white knuckles at 5 mph
This last weekend the family packed itself into the ole jalopy and drove over the hill to shop. After going to the Winchester Toys 'R Us to pick up something that our local 'R Us didn't carry, we then ventured over to the Cupertino 99 Ranch Market to pick up a couple of Asian items that aren't carried anywhere in Santa Cruz country.
Everything was going along fine...until we reached the parking lot. Therein began the terror and the coldsweating.
Asians, shall we say, have a reputation for being terrible drivers.
Now imagine a high concentration of said drivers in a cramped parking lot with 15 or more cars in constant motion.
We had people backing out of parking stalls and not looking behind them. We had cars park on top of and over the lines. We had cars weaving though the aisles and not stopping for pedestrians. We had cars stacked up three deep while someone waited for an opening spot, while two others tried to pass on the left to get another spot further up.
A woman parking a white Lexus came within two millimeters of hitting the front of our parked car, and only stopped after I raised my hands up, looked at her sternly, and clearly displayed the distance between our two license plates. To this day, I still believe she was going to hit my car.
After dodging through four aisles of non-stopping cars, we headed into the market, where the driving madness continued. Now instead of cars, we were engaged with baby-carriers and shopping carts. I was hit twice in the ankle by two baby carriages, and once with a cart by someone clearly not paying attention.The madness continued as people left their carts in the center of the aisle while scouting around for their grocery items. Some of these were driven around. Some of them were just rammed out of the way with another cart.
After purchasing our handful of items, we braved the parking lot again got into the car and escaped to the safety of Wolfe road.
It was easily the scariest driving moment I've had in years.
Everything was going along fine...until we reached the parking lot. Therein began the terror and the coldsweating.
Asians, shall we say, have a reputation for being terrible drivers.
Now imagine a high concentration of said drivers in a cramped parking lot with 15 or more cars in constant motion.
We had people backing out of parking stalls and not looking behind them. We had cars park on top of and over the lines. We had cars weaving though the aisles and not stopping for pedestrians. We had cars stacked up three deep while someone waited for an opening spot, while two others tried to pass on the left to get another spot further up.
A woman parking a white Lexus came within two millimeters of hitting the front of our parked car, and only stopped after I raised my hands up, looked at her sternly, and clearly displayed the distance between our two license plates. To this day, I still believe she was going to hit my car.
After dodging through four aisles of non-stopping cars, we headed into the market, where the driving madness continued. Now instead of cars, we were engaged with baby-carriers and shopping carts. I was hit twice in the ankle by two baby carriages, and once with a cart by someone clearly not paying attention.The madness continued as people left their carts in the center of the aisle while scouting around for their grocery items. Some of these were driven around. Some of them were just rammed out of the way with another cart.
After purchasing our handful of items, we braved the parking lot again got into the car and escaped to the safety of Wolfe road.
It was easily the scariest driving moment I've had in years.