We visited another country last week: Santa Fe.
Let me explain: A leisurely drive to and in Santa Fe isn’t what it used to be. It’s as challenging as racing around the “glorietas” in Mexico City, in which a curbed circle, filled with flowers, appears in the middle of busy intersections.
Rather than using on- and off-ramps, traffic in Mexico City stays on one level (or at least it did when we visited): if you want to make a U-turn, stay in the inside lane; to go straight, take the middle lane and work your way around the glorieta, and if you’re turning right, stay on the right.
It took some practice. Seeing thousands of cars, all of them crowding ours, drivers making welcoming gestures, convinced us that we’d best take the bus. In a lot of ways, that kind of driving has infested Santa Fe. Years back, we often returned from Santa Fe at night and got to use our brights a lot, there being such a scarcity of traffic in any direction.
Nowadays, traffic between Las Vegas and Santa Fe is almost bumper-to-bumper. It seems that in just a few years, traffic has quadrupled. No sane person would ever attempt getting on to Cerrillos Road (the Capital City’s main drag) through a left turn. Getting on with a right turn is difficult enough. What we’ve discerned is a series of special rules visitors need to learn before daring to drive to and in Santa Fe:
1) The 75 mph speed limits are just a suggestion.
2) You’ll get there faster if you tailgate the driver in front of you in the passing lane. You need to get up close and personal, to allow room for the cars behind you whose drivers have the same idea.
3) If you’d like the person ahead of you to pick up the pace, you need to turn on your brights. People appreciate the suggestion.
4) Bigger muscle cars have the right-of-way.
5) Graying tourists, men wearing pony tails, and women with demin skirts and tons of turquoise, need not observe traffic signals.
6) You must always yield to cars driven by big-shots, those with New Mexico Legislature plates. Their haste is because they’re on their way to the Roundhouse, to help pass important legislation which will benefit you, and which they let you pay for, so you won’t feel like an ingrate.
7) Seven cars can legally turn left after the green arrow goes off.
Preferably, get close to your neighbor, who will provide an escort for you and the others, while facing traffic, those with the green light, wait patiently and think of your bumper-car procession as part of the Santa Fe Fiesta parade. If you get stuck in the intersection, you have the right of way on the next light cycle.
8) Cell phones work only when the car is moving, and they work even better at busy intersections. It isn’t a law yet, but there is a move afoot to require all teenage girls driving SUVs to have a cell phone attached permanently to the left ear. And remember, when cell phone users stops in the crosswalk that’s just their way of getting closer to you, in the hopes of getting to know you better.
9) Swallowing a double bacon cheeseburger while at the wheel improves your concentration, and balancing a Big Gulp between our knees will prevent you from getting thirsty and possibly becoming distracted.
10) Santa Fe has a number of entertainment venues. To keep up the effect, many natives have equipped their cars with woofers and rap music, such as by Fitty Cent and Eminem, lest you become bored. They provide this free, and the beauty is that you won’t even have to roll down your window to enjoy it. 11) Many retirees, vowing never to use their turn signals again, have migrated to Santa Fe (and Las Vegas as well). However, it keeps the flasher in good condition to leave the left blinker on during an entire trip on 1-25.
12) Drivers should not allow others to change lanes. It creates more intimacy to be able to exchange glances with a neighbor when you’re side by side than if that person goes in front of you.
13) When you take your driver’s test, there may be a math question, in which you are to define “nanosecond.” We all know that the prefix of the word refers to “nine,” and therefore, a nanosecond is one-billionth of a second. You will get a higher score if you provide this answer: A nanosecond is the time that elapses from when the light in front of you turns green and the driver behind you sits on his horn.
Seeing a driver, a dissipated, dissolute-seeming middle-aged man, pass several cars by weaving in and out of traffic during rush hour, and cutting off other cars, I later saw him in a parking lot and asked, in a concerned way, “How many more years do you expect to stay alive by driving like that?” He held up one finger.
The middle one.