Driving in Melbourne

As most of you can imagine - it is a pretty crazy experience driving (or in my case riding) in Australia. In addition to everything being reversed; Melbourne has more "round-abouts" than any city I've ever seen. People also drive like maniacs and the far left lane is considered a reasonable place to park in certain areas of the city. If you ask me - it is an accident waiting to happen. To give AU a little credit, you can not talk on the phone while driving (I am assuming that this is because you need your full attention on the road in case anyone decides to randomly park on the main road). There are also completely different mix of cars here. You see a lot of brands we are familiar with; but they are often different models. There are also numerous brands that I've never seen before. John Paul's company car is a Holden - which is a part of GM - and comparable to a really nice Impala or Accord. The funniest thing that I've seen are these hybrid car/trucks that Australian's call Ute's. They are absolutley terrible but are everywhere here. The front of them looks like an old school Chevy Cavalier, but it has a truck bed in the back. Apparently a lot of tradesmen use them to haul equipment to jobsites. For the record, if IRWIN tried to give me a UTE when I was in the field, I would have insisted on keeping the Short Bus (Chevy HHR) I had when I worked for Levolor. See picture attached!

Now in regards to actually driving here....I am really impressed with how well John Paul has done adapting to the change. I REALLY don't have room to criticize seeing that I have not driven myself; but it is just too funny not to comment on.

1. Every now and again John Paul will turn on the windshield wipers instead of the turning signal.

2. Although he would disagree, I am convinced that he favors the left side of the road. That means that you have me in the passenger seat cringing every time we pass one of those randomly parked cars.

3. John Paul definitely went through the McDonalds drive through the wrong way. As we were pulling in; JP was like, "Why is that guy looking at me like I am an alien?" Needless to say, we didn't have the guts to drive back through the correct way, so we went inside instead.