We are thoroughly enjoying a wonderful stretch of weather here in Madrid. The weather is regularly nice, but it is especially fantastic this week. So yesterday, after church, We decided to meet some friends downtown at a large park. It would be good to let Olive and the children play together in the sunshine and unleash some of the extra energy that has built up due to a little too much TV watching the past few days.

So we pile everyone into the car after grabbing the requisite snacks, skateboards, water, and roller skates and finally make our way downtown. Google maps informed us the trip would take 14 minutes. Great.

I didn't immediately realize that this trip would bring me in conflict with my old Spanish adversary: Madrid's M–30 tunnel system. The M-30, otherwise known as the Autopista de Circunvalación M-30, is a very large, complex, limited access ring road encircling Madrid. That alone doesn't make the M-30 unique. What does it make unique (and completely terrible) is the fact that "a significant portion of the southern part runs underground. They are the longest urban motorway tunnels in Europe, with sections of more than 6 km in length and 3 to 6 lanes in each direction, between the south entry of the Avenida de Portugal tunnel and the north exit of the M-30 south by-pass there are close to 10 km of continuous tunnels." [1]

The M-30 tunnels and I have sparred a few times. So far, I'm 0 - 5.

We've discussed previously how the road layouts in Madrid are not perfect:

many bi-directional roads randomly becoming one-way roads
non standard roundabouts with no lane markings
signs with 5 - 7 different destinations listed on them
exits and entrances to side roads that must be taken in advance to be able to leave the highways
many tight, ancient roads downtown
inadequate parking (not unique to Madrid, but still painful)

For that reason, nearly every person I know in Madrid uses a GPS navigation system to find their way when driving around the city. We are no exception, and normally we are rewarded with successfully arriving at our intended destination.

However, even the world's best GPS units do not work underground.

When they cannot find the GPS signal they become lost. And so do we.

The lovely thing about the M-30 tunnel system is that when underground, it eschews exit numbers and its usual overabundance of signage. It expects you to psychically know which random exit to take to return you back to the sunny, happy, GPS-rich world above. Unfortunately again, there are only a few exits, and, if you miss yours, you are more or less screwed for another 10 minutes until it springs another poorly labelled exit on you, forcing you to nervously jump or not into the exit lane.

So, our 14 minute trip turned into nearly an hour as we drove the length of Madrid. Twice. We finally found the correct exit for the park (more or less by luck), and then proceeded to engage in a fun downtown game called "go crazy trying to park". Yeah, it's even more fun than it sounds.

Over two years in Madrid have taught us a few things and learning to find, defend, and squeeze into a downtown parking space is one of them. However, if there are no spaces to be found, and no public parking garages, even my best parking ninja skills are useless.

Every square inch of concrete devoted to legal (and many of the non-legal) parking was occupado. So we continued to circle the park in ever widening loops. Main roads, side roads, even smaller side roads; they were all full of cars. And just to increase the temperature in the car a little more, we had to repeatedly pass two different police stations. The police cars were like ants near a hive; they were everywhere. At one point, I was sitting at a stop light with two police cars to my left, and one directly behind me. It was like a 0mph O.J. Simpson car chase. Except we're in a Skoda and not a Blazer. And we weren't moving. And I hadn't killed anyone. Actually, it was not at all like the O.J. Simpson car chase except that there were police cars involved. As we sat at the stop light, I knew they could tell by how my sweaty palms tightly gripped the steering wheel, that I don't have a valid Spanish driver's license.

After 30 minutes of frustrating circling, I became lost and no longer knew where the park was. So we set coordinates for home and slinked back defeated. The entire ordeal took 90 minutes and we accomplished nothing except burnt fuel and patience.

0 - 6.

[1]: wikipedia.org