As you can imagine there is always a lot of traffic on the Mexican side of the border. The bridge over the nonriver is basically a parking lot as the US border guards do a thorough job of examining entering cars. Frequently (which means all times that aren’t 5am) the backup extends well beyond the toll on the Mexican side of the bridge and back into the major road. That wouldn’t be a problem, except that there are other things on the road, things like stores and restaurants, and most importantly the only place to buy the Mexican equivalent of an EZ Pass for the bridge.
The Mexican solution to this problem is a left turn lane at the intersection about fifteen car lengths behind the border toll, which has room for about five cars. I can count the number of times that a car which wishes to turn left can reach the turn lane without sitting in traffic on one thumb. In general that would seem to mean that in order to go buy an EZ Pass (neither EZ nor Pass are one of the 35 words of Spanish I know) you have to sit in a long line of traffic that is waiting to cross the border.
Unless you are Mexican…or the LR is you passenger. I was prepared to wait patiently in the left lane as the traffic inched slowly forward towards the border, confident that I’d reach the turn lane sometime just before the next millenia. A handful of cars in front of me were not. They pulled out into oncoming traffic and zipped away. The LR looked at me expectantly. This wasn’t a three second move here, this was a good 45 seconds at least driving in the oncoming traffic lane. Visions of head on collisions and Mexican Jail danced in my head. I’m delicate, I couldn’t handle American jail, let alone Mexican jail. Still there wasn’t any oncoming traffic really, and the LR was making it clear that sitting in traffic wasn’t on her list of things to do today.
Just then two SUVs pulled out from the line of traffic behind me. Like a cyclist breaking away from the back I figured there was safety in numbers and jumped out behind them. Besides with two SUVs blocking in front of me, if any cars should appear they would safely absorb the blow. Right?
For the first twenty seconds or so it was no big deal. No cars were coming; our little phalanx of SUVs was zipping right along. Then, out of the dust rose a giant, a full on eighteen-wheeler. How it got there is a mystery since there is supposedly a separate bridge for trucks. But nevertheless it was certainly there, a big looming image of certain death on eighteen wheels. Getting back onto the correct side of the road was out of the question, cars were packed bumper to bumper there was certainly no way to pull back in. One of my blockers, clearly thinking faster than I (most likely because he had way more practice at this kind of thing) pulled across the other lane of oncoming traffic, which thankfully had no cars, and onto the oncoming traffic’s shoulder. The car in front of me stopped. That seemed like a good idea. I stopped, and prayed that the truck was paying attention. One blocker didn’t seem like nearly enough to absorb the blow that was headed my way.
Thankfully the truck saw us, and changed into his right hand lane with plenty of room to spare. It zoomed by and we continued on our way with little incident. I had passed my first mortality test, and it wasn’t even at the hand of a Coked-up automatic rifle bearing drug runner, just a run of the mill narrowly avoided head on collision.
This blog has been gang violence free for 30 days.
Bodycount: 0
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