Floss religiously

Samoan driving

Since Paul has returned from American Samoa, I've had the privilege of spending a good bit of time with him in the car.

Over the past few days, he's taught me a few things about driving in American Samoa.

I picked him up at the Atlanta airport and tried to scare him by driving fast through traffic. Since Samoa roads never allow speeds higher than about 35 mph, I figured I'd play with him a little bit.
But Paul has nerves of steel. He didn't even flinch when I cut off those two 18 wheelers.

Today, it was his turn to drive, and he paid me back with driving antics of his own.

I had to keep reminding him to speed up. He appeared to have forgotten how to get the car into 5th gear. Once or twice, I think we were passed by an AARP convoy. One of the old ladies had a Calvin and Hobbes bumper sticker with Calvin peeing on a Clempsin Tiger.

A car ahead of us turned on its left turn signal. Paul ran off the right side of the road to go around him. Apparently this is normal in Samoa. What probably wasn't normal in either Samoa or the US is that the car decided not to turn after all, and he sped back up... and we drove side by side for a little while. Paul responded with some manly off-road accelerator action and got us safely in front of the fake-turn signal car. I'll chock that up as my first ever off-road pass on the right.

Okay, so I made up the part about the bumper sticker. But the rest is pretty much true....