Last Saturday, in the desert hinterlands of Northern Oman, in its provincial capital of Ibri, it rained. It rained! I could NOT fucking believe it. I was so overjoyed I went out in my Jeep to go celebrate with some 4 x 4 action.

As it turns out water freaks the hell out of desert dwelling people. I found out the hard way by passing a guy where the water was probably a foot deep over the road and inadvertently splashed him and his crew who were driving around with their windows down. After we got out of the deep water, he pulled up in front of me to get me to stop, came over to my window and started pointing and yelling at me in Arabic. His three friends got out and I pushed up the window. He reached in to try and grab me but I punched it and got the hell out of there.

They gave chase and called one of their other friends who drives a BMW. The guy in the BMW pulled in front of me and the other guys pulled in behind me to try and sandwich me in. I acted like I was gonna let them and then veered right and up and off the road to try and lose them in some neighborhood side streets. There was a lot of water and people outside in this little Omani barrio so I had to go pretty slow and at one point and they caught up with me. One of the guys jumped out of his car and tried to jump into my back seat. I punched it again and found my way back out to the main road where the guy in the BMW was waiting. I soon found myself dealing with these angry Arabs who were trying to sandwich me in again.  As I wouldn't let the BMW get in front of me to do it, he was getting frustrated and at one point tried to ram me into on coming traffic. When I saw a turn out for a petrol station, I let him get in front of me, veered through the gas station before the other guy could ram me from behind and sped through the station just as a spot in the slow moving traffic opened up to make my escape. Minutes later I saw the flashing lights of the Omani Royal Police in my rearview mirror. They took my expired California license and registration, indicating that I should follow them to the Royal Omani Police Station. I was looking at two felonies and some jail time, they told me. The first felony - spitting in an Omani’s face - carried a two month sentence and the second felony - driving with an expired license - meant at least two days in jail. I gave my account of what happened, called the local laison from my company, a sheikh of some stature and within the space of a couple of hours I was back home with just a warning not to drive or I'd be looking at FOUR days jail time.

 The next day I was called in to resolve the issue. I told the police that even though they tried to kill me I didn't want to press charges, that I just wanted to be left in peace and signed a paper attesting to that fact. No problem since (except not being able to drive my Jeep for the remaining two weeks that I'm here).

 So the plan is to renew my license in California over the summer and get an Omani one when I come back. What I learned from this debacle is to NOT pass Omanis when there is water of the road because they freak the hell out and if you splash them are liable to take that as you spitting on them.