I WAS BEHIND A TRUCK. I’m neither a Crop Over nor a Carnival person. Who am I?
Answer: I could be any driver in Barbados, on a daily basis!
I’m not really into riddles or anything so. Actually, I was real frighten on Monday morning. It was by the ‘Bermuda Triangle’ (the one in Barbados, not the Atlantic). I was behind a monstrous Mack truck, with two boulders bigger than you and me put together twice.
The Mack driver applied brakes as I was applying my MAC lipstick. I nearly swallowed the thing whole. My mac-a-cheese spilled all over my Mac, as I was trying to multitask on my way to work.
I could hear you saying I deserved this, but I think you may be thinking I was driving, right? I was actually in the passenger’s seat, listening to Sherwood McCaskie, with the prestigious Sir Henry Fraser, on tales of tombs in Barbados. Reader, for a split second, I thought my tail would soon be in a tomb, too!
The driver swerved onto the left lane and suddenly applied brakes. Thankfully, my comrade with whom I carpool walks slowly (to the tune of Sister Marshall’s biggest hit) and drives slowlier! I thought the boulders would come tumbling onto the car. What separated boulders from car was a chain that was no match for a hungry pot-starver.
Perhaps the chain was placed there for style. Or maybe to appease a guilty conscience. Whatever the reason, if the boulders had rolled onto our car, you would have found me in another section of the papers, a few pages later.
Do you think it is time for a truck lane? You can text 9-3-7. I bet one hundred per cent of the answers will be in the affirmative.
I’m not really sure the local traffic flow theorists will agree with my proposal, though. There are now traffic lights between the Wildey roundabout and the newer roundabout in St Thomas.
So, heading north from Warrens, you slow down by lollipop, then stop at roundabout, then drive for a minute, then stop at lights, then slow down or stop again. All that just to get some wings from Lucky Horseshoe!
I’ve heard rationalisations for pedestrian crossings just at the edge of roundabouts. An expert in the field tells me, “Is just so in the UK; it got to be right!” Apparently, with that response, I was to be unshackled from my pedestrian thoughts. But my mental chain was too thick for a pot-starver.
I decided to ask my engineer brother.
He said some things about U=D, a bottleneck and the average speed of trucks. So, after opening a Coke, I surmised that we truly are in need of a truck lane.
Anyway, enough trucking talk.
This is my 50th column. I thought I’d give Hoadie a surprise and send him a voice clip of me in my best karaoke form. I can’t wait ’til I hit a hundred . . . . Until then, I’ll just keep on truckin’!
Veoma Ali is an author, broadcaster, advertising exec and, most important, a karaoke lover.
