D-Day had arrived. I was to drive on the right-hand side of the road for the first time since 1978 when I was in Israel and seemed to follow or be followed by bombs…what would happen here?
I had been pretty apprehensive until I got behind the steering wheel, but then it felt manageable – just! – as long as I took things fairly slowly and had time to think at junctions…and was able to use a device as a satnav to help me along.
The car was smaller than I had expected. A Mazda 2. But that was fine as it was a model I knew and was comfortable with. Until I tried to unlock the boot and the passenger door. Couldn’t do it! There had been no real handover, just a fairly cursory ‘Sign this when you check the car. It’s in Bay 18’. And you don’t know what questions to ask when you haven’t seen the car. Eventually a friendly shuttle driver at the Holiday Inn Express sorted it out for me and we were able to load up and move on.
I drove gently along Christopher Columbus Blvd to pick Somjit and our luggage up from the hotel where we had stayed and we headed for the Pennsylvania Turnpike – about six false starts later we were there. There was a bank of toll booths in front of me. I drove up to one. Stopped. Could see nothing and there was nobody supervising, so I drove on. What else could I do?
Of course I SHOULD have taken a ticket. But I didn’t know that until we exited the Turnpike about fifty minutes later. I explained what I had done. The attendant said, “Thirty dollars, then”. I had no idea until later in the day what a huge overpayment that was – the next drive only cost me $1.75!!
Note to self: When driving unknown roads and road systems, be VERY careful to obey all instructions – or have a bottomless purse.
The mistake has not been repeated – and we’ve covered nearly 2000 miles now.
Later in the day, I was to make another mistake, this one more time-consuming: we had spent a pleasant couple of hours in St. Peter’s Village and were making our way back to the hotel to change for the evening’s party. Lack of familiarity with the conventions of the road meant I didn’t see the correct place to turn, so drove past the hotel and took a right turn thinking I could just drive down the street and turn around. Nothing so simple!! I had driven on to the Turnpike access road, couldn’t turn and had to drive about sixteen miles before being able to get off and return to Morgantown – and we were due at a party half an hour away at 6p.m. By now it was already 5p.m. and we hadn’t even checked in!!!
The last straw was a lucky escape later in the evening when the merest lack of concentration had me on the wrong side of the road for a slit second. Fortunately neither I nor the driver coming the other way was driving fast – and he turned right just before we would have collided….
Those were the disasters!
The delights merit the photographs: a garden party for about 80 at a family home in rural Pennsylvania to celebrate the forthcoming marriage of the son and his fiancee. Lovely people, amazing food, warm welcome. It was good to be able to put names to faces and get to know people a little and then, the next day, after another Sunday yarn shop visit, to spend a relaxed evening with the family before we all made our separate ways to the Michigan town where the wedding would take place the following weekend.
Living the Journey 