I’ve spent a lot of time in cars recently, at least 500 miles in the last week. That’s a lot for someone living in England. To explain an Englishman’s attitude towards driving, perhaps I should reference the infamous Bill Bryson, who wrote in his book Notes from a Small Island
If you mention in the pub that you intend to drive from, say, Surrey to Cornwall, a distance that most Americans would happily go to get a taco, your companions will puff their cheeks, look knowingly at each other, and blow out air as if to say, “Well, now that’s a bit of a tall order…”
I’ve had particular problems at roundabouts, where everyone else seems to know what to do and I’m just happy I don’t hit anyone. Yes, I know the theory, but when entering a roundabout with 5 exits and 3 entrance lanes, WTF do you do? (old people may look up WTF in the Urban Dictionary, the same thing I used to look up a Hot Richard after hearing it on 30 Rock)
As I have no car, I’ve been driving various ZipCars, including a Mini, and rented a Ford Fiesta Hatchback manual diesel for the big trip. Try walking into an American Ford dealership and asking for a Diesel Fiesta, and those sales-men with 70′s haircuts will assure you no such thing exists.
The UK Fiesta, for the record, has the worst turning circle of all the cars I’ve ever driven in my life. There’s also a certain Fiesta at my local Enterprise with a badly dented alloy rim. I don’t know how that happened, no sir, certainly didn’t happen in a country lane in Surrey last weekend.
But with all this driving, what about the famous green mini-mini-van I drove for years? The thing I got from my mom? Sigh, I sold it after it broke down the 6th time in 4 months about a year ago. Here’s the second to last photo I have of it:
Yes, it’s on a tow-truck. And here’s the last photo I have of it. Note my face, expressing the exquisite pain of having to get my ass and car towed once more. I took this picture while sitting in the tow-truck passenger seat, holding the camera in my outstretched arm. I think I’m registering existential angst on my face. Or something like that.
I remember one guy I knew from the crew team thought I was a secret trust fund kid. Hello? Do trust fund kinds drive mom’s green mini-van with 180 thousand miles and a penchant for buggary breaking?
I loved that green mini mini van too. Took me and Vernon (yes I do know it should be Vernon and I but that’s so formal and uninternetlike) to Canada several times, Maine, exploring New Jersey (yes it is worth exploring outside of the New Jersey Turnpike). I was very sad to see it go and hope it is still tootling around with its new lawyer owner somewhere on the Jersey shore.