Bad Girls Don't Cry

Chapter 15

The name Eleanor came from the first car movie that I remembered watching when I was a child: Gone in 60 Seconds. I always told myself I would name my first vehicle Eleanor after the Shelby GT500 in the movie; the one Nicholas Cage always had to beg to work well because she was finicky. My scooter was old and had 800,000 kilometers on her, and that was before the odometer had broken. I definitely thought it was more than fitting. Little did I know that she would have more than enough issues and that I, too, would be rubbing her wide head telling her to please work, whispering things like, 'you can do it, baby, come on'. Even with all her issues, she was the best thing I could have ever gotten myself at that time in my life. The feeling of absolute freedom was immense. I didn't know where I wanted to take her and learning to drive in Hanoi was very scary, but the adrenaline rush was just amazing. I didn't have to rely on anyone but me. It was a feeling I didn't think I would ever find. I felt I trusted myself for the first time and it was glorious.

John was planning his journey down south and told me to go with him. He had a large map and was circling places he wanted to visit. Emma didn't want to go; she had resolved to staying in Hanoi and was trying to get a job there, but she agreed to drive with us to the next town over about 100kms south.

"Why not, I'm down for the adventure!" I shrugged.
I didn't want to think too much about it; I knew if I did I would have probably talked my way out of it. I was always overthinking stuff.

The next morning, we all met bright and early in the lobby of the hostel. We paid whatever outstanding bills we had and sat down for the breakfast buffet. John had his map out again and was highlighting the best roads to get to Ninh Binh, which was pretty much exactly 100kms south of Hanoi. I was dressed in comfortable riding clothes (yoga pants and a sleeveless shirt which turned out to be a bad idea in the 40-degree-celcius, mid-day Sun,) and did my hair in a long braid down my back. Let's do this, I thought confidently.

We arrived in Ninh Binh roughly 5 hours later. The journey was mostly on the A1 Highway; it was noisy, terrifying and jam-packed with massive trucks. I may have been a bit too brave at some points. When we arrived at a hostel in beautiful Ninh Binh, John and Emma looked at me with wide eyes.

"What...?" I shrugged.

"You are nuts," John said. Emma nodded in agreement.

"What do you mean?" Their expressions were hilarious.

"Here, I'll show you." John removed a Go-Pro camera from his helmet and rewound the tape. He pressed play and passed it over to me. "Here. This was the first time you decided you were frustrated being stuck behind this truck and darted off in front of it. I wasn't sure if you would make it or if we'd see you come up from under it!"

I watched myself in the footage dash in front of the massive truck. It really looked like I was merely a fraction of an inch away from having my back tire hit. I bit my lip. Wow. I gave an awkward smile and an even more awkward laugh.

"Sorrrryyyy..." I shrugged again. John and Emma looked at each other and shook their heads. It was such a close call; and it would be far from my last.

Emma headed back to Hanoi the next morning while John and I continued south. We decided to avoid that awful, deathly highway and drove on the stunning West Ho Chi Minh Road instead. It was a magnificent road with little neon green butterflies everywhere and tiny restaurants along the sides. Pretty much everywhere we went, we were the only tourists and buses of school children would wave hello to us as though we were famous movie stars. But the more time I spent with John, the more I found him to be rude and condescending; I needed to figure myself out and he had become an unpleasant distraction. After a couple days of riding together, we decided to part ways.