Just this afternoon.
One of my neighbors here in UAE is a Russian woman (born in Kazakhstan, but raised in Moscow) who is a classically trained pianist. As she was trained in the old USSR, the stories she tells of those days are kinda scary- but they explain a lot about her.

Not to mince words, she's a control freak.

Don't get me wrong, she's a sweetheart who has all but adopted my wife and me, but things have to follow certain rules or she gets pretty wound up. The other day she and my wife went out to the gym and then went shopping, and when she returned my wife described the back-seat driving in aggrieved tones. (In all fairness to the Russian, driving is scary over here and my wife is a bit careless.) So I decided to have some fun, and invited the Russian to come with me on today's offroad drive through the desert.

Now I've been driving for about a year on the desert, so I have some experience, and this was a trip for people of limited experience so it was pretty easy. I wasn't going to take someone new to this out on the desert for a wild ride doing dangerous stunts, after all. But it's not street driving- we're going over sand dunes. And that requires driving up to the ridge and going down a 45 degree slope, which means that it looks like the land ends and you're dropping into nothingness. You have to trust the caravan leader- after all, if they drove down it, it must be safe enough for you to go as well. But it is still something of a leap of faith.

The Russian started out by pointing out things I needed to avoid, then getting anxious over going up some rises and slewing around a bit in the loose sand. Then we had to climb some spots that were about a meter tall step followed by level ground, and she gasped as we surged over them. She clung tight as we climbed up a ten foot dune, then was silent and rigid until we reached the bottom. I learned several words of Arabic and some new ones in Russian as well. (She kept snarling "Shaytan!" which I thought meant "Shit!" at first.) But what to do? All I could do is keep going and have her hang on.

We did another climb and I could see her tense up, then we did the usual controlled slide down the other side. I swear she left fingerprints in the steel of the roll bar. When we reached the bottom she hissed "I kill you. I KEEEELLL YOU!"

This happened three times over the next hour.

When we finally stopped to re-inflate the tires at the camel farm the leader approached and asked her how she liked it. She gave a harrowing account of the drive, much to the amusement of the group.

But she wants to go with me on the next trip...
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 27 Sep 2013, 21:46, 2 replies)

I really quite liked that.
I know it was a "I took a foreign lady on an off road trip which scared the shit out of her, but she still wants to come again", but it was really quite a nice read. I actually imagined it happening as I was reading.
(dchurch bah, Tue 1 Oct 2013, 11:44, closed)

The thing about being over here
is that I'm a foreigner myself. So she's no more foreign than I am- I just included her background to explain why she was cursing at me in Russian and Arabic.

The funny part (to me) was how much she was laughing about it after we stopped.

Want to see the trip itself? youtu.be/bApq1jYgUzw I'm in the black Jeep with the light bar.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Wed 2 Oct 2013, 12:50, closed)