"Keep her in the gutter"

Now that we were officially check in to our Ford Focus for the next 7 days, the daunting task of actually driving became quite real.

"Have you ever driven on this side of the road before?" the attendant asked with a sideways smile.

"Nope" I nonchalantly replied.

He offered his parting advice, "Well, just remember: Keep her in the gutter."



This phrase would be repeated constantly on our road-trip, sometimes as a joke and sometimes shouted as a literal reminder to get back on the correct side of the road.   “Keep her in the gutter” meant that with Nancy riding in the passenger seat (I was the only one covered to drive since we were using my credit card as car insurance), I needed to keep Nancy in the ‘gutter’ or towards the edge of the road, at all times.  According to Nancy, I may have used this as literal advice a couple of times (actually veering off the road and putting her in the gutter), but I don’t remember, I was busy checking out the luscious green hills of Ireland.  Regardless, the phrase would be the only words of advice we received before starting our week-long, 6 city Ireland road-trip.  As we already mentioned, I was not only driving in a different country, but also from the opposite side of the car, on the opposite side of the road.

In keeping with full disclosure, I have to be honest in saying that our first 10 minutes with the car, didn’t exactly start off great…  First, the attendant asked if he could turn the car around for us – what a kind gesture I thought at first, that, or I guess I didn’t look like the confident type of guy that knows how to turn around an Irish car in my first seconds of driving ‘in opposites’ since the car was facing the wrong way on a busy street.  Second, and probably more damaging, when we finally walked across the street to get in the car, out of habit, Nancy and I both walked to the “wrong” sides of the car.  “Ha, ha, that was … funny,” we nervously laughed and glanced back with relief to see that the attendant and robot weren’t watching us from inside the store window.  Not much to inspire Nancy with confidence in my Irish driving ability, which was non-existent at this point.  I think we were off to an unsettling start.

And how exactly am I supposed to do this??

There were quite a few signs in the car and even on the roads reminding drivers to stay on the left... real reassuring!