driving across the pond

driving across the pond is so different than driving in the states. obvious difference being that the driver's side is on the right rather than the left therefore one drives on the left.

also, and this lucky for me personally being my first time driving abroad: UK drivers are not road rage maniacs. in fact everyone seems to drive as a community; roads aren't always primo, traffic can be horrendous but hey, we're all in this together, so let's at the very least make everyone's driving experience today a good one. and this itself is AWESOME. no one rides your car's rear end for miles. everyone is fairly patient. no one cuts you off. everyone lets you merge. no one thinks they are entitled to make it through a light blocking oncoming traffic. it's just much more . . . civil.

example: though i learned to drive fairly well in the UK, i could not park for s#!%. don't know why, because it's not my regular car or perhaps the parking spaces are smaller than their US counterparts but nonetheless, parking proved difficult for me. at the sainsbury parking structure it took me 6 attempts to get the nissan note into my chosen parking space. even my 4 year old twins asked me why parking was taking me so long. and since lanes are narrow narrow, i was holding up traffic coming AND going. awesome.

after finally manouerving the car into the free space, i expected an angry mob of cars to drive past me with middle fingers shoved up against windows, profanties shouted through open or even closed windows by irate, red-faced drivers as well as the inevitable driver who likes to give you the long honk that says "you are a terrible driver and have thus ruined my day making me late. you suck".

nope. nada. zip. zilch. zero. not one single honk during the entire 6 tries.

every waiting driver/car drove past with me mouthing 1000 apologies and what i got in return was smiles and "no worries mate. cheers!" me: absolutely flabbergasted. because back in the states, every single one of those drivers who i held up with my awful parking skillz would have stopped, rolled down their window and given me a profanity laden tirade until they felt that i had sufficiently "paid" for wasting their precious time. then i would have been given the finger as they sped up and i ate dust. oh, you americans can learn something from this!

signage is also awesome on the UK motorways. enormous signs with even more humongous lettering letting you know a more calm traffic configuration lies ahead, that there are lanes merging from your left, that the motorway is shrinking to 2 lanes instead of 3, so sorry that, that your exit is coming up in 3 hatch marks, and that the rest stop ahead has a costa coffee.
their signage is so fantastic, i now wish i had the foresight to have documented some of the awesome, HUGE motorway signs i saw for your edification.

also, apolozies will abound when there are road improvements being made. i mean it really. the sign will actually say "sorry for the inconvenience". in the states, drivers are lucky to even be informed that there is some sort of road work going on ahead, delaying the drive in to work, school or wherever. usually, we're just in the dark on such matters, cursing all traffic ahead of us.

i left bristol (or b'tol as i have come to refer my adopted city. a name purloined from the M4 turnoff) with a clean driving record: no tickets, no pedestrian, biker or pet deaths, no popped left side tires, no left side of the car scrapes and no angry mob of bristolians cursing my awful driving skillz.