You Take the High Road

As I implied in my last blog, driving in Scotland was not my finest hour.

It had been years since I last drove in the UK. My maiden voyage in the late 70’s involved renting a compact with a stick shift in downtown London and embarking on my journey at rush hour. I was young, cheap, and foolish. I would never make those mistakes again, but there were many new errors awaiting the older, wiser me in Scotland.

The adventure began at the rental counter in Glasgow Airport.

I had prebooked a small SUV with automatic transmission and had declined extra insurance. The booking agent listed all the things not covered by my American Express Gold Card insurance and after some back and forth, I caved and got the extra daily insurance. It would not take a genius to figure out that a 75-year-old driver with a less than spotless record might encounter some issues. I would be sitting on the “wrong” side of the car, on the “wrong” side of the road, clueless as to route, and struggling to find the skills gained 40 years ago. OK, I’ll take the extra insurance.

When you plop yourself into the driver’s seat of a rental car in the UK, the first thing you notice is the large circular sticker on the upper right-hand corner of the windshield. In bold letters it says DRIVE TO THE LEFT, with an equally bold arrow. I scoffed at this little crutch for rookies but consulted that little circle a thousand times over the course of the next 8 days.

I quietly sat in the car for at least 10 minutes orienting myself to this strange land. You reach for the seatbelt with your left hand and pull it over your right shoulder. You look up to the left, not the right, for the interior mirror. To open the windows, the controls are on the door to your right, not your left. Even with self-coaching, you are constantly looking in the wrong places for things you have relied on for 59 years of driving.

Have I made a mistake? Should I have taken the train? The bus? An uber expensive Uber? Snap out of it kitten, you can do this.

Once oriented, I slooooowly backed out of the parking place, inched to the left side of the lane, and crept to the exit gate. Upon arrival, I was shocked to see the gatekeeper on the right side of my car. After searching for the window buttons and discovering that it was the button on the right, and not the left that would open the correct window, I nervously smiled at the attendant, showed him my paperwork, and proceeded through the gate. I already felt like I had done a day's work and had only just left the friendly confines of the car park.

Before you could say Mr. McGregor’s Garden, I was on the freeway headed for downtown Glasgow. Of course, it was raining.

As I approached the first roundabout, I felt like I was going into orals for my PhD. Attentive, nervous, and did I mention attentive? I proceeded into the Mixmaster at speed, left via my proper exit, and continued unscathed. Whew!

It was at my third roundabout that I heard the blaring horn of a fellow traveler and realized that the old “give way to those already in the roundabout” might have been violated. Nae, it had been violated.

At some point in my journey, I glanced down at the very complicated control panel and saw two unfamiliar boxes. One was labelled “safety score” and the other “eco score.” I was being graded by this bloody self-righteous car. Already I had slipped from what I assumed to be a perfect safety score of 100 to 97. I was too scared to drive the speed limit, so I assumed that I was either going too slow or had cut that guy off in the roundabout, or both.

Normally you are not thrilled to be in bumper to bumper rush hour traffic, but as I approached downtown Glasgow, I was happy that everything ground to a crawl. I was able to catch my breath, congratulate myself on another mile of accident-free driving, and scan a few more of the digital numbers on the screen. I am happy to report that my safety score had crept up to 99. You can’t do much wrong when all the world is progressing at 5 mph.

I was also able to look around and take in a few sights. I was impressed by my first glimpse of the River Clyde and the variety of old and new architecture that hugged its shore. Church steeples in the distance, the shells of abandoned industry, and silver skyscrapers told the messy story of a city’s timeline. Names of hotels and corporations were familiar, but the whole vibe was unique and well, foreign. This is why you travel.

When traffic cleared, the bodiless voice from the dashboard guided me to my hotel and then to the parking garage. It is hard to describe the sense of accomplishment that I felt when I walked away from the car that evening. I looked back and smiled at the bumpers, quarter panels, doors, and mirrors, all intact. Safety score 99.

I attacked the city mainly on foot, so my car had a couple days of rest in the garage before I approached it again to drive to Greenock, the home of my cousins.

When I emerged from the elevator at level 3, I immediately noticed that some patron had parked way too close to my vehicle. I rolled my suitcase to the rear of the car and popped the “boot” with my key fob. After securing my luggage, I approached the task at hand. Getting into the car.

I opened the door as far as the clearance would permit. I got my leg into the car, turned sideways and started to squeeze, and I do mean squeeze, between the door and the roof of the car. Sucking in more and more breath as I went, an inch at a time, I scraped my sternum past the window frame. I pulled with my hands and pushed off my back foot still on the garage floor. Finally, with one final push I ducked my head and dropped into the seat.

Success.

Wait, no. Not success. My seat was missing something.

A steering wheel.

I had achieved this gymnastic maneuver only to find myself seated on the passenger side of the car. Wrong side of car. Wrong side of road. Once again, two wrongs don’t make a right.

I just burst out laughing.

The absurdity of this situation deserved a long hard laugh and laugh I did. All alone. No one else to hear. I laughed a soul cleansing, side splitting laugh.

There were many roundabouts, country roads, wrong turns, and close calls to come, but I survived. As to the extra insurance, good move.

The agent that checked me back in at Budget Rental Car trained his flashlight on the left rear wheel of the car. There was a clear scrape around the entire circumference of the very expensive black wheel. And yes, I had definitely hit one curb in my 8 days of driving.

As he stood up in the dim light of the car park, and signed off on his iPad, he printed out my ticket, handed it to me and said, “The insurance will cover that”.

O ye'll tak' the high road, and I'll tak' the low road,

And I'll be in Scotland afore ye,

But me and my true love will never meet again,

On the bonnie, bonnie banks o' Loch Lomond.

Scottish folk tune, Loch Lomond, 1745