Lord Jim

Call me, Lord Jim from a page of a Conrad novel in this land of enchantment. I was returning from another fabulous evening with Rosinha in São Paulo.
My feeling was much of love for my adventure, a beautiful princess, and achievement in a strange new world. The boulevard passing through São Paulo was deserted as the hour was well past midnight. The open window of my Charger was swirling a pleasant breeze inside the car. Most likely the radio was playing the Stylistic' song Betcha by Golly Wow. In the cities of Brazil, you drove with only parking lights at night. Even I mostly ignored traffic signals, by this time. I kept my guard up for others after witnessing too many bachata (auto crashes) in my two months of exposure to this land.
Some distance ahead another car was approaching on the opposite side of the median. We were both coming to a dimly lighted intersection when the screech of a cat echoed in the night. It darted across in front of me at lightning speed. The cat, now in total silence, ran directly into the front hubcap of that approaching car, in my full view. The cat flopped to its side and never moved again.
Once before, I was pushing through Normandy to catch the early ferry to Dover, Exhausted, I pulled into a churchyard in the middle of the night to catch a few winks. Unaware of the time when I next awoke, I sped off. Unsure of my direction, my face was to the windshield of my Renault 6 looking for signs of direction on this rural road, then SPLAT! I think it was a bird that hit the window which made the hair on my head stand up for three days. Even today I brush my hair down at the thoughts of that night.
I find such incidences very frightening and unsettling to the romance of an adventure. I was not a stray cat on the run but at times the adrenaline of each new excitement can approach fear and uneasiness. Yet we all push our un-commonality to sort us out from the masses.