Cool Kids Drive On The Left (Jan. 3 Cont'd)

As we cooled down from our run near Mount Cook, we took a few minutes to walk through a small (free!) educational display that the Mount Cook Alpine Center had set up as a tribute to Sir Edmund Hillary, a mountaineer and explorer from New Zealand.  He was the first climber to summit Mt. Everest (in 1953) - and he did much of his training on Mount Cook!  He was also part of the team that first reached the South Pole over land.  Quite the intrepid (and warm blooded!) fellow.

Smart and more aerobically fit than we were before, we set off for Te Anau, a town on the outskirts of the Fiordland National Park.  Our driving route took about 4.5 hours and looked like this:


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With about 2 hours remaining, I took the wheel for the first time.  I'd never been brave enough to try left-side-driving in Singapore, but the empty roads in this part of New Zealand seemed like the perfect place to try.  This worked out pretty well, actually, and I got in quite a bit of practice.  Subsequently, I've driven around Te Anau over the past few days.  A few thoughts from these experiences:

1. I have retooled all of my Driver's Ed sayings.  When I approach an intersection, I say out loud, "Look right, look left, look right again."  And I still have to stop myself from taking one more peek to the left.  I sit up very straight. I make my turns very square. I think: "Slow down into turns, accelerate out" (thanks, Mom & Dad!).  Even if it has nothing to do with LEFT side driving (but just driving in general), I'm thinking extra hard about it.

2. I may walk out to the car with every intention of driving (holding the keys, in fact), but still walk around and get in on the left.  And it's not until I'm sitting down, by myself, in the passenger's seat, that I realize my mistake.

3. I've been backing up by looking over my right shoulder (toward the window), without even thinking about it.  Kee-Min finally pointed this out to me.  Tonight, I tried to back out looking over my left shoulder (toward the center of the car).  I suddenly lost all my knowledge/instinct for which way to turn the wheel, and started trying to reason it out (on the fly).  I gave up and just looked over my right shoulder.  The brain is a crazy thing.  Why does that one small change throw off my driving intuition?

4. New Zealand likes painting the symbol for YIELD (an equilateral triangle with one corner pointing down) in the traffic lanes. This makes me panic, since a triangle painted in your lane, pointing at you, looks a bit like an arrow indicating traffic flow in the opposite direction.

5. Traffic circles are REALLY TRICKY in an opposite-side driving situation.  "Aggggh!  Which way are this cars entering? Exiting? WHERE DO I LOOK!?!?!"

6. Your turn signal is on the right now.  ON THE RIGHT!!!  Turning on your windshield wipers when prepping to make a turn just makes you look like a newbie.  Thankfully, the brake/gas orientation remain the same.  *whew*

But overall, the whole process has actually been much easier than I expected.  Thanks, New Zealand, for being so empty!  I must admit though...I'm still not ready to jump behind the wheel in Singapore.

Betsy, our trusty steed.  I have to admit, I love her (not as much as you, Dimitri!).