Every one knows that you get car sickness when you are being driven? ... Right? .. So how come mine comes along when I'm driving through Tunnels?.. Now, when I saw driving through tunnels.. I mean I AM the one driving. YES I drove today! :)
Yes, boys and girls laddies and gallies .. I drove All the way home from church. Don't I just feel like a brand new shilling! I was driving a
Land Rover, so it was a bit bigger than I have ever driven (except in New Zealand when I drove an RV.) Sundays are great days to practice driving on the right side of the road - literally the right, since I'm accustomed to the left in Trinidad. There are not as many people, no one is in a hurry .. and lucky for me it was a sunny day ... so people were like smoked bees.... calmer.
It was pretty cool that the hubby asked me if I wanted to drive when we were heading back home, since just that morning while I was having
Caviar and Sliced Hardboiled eggs for my Breakfast ... (Caviar come in a tube ... how un-fancy) I was thinking that it would be nice to get to practice my driving more often.
I'm very proud of how I did, considering that I was driving a larger car, on the right hand side, and a manual car to boot.
There was no sweating, no animals coming forth, no wild crazy thoughts... just the constant tugging in my head that I had to impress this man who is a crazy
Formula 1 fan; who loves to drive fast and who, as with any sports car owner, was once embarassed when I was driving his Sports car "too slow" so that a truck passed us. hmpf!
Why then, if this day was going so beautifully well, did I start dreading the first tunnel we came upon. I knew that as a passenger, I close my eyes in the tunnels. It is something about the lights and how it passes quickly and feels like a hypnotic light flashing that makes my stomach go upside down. The trick this time? I had to keep them open .. no matter what!.
Into the first one and I started to feel slightly whoosie...
Note: In Norway you are not allowed to pull over to the side of a 60+ speed zone road. You can get a fine. I remembered everything that I was supposed to rules wise on the road. But this rule was becoming more and more ridiculous to me. After the 3rd tunnel I started to will my eyes to stay open in the tunnel.
I started wondering if this was a temporary thing, or will I have to deal with this through every tunnel that I would have to drive through? Would I have to drug myself up on Gravol each time? ... Maybe some deep breathing every time I pass through a tunnel would help ... Maybe a air refreshner with citrus in it? Maybe just a beacon on top the car to shine the whole tunnel to block out the flashing lights?
Almost home. The last tunnel pretty much did me. As we came out of it we had to curve around a feed off road. "Um .. hon.... What happens if I have to puke?" where can I pull over?" ...
"If you want to puke tell me before you do so I'll drive"
"So does that mean I pull over into the rock?" I asked eyeing the rock right next to the road.
This is not a road of shoulders where you can pull over and have a
carib on the side of the road .. or pull out de ole
Royal Oak. The road next to me stops because it has to... there is a rock that has been blasted away to make it. Not certain of what I mean? yuh know when u coming from San Juan heading to Maracas? Yuh know just where the road turns right to join the Maracas Road and you go through a narrow pass of road that has rock on either side of it? ... yea ... its That close .... pretty much all the way.
No dearies ... this is the land of " yuh better keep pressing on, crash into a rock or go over a cliff."
Happily though, with one final urge from the hubby of " Its an 80 Zone!" .. I ex-ed my way to our final turn off ... swished through the narrow one lane twisty road in our neighbourhood, and confidently and gracefully cut off the car just before I park it.....
Well if that isn't good timing ... I don't know what is! Whey yuh say?
Surprisingly, the roads in Norway leave little to the imagination of what it must have been like years and years before.... simply put .. dey bad.... real pothole and ting all over. But needless to say I understand how it could be so. It is dreadfully expensive to put down a road since ... hardly likely would a road from Bergen to Tronheim be flat ... or straight. More than likely, it would have be blasted through Numerous Mountains. Blasting through mountains can be as speedy as 5 meters per day and can be as long as 24.5 km (the longest tunnel in Norway) and costed 125 MILLION US dollars. I can't fault them for not building better roads. The Main road that joins the west coast big cities is about as comfortable as the road to Maracas !!! ... and between the ferries and frequent one laner areas ... with Motor Homes and Foreigners driving frequently, I would actually say that the trecherousity increases by 100%. Still it is a beautiful drive. Unfortunately, it is not as easy, simple or wise to stop all along the way to take pictures... So pictures usually should be taken in sport mode ... or better yet... cycle the road. This option is actually a big attraction, especially in summer. 
