Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

When I was living in Canada I often caught myself looking up the planes as they passed overhead. I would imagine where they were going or where they were coming from and dream about travelling to that place. When I was in Edmonton we lived very near an airport and so this tradition could occur several times a day depending on my schedule. The other night my husband and I were travelling home from Bicester (which deserves a blog all of it's own. Ladies the Best shopping area there is) I noticed in the dark night skies the familiar lights of a plane flying over us and speculated that it was likely heading into the Bristol airport which was the closest to where we were. As I watched it until it left my line of sight I realized that I had not thought about where it might of been nor had I got the somewhat wistful ache of wishing I had been there. More surprising still was the fact that I hadn't done that even once since we landed in this country. Now that could simply be because any airport is nearly an hour drive away from us and so planes just don't fly over me as much, but maybe this hopeless wanderer has met her match. Perhaps I have gone an adventure big enough that, at least for the time being, I don't need another one. What I truly hope is that I was learned to love the sky I'm under, which I think would show a great deal of maturity.

On the other hand, maybe the medium of travel is in fact the only thing that has really changed. True I no longer look to the skies but if I am going to be totally honest every time I see one of the many trains they have here racing across the country side I mentally run through all the places I know that they can take me. It is not uncommon in those moments for me to think to myself 'I should run into Bath tomorrow' or 'If I leave right after I get the kids off to school I could spend the day in London' and 'I think it takes less time on the train to get to Cardiff than to drive'. So maybe I haven't learned total maturity yet, but at least these adventures are far more cost effective, that's something right?

Actually, probably not, because we all know that the cheapest mode of travel would likely be by car. Sadly I still have yet to drive here. I know that at this point I have simply built it up in my head to a deranged phobia but I find it terrifying to get behind the wheel and drive on the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road. Even more than driving on the foolishly narrow roads with strangely high speed limits is parking on those same roads. What you need to understand is that this county holds more population than Canada and could fit into that great country something like forty times. That is a lot of cars to park in not very much space. So I have not really matured, I still dream of the places I have yet to explore, or want to explore again, and I will probably not do said exploring in the cheapest way possible, but I don't wonder where those planes are headed.