Yesterday was my last day in London, though I only spent about an hour of it awake. You see my flight left London at 7:55 in the morning. Now the night before was spent going to Arsenal v Sunderland and then hanging out with a group of friends afterward and drinking. Which was fun, what wasn’t fun was having to go home early simply because I couldn’t be out all hours of the night if I had to be at the airport before 7:55.

Another downside of leaving so early on Sunday was that I wasn’t sure if the Tube was running that early, at the suggestion of some of my more local friends they thought I should call a cab. When I got into my hotel that night I had them call a local cab company for a ride to Heathrow at 6 in the morning. I packed my stuff up that night and went to sleep for a few hours. I have to say I slept ok, but woke up at about 5:15 because of nervous energy. That and the fact that whenever I set an alarm my body almost always wakes me up before it goes off.

I thought about taking a shower but realized it’d be much too long and wouldn’t be that good anyway. Instead I washed my hair in the sink. I don’t know if anyone has ever done that before, but it’s an especially awkward thing when the size of your bathroom is smaller than the size of my closet back home. After managing to squeeze myself around in the bathroom I had my hair cleaned and was almost ready to go. After a quick re-pack of my toiletries and other things I headed upstairs to meet my cab.

Thankfully I was only up there for a minute or so before the cabbie walked into the hotel. He was a nicely dressed middle-eastern looking man who guided me to the awaiting Volvo. After putting my bags into the trunk and sitting in the back he drove off. I hadn’t ever really ridden any above-ground transportation on my two trips to London so this was a new thing to me. It was also a slightly frightening experience. Both because of the fact that I’m not used to driving on the other side of the road. But because after about 5 minutes of driving he asked me when I had to leave by, I told him 7:55 which he said “That’s pretty soon, you should’ve left earlier,” and I commented how I wasn’t sure if the Tube was running and didn’t really think things through. He calmly replied “Don’t you worry, I’ll get you there in time, I’m a Formula 1 driver.” I chuckled uneasily and sat back in my seat waiting to see what would happen.

What happened was that he proceeded to do about 130mph on the M4 [or maybe A4, I don’t know] towards Heathrow. I remember looking out the window after he had gotten on the freeway thinking, ‘My we seem to be going fast,’ at which point I looked at the speedometer and saw it climbing from 80 to 90 and it just kept on going. I don’t know what Volvo he had, but it didn’t seem to run out of power. When a BMW M3 in front of us, who was also doing a high-rate of speed, peeled off into another lane the driver egged him to get back in front of us. Thankfully he didn’t and we continued our rapid speed towards Heathrow.

I will say this, the guy got me there on time, and besides the massive amount of speed, wasn’t really out of control on the side-streets. But me being the idiot that I am, only had £40 on me, and I thought that’d be enough because the sheet of paper I saw at the hotel said it was £40 to Heathrow. That paper was full of lies. When we pulled in I asked how much it was, “£45,” to which I exclaimed “Oh fuck, I only had 40 quid on me. Hang on though, I know there’s an ATM around here.” Let me tell you what isn’t fun, having to literally sprint around cars and across a few lanes of traffic in order to find an ATM and get some more money to pay the cabbie who broke all sorts of laws to get you to the airport on time. But because I was at an ATM I only got out £10, because while I enjoyed his services, I didn’t want to blow the money giving him that big of a tip. Especially because to me £20 translates to about $40.

Alright this looks like it’s going to be another immense entry so I’ll try to break it up and update a bit later in the day.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 7th, 2005 at 11:54 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.