I couldn’t believe what I saw in the distance.

It was actually a gang - a pack - maybe ten or twelve of them. The worst possible type of all life to have to encounter.

Teenagers.

And from the sounds emanating and the look of their restless gate, teenagers - as they always are - on the hunt for trouble.

Man, my first night in Horley, a northern suburb of London after a day spent in the grand old city, and I’m thinking to myself, shit, a gang coming right at me.

Right up to this point the day had been incredible, even including the dreaded overnight flight from the States.

Let me digress. We’d been stranded on the tarmac at O’Hare for forty-five minutes, because (someone napping in) the Control Tower was unable to integrate our international flight into the ever-growing exiting plane line. Or so they said. Forty-five minutes, no big deal in Chicago. That probably bests the average anyway, but this time our pilot made the decision that the drinks were on the house. God bless him. A couple Dramamines and a few free Kaluaha and Creams later (by that I mean Kaluaha and milk from a little cardboard box) and I was out for the count.

Passed out. Completely out.

The flight, pleasant enough I suppose, went without issue through the night and as the landing gear was actuated and the wheels bumped down at London’s Heathrow airport, I was rudely awakened.

Now that defines a great flight.

I’ve got to try that again for an overnight flight: 2 Dramamines + 2 (or 3) Kaluaha & Creams = a sleep-filled (no, an unconscious) flight.

I’ll need to patent that.

As I blew through customs and went to pick up my rental car I received some rather simple directions for locating my Bed and Breakfast in a little town called Horley, a suburb north of London. The four cylinders of my Opel Kadett fire and I immediately roar off as I always do.

Unfortunately however, in the wrong direction. It was an omen that the left-lane stuff would turn out to be just too much. Following close behind cars through those ridiculous round a bouts posed no real problems once I learned (and remembered) that the first guy in the circle gets the right-of-way. So that’s the key, make sure you’re the first one in the circle.

However, heading down a straightaway with no leading traffic to gage from I found I would instantly default to the natural right lane.

In other words, oh, shit.

I found immediately I was the engine-powered vehicular version of Typhoid Mary - on wheels.

I was shocked that the ordeal that defined my getting from Heathrow to Horley, a mere five miles away didn’t make the nightly news. I’d been afraid even to look in the rear view mirror and see the havoc I’d reeked. I imagined footage of that drive would have historical value by providing 1) world class wrong-way movie theater chase scenes, or 2) at the very least, scare tactics for defensive driving lessons.

Finally arriving, alive and well albeit shaken at my bed and breakfast I checked in and met the owners and as they listened to my story, they volunteered immediately to drive my car back to Heathrow airport and back home together safely. Very, very understanding hosts.

So I dodged the bullet and learned the lesson, no more rentals for me. The train will have to suffice.

We accomplish the deed and my hosts walk me through the small town of Horley and to my first English pub. I tell them I’ve been a ‘beer snob’ all my life that being defined as the taste of the worst English beer is still superior to the best tasting American beer.

Sorry, but it’s true.

The couple introduces me to a tepid glass of English Lager. Flavorful, yes, full of flavor. Good, not quite. It must take a lot of time to get used to warm beer, and I find I’m all out of time. This stuff tastes like piss.

Mistakenly, I ask for my next beer cold.

Around me muffled chuckles accompanied by wary glances and that subtle grotesque sight of the dreaded shaking of heads. I can read the thoughts of those ancient scrubby, longshoremen-looking dudes – bloody Americans. Another warm beer arrives, quite different, this one is the dark, classic stuff. Darkened piss. My beer snob days are over. That cold, light American stuff ain’t that bad after all.

The rest of the glorious morning is spent with my newfound friends cruising the simple sights of a little cold, unassuming town in northern London looking for chocolate or something to wash the taste of piss from my mouth.

Afterwards I leave them for a little exploration on my own. A train ride to old London herself.

What a trip: spiked hair dudes with metal hanging from every orifice imaginable sitting right next to three-piece suits out to impress the world. Young, very young girls with blue hair chatting endlessly, not a care in the world. What with blue hair, obviously not a care. The train is extremely crowded and with every stop, we reload with as great a mass of people entering the train as exiting. This is better than the movies.

Along the journey plastered on the walls of every tunnel there’s a six-foot high poster of a really butt-ugly butch-haired face of a dude. Just this six-foot face, nothing more. No ad, no writing, no hints, just this face from Hell. Nearing the city where the train goes underground for every stop, the same poster, and the same face. What is this thing, who is this guy? I haven’t got a clue.

Exiting after what was less than an hour I arrive into another world.

I follow the crowd through the station which is actually quite easy as I’m pushed (or rather sucked) along for half a mile directly towards the main exit. Outside, I see right in front of me the most phenomenal, massive intersection of a half dozen streets rushing towards the front of Victoria Station. So this is London, and it is defined in these first few seconds. I fall in with one of the most hurried, concentrated, compacted masses of humanity I’ve ever experienced.

London epitomizes Europe. Cosmopolitan in every sense of the word. Every size, shape, every color imaginable. A wonderful sight, wonderful to be an electron orbiting its nucleus. There must be a hundred shops and a thousand people within a stones throw and with absolutely nothing in common.

First in my path is Hyde Park. A partly sunny day (what a blessing) it’s barely afternoon so I grab a beach chair, drag it over to an unoccupied spot in the park and pull out Travanian’s ‘Shibumi’, the classic of all classics spy versus spy novel.

Within ten minutes of my losing myself in the book a shadow slowly passes overhead. An armed park-guard appears from nowhere and rudely demands payment for the rental of the chair with that obnoxious English accent. The book had been so absorbing that while reading it I’d imagined myself the hero - you know the type – the guy that can kill you with a matchstick, and it’d gotten me all wound up and ready to strike. And besides, just the guy’s accent was irritating enough for me to thrash him.

For a split second I imagine slashing his throat with my American Express card and making a run for it. Instead (fearing SAS reinforcements rappelling to the ground from helicopters with guns blazing, and a fight to the death) awash with meekness I claim ignorance of the park-chair rule, and I pay the fee - half the price of a Pepsi Light.

Great book.

Back on the street again I come upon Trafalgar square. Another major-league intersection teeming with life with half a dozen streets jutting outwards, and not twenty meters away from me in a music store there is plastered a poster of the giant ugly face that followed me all the way to London. Under the great ugly head this time appear the words: ‘The The’. What in the Hell is this? I go inside and find the face belongs to the singer/songwriter of a group by the name ‘The The’. I buy the cassette and give Axel Rose a break to try and regain his voice. Good choice The The. Deep, marvelous lyrics, sophisticated music. I will forever associate ‘The The’ with walking aimlessly around old London. Unfortunately for Axel, he never quite got his voice back.

Straight ahead on one of the winding, busy roads lies Soho. Walking through the mess of streets that make up this part of London I enter a section that can only be described as XXX-rated. Funny though, it’s not revolting or disgusting or intimidating but its repulsiveness is actually interesting. And in a dark way, drawing. In no time at all an enormously tall, enormously black rough-looking hooker approaches me.

"Hey, luv, can I give you something?" she says with a voice deeper than mine.

"Nah, I’m just walking through," I say, curious what this species actually is.

"What ever you like, lover. Hey, you a yank?" She asks. She matches my gate and walks besides me.

"Yeah," now my curiosity has peaked and I want to know just how much an over the hill black she-man hooker in England goes for, "just for the record, what do you charge?"

"Sixty pounds ($100) will get you everything you ever wanted."

Speechless, I walk on, shocked. A hundred bucks for a few minutes with a tired old whore. What’s even scarier yet is if what they taught me back in college is true, there must be a market for this service and that somehow this market must be demanding that price. Holy shit.

He-she disappears and I walk on down the street. Peep shows, strip shows, whatever your imagination can conger up is lurking right inside a hundred shop doors.

God, a hundred bucks.

The Tower, the Bridge, the Palace, the big Clock. Ten miles on foot and its only late afternoon, still my first day in England. Exhausted and ravished I settle back for the prospect of some more really cool people-watching on my train ride again to Horley.

Horley station looms ahead and I’m alone as I disembark the train and walk down the empty, ancient gas-lit streets.

Beyond exhaustion now, a plan comes to mind.

I drag my ass to the one pizzeria in town and enter in. Waiting to order I plop down quietly by myself. Within seconds, my American accent attracts everyone over, eventually all the waitresses and the cook in back comes forward to join my table. They take turns sitting down and we all share several beers and exaggerated stories about both the States and London and what great things you absolutely must see and do.

This is the very essence of what travel has to offer. Idle, inconsequential chat always proves to be the most enlightening, the most intriguing and the most entertaining. The raw spontaneity always amazes me, how sometimes unrelated groups like this can come together and hit it off so well.

As I was no longer in a hurry to order and they were in no hurry to make another pizza, I was determined to develop a taste for English beer all in that one sitting. A couple of hours go by, my pizza appears and we say goodnight.

So there you have it. Once outside, I couldn’t believe my eyes. A few hundred meters from the little restaurant with my little cardboard box of pizza in hand, the pack draws closer now and moves in. For sure there’s a dozen of them. I can see three or four of the gang look to be unruly women, all of them definitely loud teenagers, hungry, for their own purposes.

Less than fifty meters away now, (meters here, not yards) they walk side by side, straddling each other, taking up and covering the entire street. Still yet, I can’t tell their agenda but expect the worst. Closer, and I’m looking for the weak spot in this horizontal human chain, prepared now to even sacrifice my pizza for safe conduct through.

Too late now, I’m committed, the line starts to collapse, the space between each of the gang goes from five feet to about two.

Oh shit.

Twenty feet and I focus in on the weakest link. I make my choice between a tall, lanky girl with a shaved head (on one side only) and an even taller, skinnier guy dressed up in torn rags. That’ll be my best shot.

Muscles begin to clench and tighten; breathing, coming in mad spurts now is affected by the rush of adrenaline of what was undoubtedly to come.

"G’day, mate", one of them says as they pass by, and they’re gone. That’s it. Passing around me, they barely take notice, maybe just a fleeting look from the waft of my pizza as I glance down at the sidewalk and walk on.