Going Places

My Fitbit was about to pee its pants. "8200 steps already??!! It isn't even 8:00 AM! Are you for real??!!" The Fitbit screen had erupted into a bunch of colors and flashing, little stick figures jumping up and down, and badges. It was practically buzzing off my wrist.

You bet your ass, Fitbit. Edinburgh is what you call a walkable city. Everything from reading to eating to working out to having fun requires walking ... and lots of it. Well, maybe not lots. But enough.

When Amy and I discussed places to live for six months, ditching the car was a given. I know Edinburgh is not a vacation, but since we first started dating in 2011, vacations for Amy and I meant "no driving". Some of the best vacations we ever had, like in Paris and Belize, involved just strolling mile after mile hand-in-hand,

Walking is intentional. In a car, sometimes you look up from the steering wheel and think "Why am I even in here?" When you walk, just the act of starting is comittment.

Getting to your destination alive ... well that's a different story.

Walking in Left-Side Driving Land

So the Scottish, like the English, drive on the left. But that shouldn't matter to those of us who aren't driving, right?

Not so fast.

Pretend you're new to Scotland. You're on the curb, ready to cross the street. You give a quick glance to the right out of habit. No traffic. You step in the street ... and almost get clipped from a car coming from the left. Your head is so accustomed to that right sideways glance, you did it without thinking.

But that right-hand glance gave you no useful information.

You back up to curb and catch your breath. This time you take a good hard left-wards look. No traffic at all. Great.

You step out into the street and get halfway and pause, standing on the white center line ... and out of habit you make a another quick left sideways glance. Again you almost get clipped by a car from the right.

Because that left sideways glance gave you no useful information.

Once you realize just how much these gestures are embedded in you, you think "I will just really really pay attention when I get to a crosswalk."

This works about 4 or 5 crossings, and then you get used to it. It becomes second nature.

The sixth time, you resort to your old habits of looking right then left ... and almost get clipped again.

You remember that 1st grade film on crossing the street? You feel like you need a refresher. Maybe it's on YouTube now.

Finally you just give up and cross at intersections with a pedestrian crossing light. If all the cars have stopped, then there's no problem. And that's mostly true.

You are not the only one. The world has 158 or so countries, but only 24 of them have left-side driving. Most of these were former British colonies, although one of left-side driving countries, Japan, was not. Anyway, in a city of tourists, as Edinburgh is, the odds are 6 to 1 they will be from a right-side driving country, so those markings are to keep you from losing too many of them.

Hence the pavement markings on Princes Street. The "Look Both Ways" used to be on a sign about 10 feet up, but no one read the sign ... they were too busy looking down at the road after all.

Walking is fine, but sometimes you need to kick it up a notch.

The Bus

1971 Sunday morning TV.

What a pile of crap.

Sunday was a vertiable junkyard of cheap kids programming. The BBC and 20th Century Fox cashed in with their co-production Here Come the Double Deckers . Neither studio had the money or guts to make something (how shall I say this?) full-assed. They had budgetary approval for 26 episodes, but ran out of juice and stopped at 17. Perhaps they should have stopped at one.

Still, there were only 52 weeks a year, so they just kept re-running those 17 episodes them over and over again.

I don't remember a damn thing about Here Come the Double Deckers. Not the characters. Not the plots.

But after 55 years I can sing the theme song in my sleep. Who wrote this wretched tune? I don't know. I don't want to know. I only know there is a circle of Hell reserved for them.

No wait. I do remember one more thing about Here Come the Double Deckers.

The bus of course! The "double-decker London bus."

I was obsessed with the bus. They Double Deckers would get on the bus and climb up to the top and wreak all sorts of mayhem and destruction ... all outside of the watchful eye of the adults stuck on the bottom deck. It was like the cocktail lounge on an old 747.

So imagine my excitement when Amy and I board the Lothian bus to the Edinburgh Zoo. OMG. It's a double-decker.

"We are definitely going to the ride on the top deck," Amy says.

I have never been more in love with Amy than I am at this moment.

Is life on the top deck of a double-decker everything it's meant to be? Hell yeah! You literally see no bus in front of you but a measly pane of glass. You feel like a hood ornament. People get on the bus underneath you. It is beyond cool.

I'm going to go one better. Edinburgh buses beat the snot out of any mode of transportation ever invented. They are impeccably clean. The seats are like thrones. They arrive every five minutes in City Centre, and fan out to every conceivable neighborhood of Edinburgh. They are incredibly easy to board - just tap your Google or Apple Pay watch on the front kiosk and you're on. Each bus has LCD screens up front that tell you the next three stops (also announced over the intercom in impeccable Scottish - where Crescent is pronounced Crezzent like it oughta be.).

About the only problem is not every bus actually stops at every bus stop they pass. Especially in City Centre, they leap frog stops, and so you need to be at the right stop, even if another one is just 200 feet away.

Oh and I can't get the bus app because my phone is a US phone and Google refuses to let me have any Scottish apps. How am I going to find the nearest Sausage Roll? You mean I have to look around? Unacceptable.

We get to the Edinburgh Zoo in plenty of time. Amy makes friends with an owl.

It is a grand day indeed!