Sunday, Christmas Eve morning around 7:00 am, we got into the car for our trip to Atlanta. This was preceded by some agonizing over which car to take. My wife found the sedan provided a comfortable ride, but was difficult to enter and exit. The van was easy for her to get in and out, but the seating was less comfortable. Because I have a pretty good eye for 3-dimensional puzzles, I made the decision to take the van, because we had to take a gigantic pile of stuff with us, including the wheelchair, the commode, the office chair and our suitcases – plus we would be bringing our daughter and her suitcases back with us.
Once we got on the road, the comfort issue seemed to vanish.
The drive was brisk and easy, because anyone who was traveling that weekend had left on Saturday. In Georgia, I was puzzled by the roadside fences lining I-75. Typically, these were 4-inch steel mesh with metal poles. But every hundred feet or so, the metal poles were replaced by wood, with crossbeams, forming a kind of double “H” shape:
This is the kind of thing that drives me crazy. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble and expense, creating thousands of these wooden structures along the highway, and yet I could not figure out their purpose. Were they a kind of stile, enabling humans to clamber over the fence in emergencies? They did not appear to have hinges, but possibly they were gates, enabling firefighting equipment to access woods and fields from the highway. So I called the Georgia Department of Transportation and was only transferred three times by confused, irritable office workers until I got the answer, provided by one of the GDOT engineers. Drop me a line if you want to know.
In Atlanta, we stayed at the home of my wife’s aunt, a delightful, warm woman. She had bought us tickets to the Atlanta Aquarium, billed as the largest in the world. She said, “It’s Christmas day, so there shouldn’t be many people there.”
Unfortunately, she was wrong. The place was mobbed. A sign directed people into two lines of Disney-style switchbacks: “Previous Reservations” and “Purchase Tickets.” We got into the “Previous Reservations” line, which meandered around slowly in a freezing drizzle. Then, for reasons that can only be explained by the geniuses running the place, the two lines merged, forcing wet, shivering families to fight for a place in line.
Once inside, we discovered that wheelchairs are not respected by people who are not confined to them. When we were waiting for an opportunity to see a display, I had to leave about a foot between the wheelchair and the heels of the person in front of us, or they might back up, trip and fall into my wife’s lap. But once you leave that gap, someone will step into it as though the wheelchair doesn’t exist. My wife found the umbrella was an effective tool for defending her personal space.
The displays were in some cases breathtaking, clearly on a par with the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The Atlanta Aquarium has an enormous tank holding FOUR Whale Sharks, the world’s largest fish. Other tanks held Beluga Whales, Sea Otters, Sea Lions, coral reef fish, freshwater fish and jellyfish.
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It was chilly in Atlanta, which sits on that boundary between the cold-weather northern states and the mild south. So they get a chilly winter, and on rare occasions, snow. My wife’s aunt told me that her neighbor actually bought a snow-making machine, so that they could cover the yard with artificial snow on cold nights and their kids could go sledding.
My wife’s aunt was dog-sitting for her son’s dog, Blossom. Blossom likes to pre-sanitize the dinner dishes by licking them in the dishwasher before they’re washed, removing any last traces of sticky egg yolk or smears of grease.
When we left on Wednesday, traffic was bumper-to-bumper, stop-and-go all the way to Macon. It took us 2 hours just to drive to the outskirts of Atlanta. Fortunately, the roads opened up and we made good time the rest of the way, but it was a long time in the car and we’re all grateful to be home.
Argentines are considered by other Hispanics to be somewhat arrogant. They have a lot to be proud of, with a long history and a rich culture. However, they do demonstrate a disdain for common rules. I witnessed an example of this in the Buenos Aires Zoo, where a man calmly fed pieces of his sandwich to a toucan in a cage, right next to a sign posted on the cage that clearly stated, “Do Not Feed The Animals.” My friend Norberto shrugged and said, “Welcome to Argentina.”
Nowhere is this casual arrogance more obvious than on the roadways. The daily commute is a competitive sport in Argentina, and there is no thrill ride available in any amusement park that can equal the sphincter-clenching terror of a cab ride to the mall.
Lane markings are largely ignored, treated as mere decorations. Stop signs are beneath contempt. In fact, it seems that the vast majority of intersections in Buenos Aires are uncontrolled, possessing neither stop signs nor traffic lights. Busses, trucks, cabs and private vehicles charge into them with apparent disregard for cross-traffic. Parking lanes are used as driving lanes whenever there is a stretch of 5 or more empty parking spaces.
Remarkably, there seem to be few accidents, so it can’t be pure anarchy. I can only attribute this to an informal, unwritten rule structure to which Argentine drivers adhere. For example, if two vehicles are attempting to occupy the same lane, the one who honks his horn first wins. If neither honks, they simply occupy the same lane, mere inches from one another at 50 or 60 miles an hour.
Buenos Aires is a beautiful city, full of breathtaking European architecture. But throughout the city, wires are strung willy-nilly from building to building, as though everybody is stealing cable TV from each other.
Argentines, according to Norberto, pay their taxes in an amount corresponding to their belief in the stability of their government. In other words, they seldom pay anything close to the amount they actually owe, which in turn makes the government less stable, which means they pay even less the following year.
On the other hand, the Argentine people are remarkably civilized, lining up in orderly fashion at bus stops, even though bus stops are unmarked in any way. These mysterious locations must be passed on from father to son, mother to daughter.
Restaurant dining is considered serious business, the food is expertly prepared and the waiters are highly professional. However, Argentine diners simply ignore “No Fumare” signs, lighting up cigarettes wherever they damn well please.
Graffiti is just as much of a problem in Argentina as it is in any large city, but it’s almost all political. Because political parties are organized, Argentine graffiti is painted by professional sign-painters. They do a very nice job, considering the fact that they’re defacing private property. The graffiti is like a metaphor for the Argentines themselves: Elegant, professional, but in your face whether you like it or not.
Our trip to Argentina was suggested by our friend Norberto, who is a native of that country. He visits Argentina frequently, and was excited by the prospect of showing us around. Norberto used to be in the travel business, so he takes extreme pride in finding airline and lodging deals. We let him poke around on the Internet for a few days, and he proposed the following scenario:
He and I would drive to Miami with the kids and the luggage late on a Thursday night, arriving in the wee hours of the morning. On Friday morning we would fly from Miami to Panama, change planes, and fly from Panama to Buenos Aires, arriving in the early evening on Friday. The wives would fly down from Orlando on Saturday afternoon, arriving very early on Sunday morning.
Norberto had arranged for two furnished apartments in Buenos Aires. Because the Argentine peso is valued at 3 to 1 versus the dollar, the accommodations were incredibly cheap. A week in a furnished apartment in Buenos Aires costs about the same as a nice hotel for one night in New York.
So at 11:30 pm on Thursday, we piled into a rented van and hit the Florida Turnpike. Within half an hour I realized the flaw in the plan. We would never make it to Buenos Aires, because we would all be crushed or burned to death in a horrible traffic accident. Norberto is a judge, and like many judges, considers himself basically immune from prosecution for all but capital crimes. He drove 95 miles an hour the entire way. The 4-hour drive to Miami was over in 2 and a half hours. I left claw marks in the foam padding of the dashboard, and ground half a gram of calcium off the crowns of my teeth during the ride.
We were first in line at the airline counter when it opened for business at 4:00 am, where Norberto argued in Spanish with the desk agent for half an hour to get the seats he wanted. I must admit, it worked. I sat in an exit aisle and had plenty of leg room.
The 2 and a half hour flight to Panama was uneventful, other than the argument Norberto had in Spanish with the gate agent in Panama to ensure that we got the seats he wanted. Once again, Norberto came through, and I enjoyed the same exit aisle seat for the 7-hour flight to Buenos Aires.
When we arrived, we were met by his cousin, who is also named Norberto. Norberto number two helped us load our luggage into the car, then drove us on a picturesque route through the evening streets of Buenos Aires, at approximately 95 miles an hour.
We wove in terrifying patterns through the traffic, occasionally occupying a lane with another vehicle. We were never farther than 6 inches from another car, bus or truck. Norberto flicked his headlights and tooted his horn at random intervals, made casual conversation in broken English, careened recklessly through intersections, pointed out historic landmarks, and steered with his knees while lighting a cigarette. When we arrived at our apartment, I was a whimpering wreck. For 10 hours I had been hurtling through the atmosphere at half the speed of sound, but I was never so terrified as I was when riding in a car with either Norberto behind the wheel.
