Mopeds look cooler in the movies

So I've never really liked crossing the street. Even in little, suburban Weymouth, Massachusetts. It just makes me nervous. I'm not really sure where this fear comes from, except maybe that one time when my sister Julie, my mom, and I almost got hit by a car picking up pizza from the Venetian on a Friday night. Apparently it has left me scarred for life, though, because crossing the street in a busy city is probably somewhere up there on my greatest fears list (but well beneath snakes and wearing my ND headband with the logo upside down). So naturally, I don't like crossing the street in Boston, home to the world's worst drivers. Or so I thought.

Crossing the street in London is like taking your life in your hands. Like tightrope walking without a net. This morning while walking to school I had the lovely experience of almost being run over by a moped. Actually, a fleet of little mopeds in what might have been a triangular shape. But I was too busy running away to take note. (It reminded me a little too much of the time I covered Bike Week, the motorcycle fest in NH, for the Concord Monitor...).
Yes, the very same mode of transportation often used by handsome European men to wisk away Hollywood starlets in plenty of chick flicks becomes an instrument of near death in London. Apparently the British guys who ride mopeds missed that memo, because they find it more fun to accelerate at poor innocent people as they cross the street.

Not to mention the cars driving at a million miles per hour on the wrong side of the road. Or the giant double decker red buses. And the bike riders, who are almost more dangerous than the mopeds. The near death incident with the bikes was the other day, so I'm sure I'll be running from a bus or a car any day now. But don't they say the best way to conquer your fears is to face them?

But that doesn't mean I'll be wearing the ND headband upside down any time soon. ;)