Jon In England: Climb, climb, rattle on the front seat...

Spree I spraddle on the backseat;

Turn my key, step on my starter,

Take you riding in my car.

¬Woody Guthrie

7/8/10

Woke up. Packed. Class. In between classes I finished booking hostels and train tickets and printed confirmations for Scotland. Very excited to drive on the other side of the road. After class I head with Laitha and Will to Thrifty rent a car in Kilburn Park. There were some initial delays in getting the car. First Thrifty didn't have automatic (which Latha confirmed he was renting a week ago), then we were trying to see if one of us could drive stick (which has to be done with the left hand over here and as only Latha could he would have to do it both ways all the way), we called other places none of which had automatics available, so Latha finally decides he's up for it and 3 minutes later someone returned an automatic so we were able to get one after all.

By the time we got our car it was 4:30. It took us nearly two hours to wind our way through the labyrinth that are the cities of Westminster and London to get to the M1. The problem was that they were doing construction on the highway entrance we planned on taking and hadn't considered that possibility in advance but soon enough we maneuvered through the detours and made it to the M1. Finally! Very nice drive (once you get out of the city), although our car a Ford Fiesta-Titanium had an engine built for a scooter. After an hour on the highway I took the next shift as driver.

I drove along the M6 from Northampton to Charnock Richard (in the lake district which is beautiful and worth its own trip if you ever get the chance). It was a very enjoyable and leisurely drive, glad I didn't have to deal with the hustles, hastes, and hastles of the city though there was a little learning period at first. As soon as I sat in I instinctively reached for my seat belt with my left hand and tried to put it in reverse with my right (little things). Also, I initially didn't realize that the fast lane is on the right here (got a few honks about that one) and I always thought they used Kilometres for speed limits but turns out they are measured in miles. The hardest thing to get used to though, was making a right turn and ending up in the left lane, but really its not that hard you just have to follow the cars in front of you.

North of Newcastle when we stopped for gas I saw my first Scottish pound and knew we were close. We finally entered Scotland and made our way to Glasgow where atrocious signage (seriously just awful, you could completely miss exit signs if you don't know where to look) led us on various late night detours but we finally made it to our hotel.