Trains, slow but cheap!

This was my first week at work, so also my first week commuting into Manhattan. For $19.50 I bought a peak rate return ticket on a train that was clean, unvandalised and where everyone got a seat. For comparison, when I've travelled into London Kings Cross from a similar distance out, the ticket cost £18 and the train was dirty and overcrowded with people paying to stand the whole journey.

However, the journey is clearly measured in US miles as even a direct train averages a sedate 44 mph.

Measurements

The United State's 230 years of self-enforced separation from the United Kingdom has led to a certain amount of divergence in the area of measurements.

Pints and gallons are the most obvious ones. A UK (or imperial) gallon is 4.544 litres, a US wet gallon is 3.784 litres. This is because back in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the gallon measure varied depending on what was being measured. A gallon of ale was a different size to a gallon of wine or to a gallon of grain. Eventually, people saw this was just silly and decided to use a single gallon measure for everything. This happened in the UK and in the US, but the US went with the wine gallon and the UK chose the ale gallon.

However there is a unit of measurement that has a more subtle difference. The mile. On the face of it the American and the British miles appear the same length, 1760 yards. Indeed if you were to walk or cycle a Yankee mile it would feel just the same as one from Blighty. However, once you start driving, US miles lengthen.

Say you wanted to drive 20 miles. In the UK, you would probably find that your journey was a combination of small twisty roads, fast, straight single-lane roads and dual carriageways. You would expect to be there about 20 minutes later, even allowing for doing the last couple of miles at 35mph because you're stuck behind a caravan.

In America, your 20 miles will take you 40 minutes. Three-quarters of the journey will be on divided highways, yet the speed limits are often 40 or 45, occasionally raising to the state maximum limit of 55mph. Granted, speeding seems normal with most traffic travelling between five and ten miles an hour above the limit. But there are also traffic lights every half-mile and stop signs which are more common than traffic lights.

Stop signs are like 'give way' signs were when you were 17 and your Mum was sitting next to you. You are meant to stop at the sign even if you can see there is no traffic coming from any direction. Often the stop sign is set back from the junction, so you need to stop, then move up to the junction and give way. In place of roundabouts (though they do exist, I have been around three) they tend to use either traffic lights or all-way stop signs where everyone has to stop then give way to whoever got there first.

It's strange that in a country that is usually so relaxed about personal safety, where no-one bats an eyelid if I let my four-year-old cling to the side of a shopping trolley in a supermarket - in Britain I would expect to receive a lecture about child abuse and the unnecessary strain I was inflicting upon the NHS - the roads are set up with the assumption that we're all children sitting on our Fathers' knees steering down the drive. Is it the litigative culture? Would the insurance companies throw up their hands and refuse to co-operate if the roads were designed for adults? I say start replacing all-way stops with mini-roundabouts and see what happens. Perhaps in ten years time everyone will be doing 90 on the free-ways.

Housed!

We are in our new house!

This morning three deer wandered through our back yard while we were eating breakfast. The rustic feel is enhanced by the lack of telephone, tv or internet. That's not really a consequence of our woodsy location, just our lack of a social security number.

(Posted later when internet arrived.)

Britain = England = London

I had one of *those* conversations yesterday...

American lady: Where are you from?
Me: England.
American lady: Really? Which part of London?

Arrived!

Well here we are. On Saturday we arrived at JFK with lots of suit-cases and a container following behind on a ship. We close our house purchase on Friday if all goes to plan.

Connecticut? Is that in Queens?

I'm currently back in the UK. The intention is to move to New York completely in January, so until then here's my first encounter with New York's twin wonders: the immigration hall at JFK and the yellow cab.

As I stood in the Disney style 300 yard snake of immigrants awaiting finger printing, photographing and cataloguing it occurred to me that there can be few greater contrasts than Virgin Upper Class service to US Immigration in one three minute walk. I wonder if Kylie has to queue up as well? I was assigned to the queue of the slowest immigration agent in the history of the United States' border controls. When I was placed fifth in it, there was 300 yards of snaking humanity behind me. By the time I had advanced to second in the queue, there was no one in the snake at all. I briefly considered discussing this with my fellow misfortunates - but decided silence was the best course, at least until I was in.

At one point during my stoical stand, I noticed a little toddler on reins in the snake behind me. Just as a gap appeared, and his family's time to shuffle forward five yards arrived, he suddenly turned and with a lunge, hugged onto one of the pillars that holds the seatbelt material queue separator. He wasn't upset, he just wanted to hug a pillar. His Mum had to prise him off.

I enjoyed watching him do that.

Once out of customs, I avoided two strangers who accosted me offering rides and made my way to the official yellow cab rank. I didn't want to get into anyone's car, I wanted a proper taxi. Something I could trust. I told the driver, Old Greenwich, Connecticut, and we were off with him muttering something unintelligible. After about five minutes He pulled over, got written instructions from some friend, he needed to borrow my pen - and my paper. Then he filled the tank. Now we were really off. There seemed to be a lot of honking on the New York streets, but I never heard any in the distance. It all seemed to come from cars directly around us.

After clearing the city, I thought we might make good progress, but my belief was slightly dented after fifty minutes when he pulled off the interstate onto an unmade road and flagging down a passing 4x4 asked the way to Connecticut.

Now if a Now York cabbie can't find East Putnam Avenue, Old Greenwich that is one thing. Not being able to find Connecticut is quite another! Anyway, back he came, we set off again and I bravely did nothing in the back.

It became apparent that the cabbie didn't entirely trust the 4x4 driving football mom. I first wondered about his intentions when he stared at a Mobil garage as we passed it on the Interstate. I wondered quite a bit harder when he pulled over, stuck his cab in reverse and zig-zagged backwards up the slip road, back to the garage, waving the oncoming traffic past as we swerved towards them.

Bravely, I clutched my bag and did nothing.

One hour thirty-five into the journey, we spotted a sign for Old Greenwich, followed a couple of minutes later by our stumbling right onto East Putnam Avenue. This caused a strange reaction in me. For the last hour or more I had been mentally abusing my mumbling kidnapper, noting the number for complaints, considering the appropriate torture, that sort of thing. But as soon as I caught sight of my hotel, I was consumed by a feeling of gratitude towards the incompetent fool. Suddenly I wanted to shake his hand and tip him generously. It was some kind of Stockholm Syndrome, only in a taxi.

Since then I've had it pointed out that jumping into a yellow cab and attempting to leave the city is equivalent to hiring a central park row-boat and trying to take it down Lexington Avenue.

With practice, can use simple tools

It was the first snow of winter yesterday. It was also the day I had to drive to Newark. It's not enough they put the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car and the cars on the wrong side of the road, I had dig the car out of the snow before I could drive it.

Being British, I started by brushing at the windows with my sleeve, but there was quite a lot of snow and it was going up my arm. I then remembered seeing a stick in the boot. That might work, I thought. When I retrieved it, I saw it had an ice scraper on one end and a long brush down the handle. Having decided that the brush must be for the upholstery, I set to work clearing snow with a three inch ice-scraper. After about five minutes of pushing the snow back and forth with a small square of plastic, I tried - in the spirit of scientific discovery - sweeping the snow away with the upholstery brush. Would you believe it, it worked really well! It's quite ironic that they put that upholstery brush on the stick and it turned out to be better at clearing snow than the ice scraper.

It occurs that this story is really quite boring. Sorry about that. Luckily, this blog has a current readership of one, being me, and by the time it has risen to its rightful place as the premier blog about America through British eyes, this post will be so far back in the archives that no one will read it. Serendipity at work right before my eyes.