The boss engages handbrakes, clutch brakes and heavenly favours, and we lose only some paintwork to the rock wall as we pull out of that bend.
“Here, start calling out them turns to me,” he says, “or we’ll never make it.” He pushes the map at me. “One, two or three, left or right. One is mild; three is hairpin.”
I can’t speak, having just snorted the milk foam with a half-jar of granulated coffee seconds ago, but I frantically grapple with the map to turn it right around and prepare for the last assault.
Instantaneously, my forehead begins to pulse from the caffeine overdose, and I begin to bark out the bends like a sergeant major drilling soldiers.
“Three-left. One-left. One-right. Two-left. Two-left. Two-right. Three-right.” We’ll be coming down the mountain when she comes, sings another part of my brain, fired up on fuel.
“Faster, faster!” I exhort the boss, who is already trying to shove his foot through the floor.
“Three-right,” I boom, as we play chicken with another rock face. Break on through to the other side, break on through to the other side, chants the manic aspect of my mind. I have lost touch with reality, rationality, and fear. We continue to whip back and forth, down the side of the mountain, my body testing the limits of the seatbelt at each bend.
In my head, the road has been writhing like a snake, trying to shake us off. Finally, mercifully, we have broken its spirit; the tarmac tames, the three-lefts become two-lefts become one-lefts, straight stretches introduced as a novelty. We head out onto the flat plain below.
“One-right,” I say, calmer now: the caffeine is wearing off, and with it the necessity of shouting and screaming my directions.
I glance at the time: it will be touch and go; what we lost coming up the mountain, we gained coming down. We are paralleling the small village where the drop is, according to the map, with a broad sweep of road bringing us right into it. As we crest a humpback bridge, we screech to a sudden halt.
“Ah Jesus!” the boss exclaims.
I glance up from my navigation duties. Roadworks, proclaims a sign in the middle of the road. A series of yellow construction trucks and hammering noises beyond it confirms the truth of the signage.
“That’s progress for you now,” he says, banging the steering wheel in frustration.
He has exited the car and is now stalking up and down the road, eyeing the humpback bridge we’ve just crossed. If I didn’t know better, he is figuring if the bridge could be used to Evil Knievel our way over the construction work.