Small Accident

There have been some complaints that my blog is getting bogged down. Yes- I confess, nothing much is happening. We have begun to enjoy our life here, finally. I think when the novelty of realizing that we have actually succeeded in moving to South America, and living in a foreign country finally sinks in, we will be ready to start off on new adventures. But I will share this little story from this last week.

I finally had my first accident in Uruguay. It was on the motorcycle, riding parallel to the Ruta (main hiway East and West in Uruguay). I had just visited a drug store, whose owner kept cars for sale outside his business and sold them for people. He agreed to take the bikes on consignment.

I decided to visit the house of some fairly new arrivals from Mexico (their last expat residence) and when I turned onto the road, I was faced with a school bus. I turned the bike and braked (a bad move any time) and laid it down, right on my leg. Now that sounds pretty exciting, doesn't it?

Well, here is what really happened. I was driving a motorcycle, but not the cool Keeway. I was driving my wife's scooter, to charge up the battery. Yes I was driving on a frontage road to the hiway, but the hiway has very few cars on it most of the days and there were no cars on the frontage road, at all. Yes, a school bus was coming, but in Uruguay, they transport school kids in 8 seat suburban type vehicles (long station wagons). And, oh, did I forget to mention that I was going about 4 mph? Yeah. I think my ego took a worse bruise than my leg (especially when the guy from the hot dog stand came over to pull the bike off the old guy), though it did keep me in bed for a couple of days.

Not much has been happening. We are back to having all of our furniture inside rather than stored around the yard and extra bedrooms. Now we are just waiting on upper cabinets to be built and installed (waiting and waiting and waiting- you get the picture). I really don't know how Uruguay businessmen ever make any money they way they start work and never finish. But at least we have everything necessary to a function. And the little VW bug is working great. Now if I can just sell the bikes....

Now it is time to get our little Fusca (bug) out on the road and see some of the country. That will be fun.