Mountain Driving
September 18th
Not many photos today, I was too busy gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white. Yeah —it was a real-life “white knuckles drive” today (that phrase is common in Nort-East USA, I wonder if it is used and understood in the rest of the English-speaking world)? I spend the day driving around the Bieszczady Mountains (a part of the Eastern Carpathian Mountain Range) — 250km in 5 hours in total. It doesn’t seem like much but on the contrary — it was probably the most difficult drive I had in my life. It was raining on and off, roads were narrow with a lot of elevation changes (with my ears constantly popping), there were countless serpentines and hairpin turns. The views were amazing and that made driving even more difficult, I had to force myself to pay attention to the road and only allowed myself occasional glimpses at the scenery around me. I got back to the apartment where I am staying tired but very happy. I always considered myself a very good driver (well, who doesn't?) and today I proved that to myself. Driving was difficult but I was in constant control and felt safe all that time. My faithful, old but reliable car handled everything with amazing ease. The only problem was with some other drivers (mostly from Warsaw or Cracow, judging by license plates) driving huge, expensive, and powerful SUVs who were speeding and rushing somewhere all the time — I guess they cannot leave the city life behind even on vacations.
