This past summer I took my family to Ireland where I\nattempted to drive a rental car in what turned out to be scarier than an evil\nLeprechaun on roller skates. The roads were impossibly narrow, everyone\ninexplicably drove on the wrong side of the road, the speed limit clearly was only\na posted suggestion and just when you thought you finally had gotten the hang\nof it, a dopy sheep would wander nonchalantly out into the road and fry your\nlast frayed nerve. I never thought I would experience anything as challenging\nor mentally draining as that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it occurred to me the other day as I was driving around\ndowntown St. Augustine, with its narrow streets and tourists who wander nonchalantly\nout into the road, just how similar my hometown is to the white knuckle driving\nof the Emerald Isle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I\u2019ve begun identifying the types of drivers I encounter\ndowntown, making our roads such a wild ride. See if you can recognize any: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The I brake for historic stuff \u2026 WITHOUT WARNING!!! driver<\/strong> \u2013 These are the people who are history buffs. And believe everyone should be a history buff. And that everything has a history. And that when there is some history there on the side of the road, by golly, you should take the time to stop and explore that history. And there\u2019s no better time than \u2026 RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF FREE-FLOWING TRAFFIC! No need to signal or pull over. Nope, just slam on the brakes like you\u2019re trying to avoid running over a kitten. Sure, cars will back up like the Long Island Expressway, but it\u2019s all in the name of HISTORY! <\/p>\n\n\n\n The 84-point parallel parker <\/strong>\u2013 These are the people who spot a choice parallel parking spot somewhere near the Plaza and commence what can only be described as a parking ballet of radical reverses and pirouettes and side-shimmies and acrobatic maneuvers that defy numerous laws of physics, including the one that says metal can\u2019t fold in half to fit in a too-small parking spot. (Look it up, it\u2019s an actual physics law.) Quite literally, the choice spot they\u2019ve found is 3 feet shorter than their actual car. But this is either not apparent or viewed as a minor impediment that can be overcome by fancy auto acrobatics or actual sorcery. Nine times out of 10 these cars become so inextricably stuck that the occupants have to abandon them altogether and call an Uber. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The mis-director<\/strong> \u2013 These are the people who must have been street magicians in a different life. Because they get you focused on the wrong things. They use slight-of-hand to direct your attention here, and then do something totally unexpected over there. These are the ones who will approach a traffic light carefully, slowly, with their right turn signal on. They will visibly point to the right. The whole family in the car will all very visibly peer and gaze to the right. So you think in your mind, \u201cI like obvious people. They telegraph their moves. They\u2019re turning right.\u201d WRONG!!! Because at the very last moment, they suddenly change their minds and veer erratically LEFT across three lanes of traffic, narrowly missing a car, potentially driving through some bushes and eventually arriving at another traffic light where they will perform the same magic trick on more unsuspecting schlubs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The \u201cI missed my address about three blocks back on this one-way street so I\u2019m just going to correct my mistake by putting it in reverse and dodging oncoming one-way traffic as I back up all three blocks in order to save myself from going around the block\u201d driver<\/strong> \u2013 Need I say more. Some days I sure do miss driving in Ireland. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This past summer I took my family to Ireland where I attempted to drive a rental car in what turned out to be scarier than an evil Leprechaun on roller skates. The roads were impossibly narrow, everyone inexplicably drove on the wrong side of the road, the speed limit clearly was only a posted suggestion and just when you thought you finally had gotten the hang of it, a dopy sheep would wander nonchalantly out into the road and fry your last frayed nerve. I never thought I would experience anything as challenging or mentally draining as that. <\/p>\n But it occurred to me the other day as I was driving around downtown St. Augustine, with its narrow streets and tourists who wander nonchalantly out into the road, just how similar my hometown is to the white knuckle driving of the Emerald Isle. <\/p>\n So I\u2019ve begun identifying the types of drivers I encounter downtown, making our roads such a wild ride. See if you can recognize any: <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[575,558],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2019-nutshells","category-florida"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1993"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1994,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1993\/revisions\/1994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}