Spaces

Spaces: My Space, your Space and the Public Space is a tell-all book chronicling the stories, Montreal's road stories. Follow the intriguing tales of life as a motorist, cyclist, pedestrian or just an observant bystander in and around the City of Montreal Quebec and its environs. Some of these anecdotes are backed up with visual support via YouTube videos posted under a series called: Crazy chicken or crazy egg. Which comes first in Montreal Quebec? Crazy chicken or crazy egg? Follow us as we go seek out the answers.Spaces: My space, your space and the Public space also includes a collection of short spoken word poetry and stories born out of issues and encounters on the roads, not only in Montreal Quebec, but these are stories which are common to wherever it is, in the world that the motorized traffic may be found and that's everywhere.Thank you and as always; remember to walk good, when walking these crazy ole streets. Here is an excerpt: It took me quite some time before I could figure out why most Quebec drivers don't use the turn signals, but upon some closer scrutiny, it finally clicked. Quebecers, for the most part, don't use the turn signals to indicate their intention to turn it would seem because, if and when they do, the driver behind is likely to respond by leaning on the horn, step on the gas, not in front of me s/he seem to be saying. But me? I don't sweat it, because my other car is a 48 foot bus, and I am a professional. So I just do my thing and allow others to do (or try to do) theirs. Now, there was this particular incident where, while I was driving my "other car," upon my approach towards a roadwork site, I was guided by a series of those orange cones from three lanes into a one-lane bottleneck. I waited for a break in the traffic flow in the left lane with my indicator lights going to signal my intention to change lanes, while slowly edging over as space became available. But then, this person came barreling down on my behind with lights flashing, horn blaring and... oh well, break squeaking when s/he finally discovers that there wasn't going to be enough space after passing my taillights to allow for them to finish passing my vehicle. And I was not going to be intimidated into altering my position in order to accommodate him/her; furthermore, my reaction to those types of behaviors is not always going to be as one might have expected. I'm a professional you see, therefore, before I attempted each such maneuvers, I do first survey my surrounding to ensure that it was safe for me to do so. And then I execute my moves in a timely manner so that no one may be caught in or rightfully hindered from those spaces unless a breach is committed as in this case, and that breach was not by me, I know, because none of the many excitements and scare tactics there did change anything in ways that could be construed as being the desired results on your part, nor did it serve in hindering me from completing the intended maneuvers in a timely manner.But there was yet one other thing which puzzled me even more. Why were you in such a hurry when it would appear as if you either weren't going anywhere or, you were going in the wrong direction? How did I arrive at those conclusions, you ask? Well, to begin with, I did notice that after some 20 minutes or so of us inching our way through the bottleneck and out into the clear once again, you did barrel your way pass my vehicle and then proceeded to show us all where you were really headed and it was not in the general direction which the rest of us were heading or even on the same road but rather, you were going up. As shown by your pointing middle finger. And why did you break up in front of my vehicle and then crawl the rest of the way? Man! You really do need to stop doing that before you get what's coming to you, and coming in this sense is actually to hit you in the rear end the next time.