On the road from Heathrow to Southampton

Well, today was a day of delays.  We had some significant confusion at the AVIS pickup location at Heathrow Airport where they did not have my reservation in as preferred and we had to wait for a change of car to an automatic transmission in case Leslie has to ever drive it. It's a black Audi wagon and is very nice. It took us a while to figure out the GPS, and other features, but now it is pretty easy.  It should also be noted that a group of three highly intelligent people trying to start this car was proving to be extremely pathetic.

It turns out that the automatic came in handy anyway since we were in a MASSIVE 3-4 hour traffic jam on the M3 - we hear that they shut down the highway between Junction 5 and 6:

As a result, we did not see Stonehenge today, but will see it another day. Since we got here so late, we decided to stay another day in Southampton and give up our day in Torquay.  We'll have 2 days in Southampton - the first night is here in the efficiency hotel (Leslie has the top bunk):

The view from the hotel window could be almost anywhere in the USA:

More photos tomorrow.


For the time being, Isaac will be writing about his day thus far.  Possibly the height of my day was discovering that, yes, air conditioners do exist and properly function in the UK, and no, the Wal*Mart equivalent is not 24 hours for us people with nothing better to do than shopping cart racing.

Apart from that, my ADD was exercised heavily in the aforementioned traffic disquintiation (copyright Robert Muir, 1961).  Also, caffeine doesn't work on me anymore.  What a shame.  I must have downed two or three cokes in total today, and I fell asleep only minutes after the last one.

We had dinner tonight at TGI Friday's just next to the Micky Dee's, not visible in the above photo.  It was loud.  And good.  And they played good music.  Very. Very. Loudly.

After the evening was over, and we returned to our hotel, I found us a TV program that made hilarious satire of the news, and it's very unfortunate that I don't remember what it's called.

Until tomorrow, have fun, don't drink and drive, remember to check your underwear, and don't get caught

-Isaac