Driving across Ireland

I’ve been on tons of double-digit-hour road trips across the United States, either as a driver (d) or a rider (r). In fact, these are all the ones I can remember:

• Seattle → San Francisco (d)

• San Francisco → New Mexico → Rochester (d)

• Rochester → Portland, OR → San Francisco (d)

• San Francisco → Rochester (d)

• Seattle, WA → San Francisco (d)

• Rochester → San Francisco, CA (d)

• Madison ↔ New Orleans, LA (r)

• San Diego, CA → Rochester (d)

• Rochester ↔ Keystone, CO (d)

• Rochester ↔ Red Lodge, MT (d)

• Madison, WI ↔ Houston, TX (d)

• Madison, WI ↔ Beaver Creek, CO (d)

• Rochester ↔ New York City (d)

• Rochester ↔ Long Island, New York (r)

• Rochester ↔ Delaware (r)

• Rochester ↔ New Jersey (r)

• Rochester ↔ Red Lodge, MT x 6 (r)

• Rochester ↔ Castle Rock, CO x 3 (r)

• Rochester, MN ↔ Florida (r)

Not to mention dozens more 3-6 hours trips, and potentially hundreds of one-hour drives, mostly between Rochester and Minneapolis (for lacrosse games and the like).

This is not to say that I am a particularly skilled driver, because I’m not, but I do have quite a bit of volume under my belt.

And though I have this expanse of driving experience, there are two things I had never done: drive across an entire country, from edge to edge, and drive on the left side of the road.

That is, until yesterday, when I drove from the east coast of Ireland to the west coast (and back) in a single day. It was the first time I had ever driven on the other side of the road, on the other side of the car. Never have I felt the internal wirings of my brain more neatly exposed than when driving on the left, fighting my own muscle memory. Walking to the left door to start driving (only happened once, to be fair to myself), misjudging how far I was from the centerline on the right, making poor righthand turns into the far lane, and constantly (never once getting it right the first time) reaching with my right hand to put the car in drive.

Each time I needed to change gear, my right hand would float up and to the right, into thin air, pantomiming as I reached for shifter with contact never to be made. This would happen despite the obvious fact that I was sitting on the right side of the car, with no room for a shifter further to the right.

When I finally got to moving the real shifter, it felt like I was fighting with the very fiber of my being. Like my left hand was merely one of those mechanical claws: ostensibly a superficial extension of myself, but not fully integrated with my central nervous system.

Ultimately, I made it across Ireland, to the Cliffs of Moher and back, in a single day. It was an incredible experience—an embodied reminder of how automatically I move through life—and maybe a prompt to try turning the other way from time to time.