Back to Routine

This morning I got-up, got dressed, checked to make sure that all the clocks I rely on are, in fact, set to the correct Time (Greenwich Mean Time), and then had breakfast and left for the office.

Because of the extra hour this morning, (which I count as having gained last night due to that debacle in Zaandam yesterday) I had lots of time to get to the office so I took the barge walk into Kingston and then river walk back to Thames Ditton on my way in. It was a lovely morning for a ride. The temperatures are a bit on the cool side, the fog was rising from the river, and the cloud cover was just enough to make the sky interesting.

On the way in I had some time to think and something that nagged at me all day yesterday finally surfaced. The comment that was made to me a couple weeks ago about having become "anglicized" was correct. It kind of bothered me when I was there, without realizing it, that everybody there was driving on the wrong side of the street.

The few trips that I took back to the US this year made me notice that I had a tendency to find myself gravitating toward the left-side of the street as I drove, (Thankfully, it passes quickly and I tend to drive at odd times when I get home so there is little traffic.) but a few days passed and I was right as rain.

I have never actually felt physically uncomfortable being on the left, however. Perhaps it is the fact that The Netherlands is so physically similar to the UK (roundabouts, narrow roads, etc.) that made it seem wrong to keep right. The first roundabout we went anti-clock-ways around gave me a real start. I know that we drove on the right through France and Belgium, but that was way back in January. I hadn’t had nearly this much time to get used to being left.

When I got on the replacement bus service from Clapham Junction to Hampton Court yesterday, it just felt good and right to be left. The bus deposited me at the Hampton Court station where I collected my bicycle, dropped my bag at the house, headed to Tesco to pick-up a few things, and then took a short ride. Then, due to the stress of travel and the fact that I had had only four hours (thanks to the incompetence of the staff at the hotel in Zaandam) sleep the last evening, I went home and vegetated the rest of the afternoon, Paying in the hammock in the back garden under the clear, sunny skies. I slept hard and woke at sunset when it started getting too chilly to lay out without a blanket.

This morning, I am back into the routine; which I will break next weekend when I take a whirlwind tour of Copenhagen! I can hardly wait!

I hope that wherever you are today, you are comfortably ensconced in the routine.

Don Bergquist - 30 October 2006 - Thames Ditton, Surrey, UK