Back to Blighty

Well that's the end of Tim's U.S. Tour 2009!

We landed in good ol' Blighty yesterday morning at about 10:15am - a full 45 minutes ahead of schedule! If thats not good customer service, I don't know what is. Continental airlines even manage to change the wind, to reduce their flight times.

What a great airline though! Last time I did the Manchester - San Francisco route, Air France cocked everything up before we'd even set off, by delaying our first flight out of the U.K. meaning that we couldn't make our connection... that just started a catalogue of errors, ending up with lost baggage on the return journey! Mind you, they are French. In stark contrast, everything about the Continental experience was brilliant (apart from the "automated check-in" at SFO, where we had to get a Continental advisor to assist us. It took far longer to mess with the computer, than the normal procedure with an employee at the check-in desk).

In true British fashion, the first English person I speak to back on British soil was complaining. He was the attendant at the immigration queue; mind you I can see his point - I was next in line, and just about to walk to the immigration officers' desk as she became free, and she gets up and walks off - lunch time! (Don't worry about the 300 Brits trying to get back into the country luv, you take your time). I bet service like that doesn't come cheap.

Gosh everything is weird here. I had to ride home in the drivers side of Dad's car. What a bizarre experience. I'm suprised we don't just all crash into each other. And what about those circle things in the middle of the roads - seems like a free for all to me! Cars just don't stop!

So I managed to locate my car this morning, and after I'd managed to get in and located the steering wheel, I noticed that was in the passenger side also. There was a complicated arrangement of 3 pedals on the floor, I assumed the far left one was the parking brake. Anyway, I started it up and thought the world had just exploded. It clattered into life like a London bus and didn't quiet down either! Gosh its loud! Plumes of black smoke errupted from the rear in environmentally-friendly clean diesel style (don't worry about the particulates, they are harmless in comparison to that deadly carbon dioxides that comes from petrol).

I attempted to put the shifter into reverse through a strange procedure of pushing down on the shifter (no button to press?) and heard a big crunch, the car jerked, and the engine stopped. I wondered if it had fallen out. After checking under a few pebbles (as I know British cars have very small engines) I couldn't locate it there, I looked under the hood - ah! It was still there!

Remembering something vaguely about the very left pedal being something to do with a complex clutch mechanism and that having something to do with gears(?), and not in fact anything to do with parking, I managed to put the car into reverse after several attempts with different combinations of the left hand pedal. Gosh this is going to be a long day.

Finally making the car move out of the garage, and selecting 1 (I couldn't find D), the car would now move forward and I have managed to get it to Manchester. It went quite slowly, was very loud, and bounced off its rev limiter with lots of noise and smoke all the way - for some reason it seemed like it just simply wouldn't up shift gear. Cars were swerving all over the road in front and coming straight for me - how people manage to move around this crowded little island without crashing I will never know. I will have to take the car to a garage and get it looked at. Think it needs a Smog test.

Claire took us to the Trafford Center today (a large, Valley Fair sized, shopping mall), after she managed not to crash into people driving on the wrong side of the road - how she managed it, as she was on the wrong side as well, I will never know. She must be a very good driver, as she squeezed the car into what could only be described as motorcycle parking - but it looked like everyone was parking there - perhaps the car lots were full. First stop was a reasonable size store called Deben Hams. It was crowded. There were about 7 people in it. Although it didn't sell any meat, and it wasn't a butchers. It was a clothes shop. I didn't see any checked shirts, or gator skin boots. Call that a clothes shop! And where was the personalized service? Not one of the sales representatives asked me how our day was going and if we needed any help. They all seemed to ignore us. How they expect us to buy anything I am not sure. I decided to take the lead and ask one of the representatives how she was doing and if she was having a nice day - but she then had a slightly disgusted somewhat vacant look on her face. Never mind I thought.

The mall got busier though. Literally thousands of people poured in from all over the place. It seemed like a sea of people. I had to jump out their way; they walk as they drive - straight towards you. Brits. I was physically attacked on several occasions by people with strollers and other parafinalia.

Its going to take a long time to get used to this!