Thursday, March 3, 2011

You're Driving On The Wrong Side Of The Road!!

I drove today for the first time - in England, that is.  It was intense!!  I was test driving a little Mazda Joshua and I are thinking of buying (really good deal - used cars are very inexpensive here) just to help with things like getting groceries and picking up furniture and get places that are a little too far to walk.  So... back to the car driving... first, I walked to the right side of the car - by that I mean I went to the CORRECT side of the car, which for us "yanks" is the left.  Oops!  No steering wheel over here!  So around I go to the other side.

Ah!  OK, so I get in, buckle up and do all that good stuff - did I mention that the car is a manual, standard, stick shift, all of the above?  Yep.  I'm driving a non-automatic vehicle with the steering wheel in the wrong place on the wrong side of the road.  Brilliant.  Oh!  It gets better!  Since it is a manual you have to shift.  Well, the gear shift is in the car just as it would be in the US meaning I have to use my left hand to shift.  No biggie, but one would think that first would be up and towards me, right? I mean, when the steering wheel is on the other side, you shift with your right hand and first is up and towards the drivers leg/knee.  Nope.  The shift is EXACTLY as it is in our cars here, so first is still up but it is away from me.  Still, I did very well, did not stall once!  And, as far as I know I did not run into the other lane of traffic either.  As for the other drivers on the road, well, they kinda looked like this...

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