Tourist = Terrorist

Living in Groton, I live near one of the most popular tourist attractions in Connecticut, Mystic Seaport.  In addition, I live next to one of the most expensive hotels in "Mystic Country".  Therefore I get my share of clueless, snobby, upper-class, short-sighted, obtuse people which the general population call tourists.  We, however, call them terrorists.  Terrorists because they inflict terror on the locals through their driving skills (or lack thereof), outright rudeness, and just unadulterated stupidity and lack of common sense.  Why today's tirade on tourists, you ask?  Because I just spent in hour in Olde Mystic Village.

Being Labor Day Weekend, we still have some stragglers around that weren't scared off by the so-called hurricane.  Enough stragglers, however, to raise your blood pressure.  So we prepared ourselves mentally for the barrage of tourists that we might find when visiting the village.  At first, it wasn't so bad.  We thought that we might get away with a little relaxation while shopping.  And we were successful for a while.  Then we made the mistake of getting back into the car to make our way home.  First, we go to pull out of the parking lot and a huge bus full of tourists holds up traffic because it is trying to squeeze something the size of two elephants into an opening the size of a smartcar.  Somehow, probably by the mercy of Heaven, the driver missed all of the fences and parked cars.  Taking a deep breath, we proceed to pull out of the parking lot and out onto the road.  Here, we are almost broadsided by a shiny white Mercedes.  We somehow come out of that unscathed, pull up to the intersection, and witness another huge tour bus blow through the intersection at full speed.  My husband looks at me and says, "I just want to go home."  We proceed to get onto the highway, only to be slowed by another terrorist who is traveling on the highway at 40 mph.  After avoiding this, we make it back to our house, okay physically but exhausted mentally. 

This is just one experience in a cluster.  Daily we have close calls near our house with people looking for the entrance to the hotel.  They will get on the highway and either drive in reverse down the on-ramp, or turn around and drive in the wrong direction down the on-ramp.  Other times, we see them invent their own lanes of traffic.  For some reason, where these people come from, they don't have stoplights.  A red light means nothing to them.  And then there are the really bold terrorists that will turn around in our driveway.  Not just at the top of the driveway, but come all the way down, turn around in our yard, and then proceed back to the road. 

My question is this:  Are there really that many terrible drivers on the road, or do they just become terrors when the visit towns and cities outside of their home turf?  Are there places in America that maybe don't have stoplights, on-ramps, lane dividers, stop signs, yield signs, highway signs, wrong way signs, private driveways, four-way intersections, and speed limits? 

In light of all this negativity, there is a positive note.  We love the looks on their faces when we drive right at them when they disregard the rules of the road. Maybe we can inflict a little terror in the terrorists.