Garbage Trucks and iPods

Traffic ground to a halt and I got stuck for almost thirty minutes on Puah street today when a garbage truck got wedged between two badly parked cars.

There was absolutely no way to back up; even if it had been physically possible to back up, it would have been the wrong way on another one-way street. However, the minivan practically sitting on my rear bumper made that escape route non-existent.

A couple of guys jumped out of their cars to see if they could help; I was pretty hopeful. I've seen Israelis band together before and basically lift an entire car off the street to let traffic through. No such luck today though; those two cars weren't going anywhere. One guy was actually jumping up and down on the front grill of one of them - I assume he thought that if he could set the car alarm off, the owner would come rushing out to see who was stealing their car. Again, no luck there.

So the garbage truck decided to SLOWLY and painstakingly inch its way between the cars. I have never seen such precision when it comes to driving a two-ton piece of metal; at one point the truck looked like it was dancing because of the way the driver was making it wiggle back and forth. It was pretty amusing, and kept me occupied for a while.

Towards the end, another guy got out of his car and stood on the sidewalk, presumably to help the truck driver edge his way through. However, his help consisted of him flicking his arm wildly to the side, and gesticulating madly that the driver should just plow on through. Personally, I probably would have done that twenty minutes before...having been here for almost a year, I would have no qualms about taking off someone's side mirror on my way down the road.

That's just the way life is here in Haifa - narrow streets, crappy parking in non-parking spaces, and lots of garbage trucks and buses trying to navigate their way through. You couldn't pay me enough to drive either one. :)

Note: this whole situation probably would have been a lot less amusing if I hadn't had my iPod with me or had somewhere particular to be. Half an hour in the car with other drivers honking in the back, thinking that maybe if THEY honk their horn, the impediment will magically disappear, is generally not my idea of fun. But instead I got listen to the dulcet tones of Jack Johnson, Robert Gillies, Joshua Radin, and Fallout Boy for awhile. Good times...