Transportation - 31 Things

We spend a lot of time in our car.

Quito is a long city with steep hills and roads. Walking or biking from our house to work or school is not really an option. We use one of our two cars every day, and have to remember which car we can use due to pico y placa restrictions (the red car can’t be taken out during rush hour on Tuesday, and the gray car on Thursdays). Public transportation is not bad in the city, but is still very crowded and quite unsafe from pickpockets, and so I am glad at the moment that we have two cars. city-imposed restriction has made me lose a little of the love I had for Quito. 

I try to walk whenever possible, however. I do not like driving in the city: traffic laws are just suggestions, the traffic is chaotic and unpredictable, and because of the way the city was planned, we take many of the same roads every day, so there is not much variety.

I didn’t always feel this way. My first car was a black Mercury Topaz, and I remember just getting in the car and driving for hours. I would always be the first one to volunteer to drive, and didn’t mind using my gas. The radio was always on, the windows down, and even though I found myself stranded in shady parts of town with a steaming radiator, I loved going places with my car. (Thank you, Grandpa, for always being ready to save me, even at 2.00 a.m.)

When Andrés and I got married, the Topaz was sold and we had his car, a teal green Suzuki Forsa. What a car! Fast and fun and a shift. I learned how to drive a stick shift with that car in the constant stop-and-go traffic of Quito.

The second car we owned was a blue Chevrolet Zafira, made in Brazil and with a computer on its dashboard. I loved that car and some of its features: doors that locked automatically as the car gained speed, a radio that not only told you the station you were listening to but also the song that was playing, the third row that folded down to become a larger trunk space.

About 5 or 6 years ago we bought the red car, a Kia Gran Carnival. Although some days it feels too big for the narrow streets of Quito, this car is so comfortable to drive: it sits up high, is diesel and uses very little gas, is automatic and has a DVD player built in so the kids can watch movies on longer trips. 

Now we also have “my” car, a gray Kia Rio Stylus, an automatic and smaller option for those days we might want to go to the mall and actually find a parking spot. We got this car when I started working for Cambridge, as I needed to be able to get around, and it is still our go-to car if we need to get somewhere fast (it can get in and out of traffic much better).

Conversation - 31 Things

I spend some time every day on email and a little on texting my sisters, but the person I converse with most is probably Andrés. We have always had intense conversations. We aren’t a couple that sits in long silences. Days start with complicated instructions for the day’s activities (pico y placa, the “day off” each car has to take due to a city mandate, has made these conversations extremely complicated as we try to organize our day) and end with the same for the next day, but in between we have had conversations about work, politics, family, the kids, something we saw on the Internet. It helps that we work together.

At lunchtime conversation is with my mother-in-law. Many of the same topics are covered: the next day’s schedule (she is our main caregiver), family, kids, politics, something she saw on her outings that day.

Conversations with the boys consist of a lot of robot and superhero talk (Avengers is a favorite right now). Agustín loves to tell me intricate details of the movies Uncle Bati has told him about. Nicolás likes to talk about something his friends did at school, or about learning. At the moment he is fascinated with addition and multiplication. Lots of “what’s 10 x 10, what’s 50 x 50?” questions. Both boys pepper most of their conversations with explosion noises. 

The car is a place where many of our most interesting conversations take place. Today the question on the ride home from school was, “Does the Devil exist?” (A lot of these theological questions come up in the car for some reason.) There is no easy way to answer this in fifteen minutes, but both seem satisfied in the end, the topic dropped as soon as we park the car. 

Here is the 2-page spread: