London to York, Pt 1

The new day broke sunny and pleasant, a busy and buzzing Monday morning in Chelsea. We did find the neighborhood cheerful and bustling, a shade on the foofy-café and fashionista side, but we have developed a tolerance for such things living in Boulder. It had a sort of London-but-not-really feel to it.

But today was The Day.

The three of walked down to the EuropCar office, a little over a mile down Fulham Road from Chris’ flat, right across the street from the Chelsea Football Club stadium, now thankfully quiet. I felt a little like a condemned man walking his own Green Mile; sure, we were excited to get the enterprise on wheels and in motion, but I also knew that my first driving experience in Britain (if you’ve done it before, you remember your First Time, admit it) would be up this apparently treacherous street, back to Chris’ flat (to get the luggage), and then weaving our way out of one the world’s greatest cities and most clusteriffic  motoring experiences toward a highway, and north to Lincolnshire. I tried hard to remember the road in from the airport, to just get an idea of what it would be like, but of course I had no idea if we were headed in the same direction, and anyway, I was a little zombiefied the day before from 18 hours of travel and no sleep.

The paperwork took a little longer than I thought, Chris and Sharon nodding or declining all the pitches the counter guy tossed at me, while I stood there stupefied, waiting to sign something. They finally wrapped up and brought up a VW Golf. Grey. Wheel on the right (duh), and as I had ordered, an automatic.

Little know fact: a mile is longer when you’re driving on the left. Ask me how I know.

We inched our way back to Chris' flat, I found the brakes a little grabby but otherwise so far so good. We double-parked, piled the luggage into VW, Chris gave us a couple of books about England driving and sightseeing, and we were off.

We had loaded up our portable GPS with a map of the UK ($70, by the way), Sharon had the route out of London well plotted, but after 10 minutes of winding our way across West London, my fingers bleached white from constricted bloodflow on the wheel, we came up to what looked a lot like a road closure, conflicting belligerently with the GPS directions. Up to this point, I had kind of gotten the hang of the driving thing (stay behind the guy in front of you, don’t worry about the massive buses/kamikaze cabbies/speeding Range Rovers, don’t kill the cyclists and make your lane change plans early – oh yeah, and stay on the left), but immediately we were flying blind, in the midst of London traffic, and everything kind of came apart. One way streets, incomprehensible signs, the mad rush of a major city assaulting the early hours of a workday. The traffic was dense and fast, we were pinballing our way from block to block, getting stuck in turns we didn’t want to make, compounding our immersion into rush hour London faster than the GPS could extract us.

We did go by the beautiful Natural History Museum at one point, I actually found a minute to glance over and admire it.

After about an hour of this, Sharon gamely guided us out of Central London into the inner-burbs, and eventually onto the A1.

We both exhaled.

“That sucked,” I said. But that little walkabout wasn't done with us.