The Driving is over – "Hard Rains are gonna fall"

It is Friday 24 September. We are in Minneapolis and the driving is over, at least for the time being. (We might hire a car when we are the Washington area). We have driven 5,600 miles, courtesy of National Car hire, who charged us the lowest amount ($250) for the privilege of dropping the car off at different point from where we collected it. In some cases, this privilege would have cost us an additional $1,000. After four weeks of great weather, yesterday saw 6 inches of rain deposited over the State of Minnesota, most of it while we were driving.

A bit of Bob Dylan seemed appropriate – watch the video and listen. The roads in the U.S. are big and long. Yessir. Big and long. Even Blanding, that small Mormon town in Utah had six lanes (if you count the emergency lane). They seem to be 100 yards wide and take forever to cross on foot. This is pretty unnerving, if you are not at a “ped xing” (see if you can work out what this is?” and the cars are coming towards you, even at a distance and at 25 mph.

Out here in the West or, as we Hawkers say, the “Left Hand side of the U.S.”, there is not much traffic on the interstates (“Motorways”). They are not bumper to bumper with Tesco lorries and petrol tankers. In fact, at times, you can have the whole motorway to yourself, as you calmly cruise through at 65 mph. The drivers seem to adhere, more or less, to the Interstate speed limits. None of this shooting past you, before you even realised that they were there. The speed limits vary from State to State, as they should in a proper democracy (I don’t think, though, that the Americans have a State by State referendum on the topic, so there is room for improvement here).

Most motorists stick to the speed limit. When he overtakes, he does so quite gradually. He is probably on cruise control anyway, and for a while he disappears from the rear view mirror in the side mirror, before pulling in front. It seems to takes forever.

A final word on the use of the Garmin (our GPS). I have managed to avoid having a Garmin. (..and why can’t people use maps – see http://colinhawker.blogspot.com/2010/06/exercise-car.html Since using the Garmin since we have been here , I have undergone something of a conversion (as predicted), but have subsequently had a partial relapse. It is perversely satisfying when something goes wrong that you always predicted. It was not much fun being diverted 80 miles, because Garmin had the wrong coordinates for a particular point of interest, but very satisfying.

Garmin definitely has problems dealing with Innercity motorways, when travelling at speed. I don’t think that it can keep up “Take the exit that you passed 0.2 miles ago” (well...not exactly, but you get the idea). If it does not recognise the road, then you have no chance, and it definitely has problems navigating in Northern Arizona. As I said, very satisfying. How immature of me!!