Move That Car

The trooper, the car I drive, is in the shop.  I hate that.  I hate operating on someone else's time schedule.  Being the first of the month, there is hundreds of things to be done and I did not think I could wait to get started on that errand list.  Marc said he would let Matt off from working with the groups today and take me to town.  I only put the most urgent things on today's list: buying groceries for the Casa kids, formula for the babies, bank, health insurance for the employees, paying Rosy's tuition. 

In typical Honduran fashion, nothing went as planned, but as I always say, "It is what it is."  We knew when we left the bank, we did not have time to get to Seguro for the employees insurance cards before they closed for lunch.  We did a couple of other things and had a nice little lunch break at Quizno's.   We then headed to El Centro to Seguro.  I got the cards and we were getting through El Centro to go to PriceSmart.

El Centro is the old part of Tegucigalpa.  The streets are narrow and are all one way streets.  There are lots of pedestrians and traffic frequently moves quiet slowly or not at all.  We were on one of the narrow streets on which a building was being reconstructed.  Scaffolding came out into the street, making it even more narrow.  We were creeping along when all of sudden we came to a complete stop.  That is not that unusual, except that we never started moving again.  Two cars ahead of us there was a big water truck and in front of him, a little pickup truck was parked, thus preventing the water truck from going any further. 

People are not patient here.  The motorcycles were going down the sidewalk.  We might have tried that except a utility pole prevented us from getting on the sidewalk.  We could here a cacophony of horns honking, like that is going to do some good.  The traffic was backing up for blocks.  Every intersection was jammed.  Matt turned off the car and we were going to wait.  We were preparing for a long wait. 

The driver of the water truck began climbing down from his truck and with two other men began walking toward the parked truck.  Sitting on the passenger side, I had a bird's eye view.  They were trying to pick the truck up and move it.  They were able to pick it up, but not high enough to get up on the sidewalk.  When all the motorcyclists realized what was happening, they began to park their bikes everywhere and anywhere.  They flexed their muscles as they rushed up to the pickup truck.  Even the pedestrians were stopping to watch.  And even a policeman joined the challenge to move the car. 

There just happened to be a trench running along side the curb, a rather deep trench.  The crew was not able to lift the car enough to get it upon the sidewalk, but they were able to move it enough to get the the front and rear tires on the right side of the vehicle into the trench.  And that was just enough room to allow the water truck to squeeze past.  Then the rest of us were able to easily pass. 

Matt and I were laughing so hard.  I noticed other people were too.  While this was another delay, it was well worth watching.

Terri