I love a parade (at 100 kph)

We recently had time off in honor of UAE National Day, which marked the 37th year of the Union. Long before we saw evidence of the celebration, we could hear its frenzy from nearby Jumeirah Beach Road. While there was apparently a pedestrian parade moving slowly through Jumeirah One, our own Jumeirah Three played host to a full throttle display in which red, white, green, and black festooned SUVs gunned their engines up and down the block, horns ablaze. Many of the drivers had decked out their rides with images of the Sheikhs in various stages of statesmanship and leisure, and one ambitiously decorated Range Rover even sported a matching overstuffed teddy bear. In my experience, parades drip by at a humble pace, but here the participants, who seemed only loosely affiliated, tore down the beach road at somewhere around 100 kph. Apparently this show of power means more than a good look at the carefully crafted decorations ever could.

The weather has cooled since the rain, which revisited us overnight, and as such we've kept our windows open lately to enjoy the cool breeze and spare the air-conditioning. UAE National day, already a petro-celebration in it's own right, has temporarily corked our once airy home. The sound of the automotive revelry continued late into the night and might have interrupted our scrabble game if we hadn't closed up the house. As such, it remained a low and constant murmur as we groped around our vocabularies for that perfect seven letter word.

I'm not deterred by the sounds of aggressive motoring, it's just not what I want to hear when I lay my head on my pillow. In fact, I'm actually related to the Ventura Raceway legend known as Brian "Dirty Bernie" Nelson. Bernie is, blood relations aside, an absolute dynamo behind the wheel. My Dad spends a lot of time at the races too, I think he's on the decorating committee or something. 

Just kidding Pops.

I'm learning that the automobile is a central fixture of life in Dubai. People are enormously proud of their cars, and prefer them to be in showroom condition. Many car owners here opt to wrap their seats up like Laura Palmer in order to keep them pristine. It's a strange sight to see a wealthy family in a Porsche Cayenne, trolling down the beach road with their plastic wrapped car interior-- it's an entirely different expression of enjoyment than you'd expect at home. In fact, plastic wrapped furniture is something I associate with a sort of uneasy ascent out of poverty, an impulse someone might have upon owning their first nice couch, dreading that first stain, perhaps heightened by the feeling that one's ability to purchase such things could be fleeting. What I find puzzling, is that for me, the plastic itself is far more objectionable than a stain or tear. My own tendency is towards a miserly love of craigslist bargains, which happily, my wife is adept at finding. I'd rather own something with a modest number of inherited flaws, than deal with the eventuality of marring something myself. This is because I know I'm going to eventually choke on some graham cracker dust and shoot searing hot Earl Gray out my nostrils and onto whatever item of furniture is currently propping me up, I am reconciled to living this way as it's just part of who I am.