al helio

or should i say "all hell-io," which is what broke loose today in my road rage. just when i was thinking i was so cool for going to dubai myself (and using the back route to avoid the traffic), i got screwed...in al helio.

i should clarify that it was nothing bad, just a blow to the ego. and i tend to get road rage easily - in this case, not at anyone in particular, just a general feeling of ire. i was told to stay straight off of the exit at al helio and continue on until i couldn't go any further. yada yada yada, those directions were actually false and instead, tanya and julian went on the scenic camel tour of ajman.

there were camels EVERYWHERE. were i not driving and not pissed off for being lost, i would have rather enjoyed the majestic beasts. sadly, my aggravation got the better of me. what's funny is, i actually went the right way - albeit roundaboutly - and even turned on the road that would take me to the E611 (the dubai bypass road). i freaked out because the intersection where i made the correct turn was familiar, i just couldn't orient myself. i had just come to it from the entirely wrong direction. i saw in the corner of my eye in the rearview mirror a sign pointing in the opposite direction for "sharjah" (the emirate right before dubai where the massive traffic backups occur). so i turn around and head in the right direction for sharjah, but wrong direction for the bypass road. and after the 1 lone sign, it was me, the road and the camels.

camels, camels everywhere. not a person or gas station to be found. of course, were i to find any human life, i'm sure the camels would have been able to give more coherent directions or speak english better. it's not meant to be mean or anything, i'm just saying that i was going to have to wing it and knew it.

i eventually see what looks like a highway off to my right. only there are still no more signs anywhere (except for the speed limit ones that i promptly ignored) and as i look to my rearview mirror for the compass, i realized my new car doesn't have one. so now i have no idea in what direction i'm headed, julian is beginning to freak out, and i have to not lose my cool so that i don't go barreling over a rogue camel out in the road.

sure enough, my side camel track comes to an end, or not so much an end as what looks to be the access road to some large sketchy buildings in the middle of the desert. so i find a roundabout and the way to get on the highway, whose number is still a mystery at this point, but at least i saw signs that i was headed toward dubai. hooray!

celebration ended shortly thereafter, as i went on a 35 minute detour to find myself basically 1 exit down from where i got off of the E311 (emirates road), and about 5 minutes from traffic hell. the sharjah 6 lanes down to 3! party on. i sat and crawled for about 1 hour before we were able to move along through dubai. 

by this time, we are approaching 3 hours in the vehicle. finally, i turn into ursula's driveway. we didn't have too much time to explore, as she has to get the kids at 2:30 (i arrived at 11:40), so we ended up going to the development next door to hers called "the greens". they have a little shopping plaza where we checked for some stuff for serge in the factory (they had nothing he needs, of course), and then continued on down to the organic cafe and shop. we had lunch there - it was nice, but slooooow service. julian really held it together until the very end, bless his little troublemaking soul. just when i wanted to peruse the aisles of the shop (like a micro whole foods! that's something i miss!), he let loose and tried to grab the glass items at the bottom of a pyramid. i saw the store crumbling before my eyes, so i grabbed him (kicking and screaming, i might add) and we got the "al helio" out of there.

i will say that i did much better on the way home. i took a minor detour down the emirates road to a MASSIVE roundabout that was 6 lanes wide in order to come back toward the north instead of going south to abu dhabi. it's quite a task to try and get off the correct exit when 2 lanes of huge ass trucks are continuing on in the circle (and don't want to let you and the other 4 zillion cars from the left 4 lanes who are zigging and zagging and cutting people off to get out). gets a bit hairy. you have to be aggressive and a bit insane to drive here or else you'll be toast and never get anywhere.

but i did it - and found my way back to the 611 bypass road and home without a hitch. 

like ursula said, she would have been very surprised if i had made it to her house on time (the time i had said) for my 1st solo drive to dubai. the fact that i didn't really get lost is even better (and that i got home relatively quickly - awesome). so there you have it, it's official - i did it!