Car Karma

How to describe car karma - it is that amorphous energy surrounding how we drive, what we drive, where we drive, and most importantly where we park.

D. has amazing car karma. He finds parking spaces in unlikely places, even here in Europe. He manages to squeeze large vehicles through narrow spaces designed for horses, not even carriages.

But, that said, here in France, his car karma takes an odd turn. Everywhere we go, there is always someone following us, turning in front of us, we seem never to be alone on the road, even in the most remote places. It does not seem to matter if we rent the car from Germany, France or Switzerland (as we have done them all), or whether it is a Volvo, a Mercedes, a VW, a Citroen Opal or Renault (we have also done all of those), the karma remains the same.

At our house, we are next to farms, with few houses. But as soon as we pull out of the gated, fenced driveway into the roadway, here comes a small "rat-can" of a car which would never survive the streets in the US. It would be crushed by our oversized SUVs and Ford F150s. Here they speed happily along, cutting off tractors, and racing alongside motorcycles.

One of the most bizarre experiences the other day was a tractor-trailer pulling up on a small but main thoroughfare across from the lone ATM machine in the town. The driver jumps out, as we are pulling away from the ATM, blocks traffic while he gets his money.

We then observe another truck driver down the road, hiking across a major, busy roadway, jumping over a barrier with his food, carrying it back to the truck.

The evening we traveled to Fontvielle for dinner at Le Planet, we set up Emily to guide us, even though I believed I could get us back there following the local signage. Emily took us over hill and dale, on the other side of Les Baux than we usually travel, on a treacherous, winding road, climbing over the mountain, via a roadway that required blasting through mountains of rock to build, with cliffs waiting to swallow us if we deviated from the road. Even on this road, with spectacular views of the valley and Alpilles, drivers seemed compelled to pass us by.

So, we continue our merry travels, trying to anticipate which car karma will present itself, which rat-can will pass us going 65 on a back road where we are driving 45, and where D. will find his next miraculous parking space. We feel it is the ying and yang of the voiture, the positive nature of his parking karma is balanced by the negative experiences driving. Oh well, c'est la vie.