Outnumbered & Abroad; No More Public Transportation (Part 9)
London-Heathrow (Thursday, September 27, 2018) - Rise and shine and we were OFF on our day! Packed and ready to go for the next great adventure and it wasn’t coming a moment too soon. If you couldn’t tell by my last few journal entries, the big, bustling city of London was hard on this country kid - something I didn’t anticipate happening after all of my years of traveling for basketball.
I was irritated that I couldn’t seem to get everything into my pack. Nicole seemed extremely worse off than me and, for the second time on this trip, I found myself extremely irritated that, unlike the other three of us, who ALL got the backpack memo, she had her simple little drawstring gunny sack backpack and a rolling suitcase …. with a broken wheel so it didn’t roll.
Getting on the Heathrow with our very expensive tickets (we had thought the taxi cab from the airport was expensive at 902 pound, it was cheaper than the train to get to the airport). I spent a solid 100 pounds to get those four tickets for us and cringed inside as it rung up.
Prior to getting on the train, Warren Clayton and I had grabbed some coffee. I was so thankful to have another coffee drinker with us on the trip, albeit we drink our coffee in two totally different shades! I was energized, pumped and ready for the day. Nicole was extremely irritated as we had to do a lot of walking to the train station. I had started to wonder if the time change had messed up her schedule.
The Nicole got sick on the train.
She lost all her color and I thought, for sure, that she was going to barf… again. Just getting slightly unwell completely shuts Nicole down for whatever she may be doing that day. We still had a long voyage in front of us to try and find the rental car location and I feared that, just like our arrival to London, the one person who actually knew what we were doing and where we were supposed to go was going to be completely incapacitated in just a few more lurches.
From the train station, we arrived at the airport where we were to take a bus to the car rental. None of us are quite sure why, but the bus never stopped at the location that we were supposed to get off. Whether it was because there was construction and the stop was closed or that we were supposed to push the red stop button (my hunch), we still aren’t sure. Maybe, the entire trip, we had been lucky that someone else had always pressed the stop button to activate the use of the stop where we were going?
Regardless of they why, we ended up getting off a stop after where we wanted to be. Nicole, determined to stay on schedule and as frustrated as the rest of us, decided that we should take the 15 minute walk rather than wait the 12 minutes for the next bus. What her little traveller map didn’t calculate, however, is the fact that we had all of our stuff with us which would definitely add time.
Now for Randi, Warren Clayton, and myself, this wasn’t a bad thing but, for Nicole, with her roller bag, this was a whole other ball game. As my mortification over the situation rose, I could physically feel the shift of the coffee I had had go from positive and happy to a much darker side almost immediately.
My self-preservation was kicking in strongly as Nicole VERY noisily rolled her broken, one-wheeled suitcase down the sidewalks of these residential neighborhoods and an unGodly early hour of the day. Too lazy to just pick it up and carry it, I felt as if we were alerting every questionable character to prey on us and being disrespectful to every resident, knowing that Nicole would make a scene in the mood that she was in from not feeling well, I picked up her bag and carried it myself - the simplest solution of all - until we were out of the neighborhood area. On smoother sidewalks and the rental car place in sight, Nicole had the nerve to look upset when I wordlessly handed her luggage back to her.
I think what got me the most is that, growing up, we had this pumpkin patch theory. You could pick whatever pumpkins you wanted out of the pumpkin patch, but you had to be able to carry it yourself - you couldn’t ask for help and you couldn’t complain. Nicole was raised under the same roof as me and, yet, that life lesson was apparently lost on her the second we landed in the mother country.
Grumpy little sister evidence of the pack muling lol
We finally made it to the rental car place and I tried to ignore the fact that Nicole had somehow pawned her bag off on Warren Clayton, as well as her long dress jacket. Standing in line for almost an hour, I waited outside with the Johnson’s furiously journaling my emotions away. I did make sure to individually apologize to everyone of the mood I had fallen into that morning which equal parts made me feel some remorse, while also being a hard pill to swallow because no one else shares in my paranoid for self-preservation.
Getting our rental car, it was definitely a tight squeeze. Taking one for the team, I quickly realized that I would need to sacrifice my leg room so that Warren Clayton could have some in the back and Nicole wouldn’t have to change her driving stance.
Our trusty car - thank God! No more public transportation for a bit and leaving the city!
All of the vehicles here, for the most part, are manual. We actually found out that you have to be handicapped to really ensure that you can have an automatic! Nicole proceeded to kill the car, a Mercedes, multiple times trying to get out of the parking lot. This was a result of the shifter both being backwards for us, as well as third gear being where our brain logically put first gear.
It took us a bit to navigate the parking lot to get out, but I didn't mind as it gave Nicole a chance to get used to the feel of the car. The drivers here in Europe are actually crazy. I have never seen drivers as bad as this.
On a side of the road parking situation, you can park anywhere. In the U.S., you would have to park with the flow of traffic, but here you can shoot the gap and point your parked car at oncoming traffic. It can be a bit unnerving, going over a blind hill/bump in the street, and seeing a car facing you on the shoulder.
They also have no good road line system. Our roads have white to border your lane, yellow to break the two directions, and the yellow line tells you whether you can cross it or not based on how it’s marked. Here, there are just white lines and you can’t even begin to remotely comprehend if the street you are on is one way or two. What I have determined, by this point, after fiercely studying, analyzing and tracking the cars around us is that it is, legitimately, a free for all.
Technically, most roads are a two-way, but if no one is coming, you can hijack the lane as a fast lane until another car is coming. My paranoia of getting a ticket here is equal parts high and nonexistent. I have yet to see any type of traffic control officer, the only sirens and lights I have seen are ambulances, which we have seen quite often. How ironic right? Maybe if they could drive….
The other interesting thing is the traffic light system. Where we have the same three colors of red, green and yellow, there is one difference: The Order. In the U.S., our traffic lights are…
Green = GO
Yellow = Slow down or stop, red is coming
Red = STOP
In the UK the mean…
Red = STOP
Yellow = Green is coming
Green = GO
The theory behind this, leaning solely on Nicole’s brain power for this fact, is her suggestion that yellow before green is because everyone drives manual so it is used to signal drivers to prepare for green by putting the car in drive.
Heading out through the country side, I could feel my anxiety disappear. I knew that the hustle and bustle of the big city bothered me from basketball, but I had forgotten just how much weight it seemed to put on me. I was even more surprised at how well the Johnson’s had adjusted to city life - handling the change much better than I.
We stopped outside Windsor castle for brunch at an American Themed restaurant where I saw this beauty of an Indian parked out front. I just had to grab a picture - add this to the toy bucket list someday!
This came as a surprise to me because I felt as if I was “so well traveled” versus they have spent the majority of their life in the most remote place of the Lower 48. I thought that I would have been able to protect them during the transition to one of the biggest towns in the world, but the truth was the opposite and I was grateful that they handled everything in stride!
The pure joy that I felt at seeing cows and sheep for the first time on this trip made me so completely happy. The lack of animals and wildlife was so absolutely disturbing to me in the city that I had even started counting dogs as a way for me to specifically keep my eyes open for them to give me some joy. I miss my dog greatly and wish that she could be here but I know the impracticality of that wish.
We saw the amazing structures of Stonehenge as we rolled along to our next clue - our Polo Lesson. Randi was very excited but my lack of knowledge of the historical landmark meant I didn’t get as wildly nuts about it as her and Nicole would.
My favorite picture of Nicole from the trip outside of Windsor market as Randi looked for postage stamps to send postcards back home.