Day 1.5 : A Journey of Exhaustion

Right now the alarm clock in my room is reading 23-hundred Greenwich Mean Time and while logically I know what time it is, physically I find myself feeling utterly clueless as to what time zone I’m actually in. Door to door its been a twenty plus hour day. While that sounds like a lot of travel, British Airways came through in spades. Their approach to film production is amazing. Without asking they bumped the entire crew up to a higher cabin in the plane and granted us access to their LAX lounge, where as it turns out there was an extremely enjoyable open bar One should not underestimate what half a bottle of Johnny Walker Black can do for interminably long travel days.

Once we arrived at Heathrow it seemed like all hell broke loose. Lugging thirteen travel cases that weight exactly 70 pounds around a massive airport is not exactly the most pleasurable experience one can have, but what was truly astounding was the total lack of common courtesy in the airport. People dart and dash about with little regard for where the folks around them are going. I’ve never been so keenly reminded of driving in New York City when walking from Point A to Point B. It didn’t take long to realize that to get where you want to go you have to be equally as blunt. The level of chaos makes one wonder why British luggage carts have hand brakes.

Yet perhaps the craziest part of the day – and to be fair the most enjoyable – was driving on the ‘wrong side’ of the road. The first several miles were fairly unnerving as I watched car after car zoom past what I consider the passenger side of the car. And even though the van is an automatic, I kept finding myself trying to shift with my right hand when parking or backing up, which of course doesn’t work very well since on this side of the pond that’s where the door is. However the most exciting thing about driving over here turned out to be seeing all the makes and models that don’t exist in the States. All kinds of cars caught my eye, from brands I’ve never heard of to drastically different looking models built by the traditional multinational car companies. It’s truly a unique thing to see and I’m excited to see what else is out there tomorrow when checking out Coventry.