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February 15, 2005

The Sky is Leaking...

I walked outside this morning to get in my truck and drive to work, and had to go back in and call in a work order to fix the sky. It was leaking.

As one can imagine, it doesn't rain much here. We're in the rainy season, now I guess. However, when I got here last year, it rained every afternoon for about 2 weeks. It would pour for about an hour and then quit. And it caused chaos.

When the roads were put in, there were no drains installed. With rain such a rare occurrence, it was neither necessary nor cost effective. But because of that, when it does rain, the roads flood easily.

Ron and I were out one afternoon last year when we got caught in the downpour. Traffic immediately got snarled, lakes appeared in the low spots, and people started to drive like maniacs. Oh wait, they were already doing that. Sorry. The highway rapidly became a parking lot, and we ended up cramming a 2 hour trip into 5 hours.

At one point, we left the highway, drove across the dirt and through a break in the chain link fence (dutifully protected from oncoming traffic by a policeman) to get on to the service road to try to find an alternate route. Traffic was much lighter, and we made pretty good time, hitting puddles at speeds fast enough to make a big rooster tail. While enjoying this, we drove past a guy and funnelled a wave of water into his open driver's side window.

Honestly, I didn't mean to do that...I didn't even notice that his window was down. All I know is that one second, I’m passing someone, and the next, Ron is cackling with laughter.

“Did you see that?!? The wave went right in that guy’s window!” he chortled.

Just then, the guy drove up beside us, shaking a very wet fist at us. It looked like he'd been in a wet gutra contest...I sort of shrugged my shoulders at him to say, "Sorry guy! Guess you should put up your window, huh?" Eventually, he turned off, and we continued on trying to find our way back home.

We eventually came up to what was the craziest intersection I've ever seen. Traffic was solid...people going all different ways, and was moving at a snail's pace. A dead snail. While we were attempting to get through it, a chorus of honking started up...

"Honk, honk, honk!"

"Beep, beep, beep!"

"Honk, honk, honk!"

"Beep, beep, beep!"

And so on...I joined in, to the amusement of a bus load of Pakistani TCNs (Third Country Nationals)...Just trying to blend in, you know...

Eventually, after about 5 hours, we made it back to the compound. We never quite figured out exactly where we'd gone, as we basically just took whatever opening we had to make forward progress. Just that quite a lot of the forward progress wasn't in the exact direction we needed to go. Still, we found that if you drive around long enough, you'll eventually figure Riyadh out.

Posted by djf on February 15, 2005 10:34 AM
Category: The Magical Kingdom
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