I arrived in London at 10:30 am, almost half an hour early. My luggage was right there when I got to carousel; if things keep going this well, I'm going to start worrying that my luck will run out too quickly on this trip.
I picked up my Hertz rental car, a Fiat Punto (Italian for "Ford Pinto"). An absolutely charming car that does away with unnecessary luxuries like power steering to provide me with a sunroof...in England...how thoughtful.
Before leaving, I called my contact at the Oracle office, only to find he's tied up in meetings all day. Perhaps due to lack of sleep, I decided on the spot to blow off work completely - since Oracle wasn't likely to pay me for any part of this trip, there seemed little point. I called my friend Jolene, who said to come on up after she gets out of work (5 pm). I cancelled my costly hotel reservation (cool!), but now I have several hours to kill, since the drive to Walsall only takes 2-3 hours.
I decided to do a test drive to Bath, so I could make the journey with Erin as quickly and smoothly as possible. Good idea, too. I found my way to the M-4 motorway after touring the airport for 20 minutes and only once turning onto the right (read: wrong) side of the road (it was an empty dead-end, too, so the two doofus moves kinda cancelled each other out).
Navigating while driving here isn't nearly as bad as the parts of Europe I remember - namely Germany. There, you are required to know every little town of ten or more people between you and your final destination. In England, they very thoughtfully partition the country into compass-based sections and include these among your destination choices, as in: THE WEST or THE NORTH. Of course, I still missed it the first time.
I made it to the turn-off for Bath (10 miles short of the city itself)
in 100 minutes, which included a couple of small rubbernecking delays and,
of course, my careful scrutiny of every Cargo terminal in Heathrow trying to
find my way out. I'll figure on just under two hours when I get Erin on
Thursday.
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