My daughter and I went to Reading today, which reminds me a lot of Ireland. Even with a map you still drive around in circles, dead lost.
People in the States can't understand what it's like driving here. Driving on the other side of the road is the least of it; you soon adjust to that. It's that there are so darn many roads, with roundabouts every few feet forcing you to decide which spoke to get off on. "Three o'clock or nine?" I shout and my daughter looks confused. "It's only eleven thirty," she tells me, at which point I'm already on the way to Basingstoke.
Of course when you need a roundabout in order to make a U-turn, that's when the road turns into a dual carriageway and you whiz by your destination, the largest—and most elusive—mall this side of London, The Oracle. (Oracle, my ass! If that place could read my mind it would move to the suburbs of Basingstoke which is where any self-respecting mall should be located. It's about convenience, people! Get a freaking clue!)
At one point I turned into the bike lane, which totally embarrassed my daughter, until I told her it was perfectly acceptable to drive in the bike lane here. I was lying, but what does she know?
I refuse to resort to GPS. I tried spellcheck, and now I can't spell for crap. I don't want to lose my sense of direction the same way. Besides, I don't even think GPS could figure out Reading.
We did accomplish our goal, though, which was to find Tom Wolfe's Electric Acid Kool-Aid Jungle Juice Test, or something like that. She needs to read it for her American History class, which makes me wonder just which part of American History they'll be learning this year.
I'd also wanted to go to the Museum of Rural English Life, which is inexplicably located in downtown Reading, but the only road that went there was going in the opposite direction, and I couldn't convince my daughter driving the wrong way on a one-way was perfectly acceptable too.
Maybe after she reads Tom Wolfe she'll be ready for more adventures in Reading, but first I'm getting a psychedelic bus. Hey, who needs GPS when you've got LSD?
