Riding The Line

I drive a lot these days. When I lived in Orlando, my daily commute to work was about 11 miles or so, and all of those miles were through residential/suburban/urban areas. It took me about 25 minutes or so, once I stopped at all the inevitable red lights and waited in the lines of traffic caused by said lights. Pretty run-of-the-mill, and something most Americans are familiar with on some level.

Now, my commute to and from work is a little less than 30 kilometers. Don't ask me what this translates to in miles, because the conversion ratio has never stuck in my brain, no matter how many times it is told to me, and, frankly (my dear), I don't give a damn. They use kilometers here; therefore I think in kilometers. 30 of them is not really very far away, I realize, but it is the nature of the drive that makes my daily back-and-forth seem so long and arduous.

The way to work is, first of all, on roads that are way out in the country. My village is in the least-populated section of France, and the surface roads reflect that. If the highway got me to my destination more directly, I would take that, but, unfortunately, the major tourist attraction for the area (the Gorges du Tarn, known to English-speaking peoples as 'the French Grand Canyon') is not accessible via highway. You gotta take these little itty-bitty, twisty, curvy mountain roads. The views are fantastic - I will say that. the trouble is that, if you are the driver, and you take your eyes off the road for one moment to enjoy the sweeping vistas opening in front of you, it is very possible you may find yourself suddenly approaching a hairpin turn, overcorrect, and go plummeting to the bottom of the canyon, cursing "the scenic route" all the long, long way down.

Not only do I putt-putt through kilometers of scenic beauty that makes me feel as if I live in a postcard, I also pass through some lovely farmland and pastures before I reach the mountainous region. Fields of wheat and hay and just plain old grass, picturesque with poppies blowing in the breeze, are around every bend in the road. There are horses and goats and sheep and cows all over the damn place. the smell of manure wafts in my windows on the morning breeze. (I imagine that it is sort of like this in Idaho, or maybe Montana. Has anyone ever been there?) Two mornings ago, and I kid you not, I came around a curve and had to stop for about five minutes, because an entire herd of shorn sheep were crossing the road in front of me. The herd was complete with its own barking sheepdog and craggy-faced farmer (shepherd?), who was helpfully wearing a fluorescent yellow vest (the farmer, not the dog - the dog was not wearing any sort of vest at all) to catch the eyes of any early-morning passers-by on this road in the middle of nowhere. He seemed surprised to see me, and the sight of the sheep tickled me so much I spent the entire five minutes grinning maniacally and laughing. As the last of the sheep crossed and the farmer gave me the high sign, indicating I could go, I could see that my jack-o'lantern grin was puzzling him. I just waved merrily and rode on - but it lifted my whole day, let me tell you.

So, the most important thing about my 30-kilometer trek is that, when these roads were built, it seems that their engineers never thought about the fact that perhaps more than one car might like to travel on them at the same time. They do have a dividing line (dotted and white in most places, indicating that passing is fine) in the middle of the road all the way there and back, but the issue is that in some places, it is just short of being too narrow for two cars to pass each other if they are going in opposite directions.If you are willing to let your right tires sort of drag on the shoulder, and there is not a tall guardrail, stone wall, or rock face on that side, you can just squeak by with no damage to yourself, your car, or the passing vehicle. From these delightful thoroughfares (on which there is a surprising amount of traffic) I have come up with a theory of French driving in rural areas that I like to call "riding the line".

Riding the line means that, as long as you are on your particular stretch of road by yourself, you drive, more or less, with your two left tires riding on top of that dotted white line. Think of the line not as a division between your lane and oncoming traffic's lane ... think of that dotted line as more of a, well, guideline. A suggestion, if you will, of where you might like to steer your car. You ride on this line, and usually cross right over it into the oncoming lane's side when you're rounding a sharp turn, but you always keep an eye ahead for oncoming vehicles. When you see one, you wait until the last possible second, and then you swing your own vehicle to just a few inches to the right of that line. You hold your breath and pray that the oncoming vehicle will not take your driver's side mirror along with them when you pass each other. Then ... whoosh! A gust of air, you can let your breath out now, and you're past them and once again free to use as much of the road as seems necessary. You might now say a Hail Mary or Our Father as you pass one of the numerous roadside stone crosses, because once again, you have escaped with your life intact. Simple.

Simple, maybe, if you were born in this part of the country and have never driven anywhere else. (Or maybe if you learned to drive in Paris, Beirut, or New York City. I think any one of the three would qualify you to be at ease driving anywhere else.) For an outlander, every day is a lesson in how much fear I can sustain and how much adrenalin I can produce in one forty-minute drive. Did I mention that the suggested speed limit, almost all the way there and back, is between 70 and 90 kilometers and hour? Again, I have no idea what that is in mph, but it seems awfully damned fast when there is an RV rumbling towards you around a curve, and you realize that to your right is a shoulder about three feet wide, and then a yawning chasm that seems to be magnetically pulling you toward it. (And also, the fact that the road ahead, where you estimate you will pass by this road behemoth, appears to have been engineered for the contestants of a soapbox derby.) In some of the narrower areas, if another car is approaching, I actually just stop and let the other car come through first, and then proceed. I know it marks me as a tourist, but hey - better than spazzing out and throwing up sparks as I scrape the entire right side of my tiny hatchback against a stone guardrail.

Do not fear for my safety, though, scary as the above revelations may be. I am getting better and better at negotiating these spine-tingling encounters, and by this time next year, I doubt I will even think of it at all. I've even managed to get my speed up enough on most sections of the road to get into fourth (and even fifth!) gear. What was originally a 45-minute, harrowing trek through the mountainous wilderness has become a 35-minute, only slightly and/or occasionally terrifying trip through some lovely countryside. I am learning. I even passed someone (an actual car, not just a crazy person on a bicycle) the other day on my way home because I thought they were going too slow. Hah! I was very proud of myself, and what did I do for the remainder of my drive home? well, I'll tell you - I rode the line.