RIM has travel medical insurance. Before the trip, I reminded Ron that we should bring the travel insurance cards with us just in case… Today, on the fifth day of our cruise, I almost got into a traffic accident. Luckily, other than both of us being horrified, nothing really happened and I wouldn’t need to call the emergency number on the card.  But it was a very scary moment.  Even today, when we think about that situation, we are still appreciating a lot that I was left intact.
Today we arrived at the capital of Tortola — Road town.  There was another cruise ship belongs to Celebrity docked parallel with our cruise ship. We walked through the pier between two huge ships, beautiful weather, mountains and water. I really loved it.Â
It was 11, we had an excursion booked at 12. So we had one hour. I didn’t want to spend the precious time doing nothing.  There was a scooter rental place at the side of the road.  The island is huge, it looked to me that it was impossible to walk to somewhere interesting. I suggested to Ron that we take a one hour scooter ride to have some scenic tour.  Ron was a little bit concerned since it was too close to our excursion. A woman was returning her scooter and she looked pretty happy about the trip.  The guy at the rental place also promised that it was very worthwhile since he would give us a map which would lead us to a very nice view.  Ten minutes later, both of us got a scooter.  Ron and the rental guy were amazed to find out that I actually never rode a scooter.  Ron said, you are Chinese, you don’t know how to ride a scooter? Yes, I saw lots of people ride scooters in China. So I even fooled myself that I actually can ride one or at least it is not hard to ride one in heavy traffic. The rental guy started to worry, he told me if I never rode a scooter, he didn’t want to ruin my vacation.  I did a 50 meter excellent trial ride on the scooter to reassure them. The only defect was that I didn’t even know to push the kickstand up during the ride, but it didn’t affect me moving the machine. 🙂
Journey now starts.  Road town has different traffic rules than China and Canada.  We had to ride on the left.  The road was narrow and it looked to me that the width of the road should only allow one way traffic.  I was not very comfortable with the speeding and braking of the scooter. I rode slowly. While Ron was much faster, he had to look back always to see if I was doing OK.  I signalled him that I was fine. But he stopped and told me that with my speed it was impossible to make the scenic place on the map in time.  He also said I was blocking the traffic with my low speed.  I had to ride 40 km/h at least to avoid that.  He let me ride in the front so he could watch me.  We had left behind the heavy traffic at that time. The road became more scenic and curvy with less traffic. I started to be more confident to speed.  40 km/h, 50 km/h, 60 km/h.   I saw the sea! The sea was on our left side while the mountain was on our right side, wow! The nice view made me very relaxed on the scooter, wind, view, speed, this is wonderful!  …A 120 degree curve up ahead, and it was very windy.  Then I drifted to the wrong side of the road.   An SUV appeared suddenly ahead.  I tried to steer the scooter to the left, but it wouldn’t go.  I don’t remember if I braked or not, the speed was too fast.  I just felt I was swinging, I was going to hit the car….with my body.  Oh shit, it must be very painful… A second later, the SUV passed me, we didn’t hit! Then I saw a second car right after the SUV… I started to think about the RIM travel medical insurance.  But apparently at that time the second car had already nearly stopped, the driver had already noticed the crazy situation — it looked very much like a woman wanted to commit suicide.  I managed to ride the scooter to the left side of the road, stopped at the roadside.  That scared me to death.   Ron came along, and asked what was going on with me. I was not very happy seeing that he looked so calm. Â
Back on the scooter, our journey continued.  I concluded from the mistake that when the speed is high, I probably need to use some body motion to turn. Just like when I see people riding motorcycles on TV, part of their body usually almost touches the ground when they are making a sharp turn.Â
20 minutes before 12, Ron suggested that we ride back.  We hadn’t arrived at the destination shown on the map. But we had to return.  On the way back we rode along the mountain side. At that scary sharp turn I rode very slowly. I was worried that after the turn I would find a truck in front of me.   But nothing this time. When we were close to the downtown area, we were hit by a thunderstorm.  Darn it, how lucky we were today!  But the thunderstorm did not last long.  It became sunny again when we arrived downtown. In the crazy traffic, we were wet and lost our way.  Finally we managed to find our way back to the terminal.  While Ron was paying the rental guy, I rushed to the ship to try to catch our excursion.  10 after 12, we found out that the “Land Rover Safari” had already left without us.  I was very disappointed and regretted the decision to ride the scooters.  The lady taking care of the excursion showed pity on us and arranged for us a sightseeing excursion which would leave in half an hour or so.   It was not the “Safari” thing Ron wanted but we really didn’t know what to do with the rest of the day. So we decided to take it. Â
During the waiting, I asked Ron how did he feel when he saw me going to hit the car. He told me that at the moment he thought I was going to hit the car, he had lots of thoughts.  He was scared, he regreted the idea of riding the scooter and asking me to ride faster. I was touched, Ron covers his feelings under his calmess. My husband is a tough cookie! 😉
The sightseeing tour bus took us around the island and to the top of the mountain. On the top of the mountain, we had a nice look out at all the islands around. Again, on the curvy mountain road, the bus ride was  not always that smooth and we had a bit adventure.  At one spot when Ron was taking pictures at the edge of the road, he accidently stood on the grass where some fire ants lived and was biten by those hardly visible creatures.  The tour was about three hours and we took many pictures along.Â
After the tour, we went back the ship.  The ship left Roadtown at 6PM, heading towards our last stop – Nassau.
My father always reminds me: safety is the most important. Such a simple rule and I believe everybody would agree with it. But some times simple rules are difficult to follow.   They are so simple and they are easy to neglect.