Yoder Michaels

I can’t help it.  No matter how many times Jacob says it, I laugh out loud.  He pronounces motorcycles as “yoder Michaels” and I love to point them out on the roads here just to hear him say it.  “Jake, what’s that?” I ask almost daily.  He squeals and yells, “A YODER MICHAEL!!!” as he points out the window.

Malaysia has not left me short on opportunities to amuse myself.  My rule of thumb for driving in rush hour traffic is this: Pick a lane and don’t move.  Those motorcycle guys are plain nuts.  We live right by the border and about a zillion Malaysian men and a handful of women come into Singapore everyday on their motorcycles to work.  If I ever find myself on the highway when they are coming in to work all I can hear is the sound of the motors ripping past me.  The come from the left and from the right at incredible speeds.  Even if you wanted to change lanes and you checked your blind spot by the time you turned your head back to the front of the car a yoder Michael has usually come out of nowhere darting between you and the car in the next lane over so it just isn’t safe to move.

 

When my brother Shon and his family were here visiting we finally got it figured out.  When changing lanes you must signal not once, but twice.  Once to move into the lane that is delineated by what I used to refer to as the painted white line. Then you must signal again to move out of the painted line into the lane in which a regular sized car can fit.  This is because the motorcycles consider the lane line to be their own lane, full sized in their minds and a legitimate place to be.

 

One morning traffic was only moving at about 60 km/h instead of the posted 90 km/h.  In 1 kilometer I counted 26 motor cycles whiz past me.  Today we came home at 5:30 from downtown and between the exit before mine the the place I got off (about 1 kilometer) I counted 32 motorcycles in about 1 minute on my side of the highway.  Then I exited and counted 26 entering the expressway.  Bees I tell you, it sounds like the buzzing of bees all around you and it can be unnerving at times, especially when I have proximity sensors on the four corners of my car and they sometimes set them off they get so close to me!

 

All that being said, Singapore can’t hold a candle to what we saw in Bangkok.  Now that was pure chaos and at any traffic light you’d see double or triple the number of motorcycles.