Drive to England

It was days before Christmas when a director asked if I'd be interested in a drive to Warwick which caught my attention. I had thought about it but had never driven in England before and was certainly intrigued by the proposition. Before I could get started I had to speak with a few other higher-ups but managed to find out who had the keys. Convincing them to lend me the vehicle was no problem and I even avoided the embarrassment of climbing into the left side door only to find myself in the passenger seat. However the journey itself was to have many more twists, after all this was a new country with new laws, roads and etiquette - all of which I would have to pick up along the way.

Right off the bat I had to merge onto the highway motorway but the speed limit was posted nowhere! There was only one other car around so I checked my speed with them and then pushed it as fast as I dared. Little did I realize there were unseen photo radar cameras checking my speed throughout which I slowly clued in on, picking up on the signs - piecing together which symbol meant what type of radar.

Now I didn't have an exact roadmap but knew the general direction and figured it should take me a certain amount of time to arrive. The trouble was negotiating these narrow roads, sometimes amounting to little more than a lane just over a small vehicle in width, with no shoulder and hedges on one side, stone walls on the other. Little room seemed left for error, especially with seemingly every corner being blind. And on top of it all - the twists and turns, or to be more accurate, how to drive in a roundabout. Do I have to stop? signal? Which lane should I be in? Is that my exit? Or that one? That says M55 but why isn't it marked north or south? Uh oh, I got out too early! Why didn't I just do another loop?! This happened a few times which caused some setbacks and delayed progress but fortunately at no point did I stall - a legitimate concern before actually shifting with my left hand which came quite naturally.

Now I knew I was definitely on the right path and had started to get a hang of driving on the left. ("It's the left, right?" I asked and reassured myself innumerable times at the start.) However I still did not know the correct speed and was tempted to pull into a lay-by and try to look it up but was afraid that if I pulled in I would never be able to merge back on the path and so I continued steadily towards my destination, already long past my expected time of arrival. "If you're going through hell - keep going!" as rapped by Birmingham native, Mike Skinner of The Streets.

Just as Warwick was becoming visible on the horizon I found myself in a roundabout with traffice lights inside of it, a transport truck  lorry behind me and an imposing double decker bus sat directly in front of me. Now I thought I had prepared for everything, was comfortable changing gears when necessary, knew which exit I wanted to take, and had already paid my bridge toll to get here when I was blindsided as my map fell off the dash. In lunging to catch it I snapped the windshield wipers on just as the amber light lit below the red in preparation for green. I was flustered to say the least but had to keep going so snapped it into first and pinned the gas. I darted for the next exit hoping it wouldn't lead me down a long, narrow road with unknown tolls and who-knows-how-long before I found a roundabout to circle back in U-turn fashion just to return to this same point. It was sometime down this road before I confirmed that I had indeed made the correct choice and was really closing in now.

Throughout all of this I heard more than a few time from the backseat, "Are you there yet? Are you almost there yet? Are you excited!?" to which my honest reply was "I'm really not sure. I hope I'm headed in the right direction but won't really know until I arrive. For now I'm just focusing on getting there."

Then there I was, basically at the city limit sign and a call rings through my Bluetooth asking if I want to turn this car right around and go home. Of course I do not, especially after coming all this way and the mental preparation that has gone along with it, and so we hash it out and it is agreed that I should carry on. And I do, driving into the city gives a sense of having arrived. For now I'm circling the blocks but all that's left to do is find my exact address.