Ghost Rider in the Traffic Jam

A busy few weeks: Moved into a rental house, started a job, got a new car, worked at a trade show in London, and caught a cold.

We bought a car just before I started working, so for my first week's commute to work, I had to drive a rental, specifically a Kia Picanto. With a robust 1.1-litre engine, she really set the motorway on fire with her 60 mph of pure putt-putt.

Not that I could go the 70 mph speed limit, what with the traffic. I should say here that the commute isn't nearly as bad as I feared, but my first night coming home, there was an accident that closed the motorway just after my exit. It took me an hour and 45 minutes to get home; it usually takes somewhere around an hour -- maybe 10 minutes either side. One guy at work who lives not far from me said that one time he left work at 5:00 and got home at 10:30. I'm thinking I need to put together an M25 survival kit: pull-tab cans of beans, cereal bars, a blanket, water, an emergency pee container. Other ideas are welcome.

My new car is a Toyta Yaris diesel automatic. Now that I have an automatic, I'm very happy that all I have to think about is where I am on the road. Driving on the left is the easy part. The hard part? The roads are narrower, there's no such thing as a straight line, and there's a roundabout, like, every 100 feet. (No, not really, but on any given trip you can pretty much count on hearing "drive .8 miles then enter roundabout" coming out of the GPS speaker several times.)

After much consideration, I've named the new car 'Ghost Rider'. While not a motorcycle, I still hold out hope that the Yaris will one day have the ability to "travel between interdimensional realms and along any surface".

Ghost Rider and The Tangerine Dream.