Jack gets in over the wire with plenty to spare for a change –

For most of my life, living in Scotland, a long car drive took an hour and if it took two hours that was a very long drive and would require sandwiches and a thermos of tea. Scotland is a small country!

Now that I’m living in the US I’ve had to re-calibrate. A short drive is two hours and a long one can be as much as eight or ten. The US is a big country!

We visited friends Dirk and Martha in South Carolina last weekend and that meant a four hour drive down and the same back, although we did take a break at ‘Frugal McDoogals’ on the way down to stock up on cheap alcoholic bevvies.

Wendy had taken our dog Bruce down to stay with her parents a few days earlier. They live outside Knoxville Tennessee, so that was a three hour trip for her. When it was time for him to come home yesterday I drew the short straw. So I left home at eight in the morning, arrived at eleven thirty, stayed for an hour then headed back. On the way home and just outside Knoxville a semi (artic for my Scots friends) had overturned into the side culvert and burned so a lane was closed for miles while it was dealt with. That added half an hour onto my time.

I was so tired on the last ten miles that I could hardly keep my eyes open and ran a red light coming into town!

I worked out later that in the seven and a half hours I had driven I could have flown to Scotland.