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Mission Visits the UK - England & Wales, May 2013
Chapter 16th - Lee and Jules 4 & Travel
Chapter 16th: Sunday and Monday, Headin' for home; More on eggs because we SERIOUSLY haven't had enough of that yet; The most amazing traffic jam your author has yet been in; Some last bits of the flavor of the UK spent with Lee and Jules and Interesting people met on the long way home.
A shot of Wondercar at Portmeirion. I talk
about
driving it, so I thought I'd stick this photo here. (It's
thin,
but it'll do. This COULD be a photo of eggs.)
I had another wonderful breakfast of scrambled eggs on toast at Villa Marina. When I commented on how good the scrambled eggs and tea were here compared to what I was used to getting in the US, Pete gave me some tips that I thought I'd share, even though those of you who manage to repeat them will be forever put off the stuff we get. First, for scrambled eggs, you need to add quite a bit of milk and whisk the eggs. (Maybe you already knew this, but I didn't.) Second, to make proper tea, the water must be boiling when you put it in with the tea bag. Pete told me this is a proven fact because boiling water makes the tea infuse properly or something like that.
After breakfast I started sorting through my stuff in preparation for the plane trip tomorrow and packing the whole mess into my car. Stuff stowed, off I went. By now I was a seasoned UK driver and the trip home started out uneventfully, despite there being (what seemed to me to be) a good amount of traffic for a Sunday morning. Driving on the opposite side? No problem. Traffic circles? Bring 'em on. Once I reached the motorway, it was almost like driving at home to me.
Everything was going swimmingly until I hit the traffic jam. I was warned about the traffic jam; truly, I was. For about 40 miles there were all sorts of digital signs
explaining that 
The Woman in Front of Me in the Traffic Jam Gets Out
of Her Car to Get Something from the Boot (Trunk)
there were "significant delays" at J11 and J10. Now, while I had gotten the hang of driving in the UK, I had no flipping clue what J11 and J10 might be. I still don't really know, but I do know when we hit that part of the motorway because we all came to a stop. An absolute DEAD stop. On a three lane motorway!
We were there, in that traffic jam, for about 2 hours. I know this because when I started the journey, the GPS told me that I would arrive at my destination at 2:18pm and when we finally got moving at the posted speed limit, I was predicted to arrive at 4:20. I was a bit concerned about exceeding my rental car return time, but there was really nothing I could do.
This didn't bother me near as much as the 'mileage left' petrol indication on the car. It told me approximately how far I could go on a tank of fuel. I started with about 380 miles left in the tank when we first slowed and had dipped down to 318 when we got moving again. The distance traveled in two hours? 3 miles!
During the traffic jam, I started out riding the brake when we slowed, but after watching that fuel gauge for a bit, I decided to do as other people were and stuck the car into park whenever we were still for more than a minute. Some people actually got out of their cars and started rearranging luggage during these stops. Jules told me she had seen people break out a picnic basket during a really good traffic jam.
No one
The Crowne Plaza at Manchester Airport. (Yeah, truly lame. Hey,
I
gotta' use
the photos I have here, and that ain't much. )
was at the rental car office, but there was a sign on the door advising me to park the car and take the keys to the hotel office. I ambled into the office and gave them the rental car key which the clerk absentmindedly threw in a little jar behind him on a mantle. So much for being worried about arriving late!
I had prepaid for a room at the Crown Plaza in the airport complex for my last evening because it was cheaper. Even so, it was actually one of the most expensive places I stayed (excluding Portmeirion, of course.) This inevitably meant everything was extra. The internet was twice as much as the Holiday Inn in Liverpool and about as much as it would cost me for a month of internet from AT&T at home. Since I needed it to contact Lee and Jules that way, I was stuck paying for it. (Which, of course, is the point.) I almost thought they didn't have an in-room coffee maker, but I discovered it hidden in a drawer on Sunday morning. (I think they hid it hoping you wouldn't find it and use the free tea and coffee.)
I contacted Lee and Jules (separately) via Facebook, hoping to get in touch with one or the other, so they naturally both started answering at the same time – Lee being upstairs and Jules being down at their house. Their answers were slightly contradictory, so I advised Lee to go downstairs and talk things over with Jules and get back to me. With that, Jules came and picked me up and we went out and had a splendid dinner. I had wanted to go to a pub on my last night because I love the hand-pulled beer in this country. It's much smoother and creamier than our beer.
Roly-Poly Pudding and Ale. The Dinner of a
Champion. (A champion what, I can't say.)
For dessert, I decided to have roly-poly pudding, not because it was something I really wanted to eat, but because Cheeky Actress (Lisa) had said I should on Facebook. I had jokingly told her I couldn't because of what PG Wodehouse had said about them in the story Jeeves and the Dog McIntosh. To wit:
"Employ the rest of your morning, then, in buzzing to and fro and collecting provender. The old King Wenceslas touch, Jeeves. You remember? Bring me fish and bring me fowl-"
"Bring me flesh and bring me wine, sir."
"Just as you say. You know best. Oh, and roly-poly pudding, Jeeves."
"Sir?"
"Roly-poly pudding with lots of jam in it. Miss Wickham specifically mentions this. Mysterious, what?"
"Extremely sir."
"And oysters, ice-cream, and plenty of chocolates with the goo-ey, slithery stuff in the middle. Makes you sick to think of it, eh?"
"Yes, sir."
Back at their place, Lee showed me his office, which was a slightly cramped room with a computer and lots of books. He produced a piece of shark skin and a box out of which he plans to make a shagreen case for surgical instruments. I became aware of these because they were discussed in one of the medical instrument books I read, but I didn't truly appreciate them until Lee sent me a link to an eBay auction for one several years ago. I told Lee if he made one to make two because, thanks to him, I wanted one.
 Lee, the Box and Shagreen |
 Lee's Office. Are you sensing a Hellboy theme runs in this family? |
And
Not the Manchester Guy I Met on the Plane
I Don't Have His Photo, So I Used This.
Unrecognizability Rating: 88% (Told Ya' So)
that was basically the end of my trip, except for some pedestrian details. I did meet a couple of interesting people on the way home. The couple sitting next to me were curious about driving in the UK because they were planning to return. I told them about how blasé I had become by the end of the trip and wondered out loud to them if I would remember my driving skills when I returned to England. The guy sitting in the middle seat in front of us turned around and explained in a thick Manchester accent that I probably wouldn't based on his experience.
It turned out that he was flying over
Your Virtual Nickel. Spend
It Wisely.
to meet his fiancé who lived in Kentucky. Now you may be wondering how a guy from Manchester met a girl from Kentucky. If you guessed that it had something to do with the internet, you win a virtual nickel. They met through some sort of on-line game, the name of which I didn't recognize and which was forgotten within 3 seconds of his telling it to me.
The female half of the couple who were sitting next to me asked him how long they had been seeing each other. 5 years. They got together two or three times a year as their schedules allowed and had been doing so for the entire time. Now, I don't care how long distance your last long distance relationship was, this probably puts it to shame. And to last 5 years!
Hunter from Washington Dulles Airport at 5 Guys
The other guy I met in the 5 Guys burger stand in the Washington Dulles Airport. I was sitting at a pair of tables eating very good French fries and he asked if he could sit with me. I had had such good luck with folks on this flight that I didn't mind. His name was Hunter and he was a Distribution Center Manager in Virginia for a candy company. He told me he really preferred to drive when he traveled, but once a year his company flew him out to their convention and he couldn't avoid it.
It turns out that Hunter had done something that I'd always wanted to do – he'd bought a piece of land and built his house about a mile off the road in the woods. One of his hobbies when he first moved there was raising timber wolves. He put them in a large pen (because the neighbors were a little leery of having timber wolves about for some reason) where he kept them until someone got on his property and opened their pen allowing them all to escape. The neighbors complained, so he gave up that hobby. He was a cheerful guy and we talked for almost an hour before I had to go.