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This is the first thing I learned from my mother when we went driving today. (hopefully the lesson will be more then 5 minutes next time)
1. Make sure you can see over the dash board
(sadly I am serious)
2. Keep your Calm.
3. After you run over the curb once, don't do it again after putting the car in reverse, then into drive again.
*Sighs*
We will try this driving thing some other time I guess.....
Why are you wearing that stupid man suit?
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Especially not in the beginning. And be thankful it is not a stick shift coz those are a b***h initially, especially when trying to get the car rolling from standstill in an incline hehehe. (Though more fun overall I have to say.  )
Practice makes perfect you know... You'll get the hang of it, don't worry.
Hug:
-L
"But he that hath the steerage of my course,
direct my sail."
-William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act One, Scene IV
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On fire! |
Location: currently So Cal
Registered: May 2002
Messages: 1179
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Way back when I was learning to drive I very quickly learned that when the car is in reverse and you turn the wheel to make the back end of the car go to the left, the front end of the car swings to the right. I was backing my mother's car out of the garage when I noticed my brother coming up on my right. He was riding his bicycle. I turned the wheel so the rear of the car would veer left and miss him. the front of the car swung out to the right and clipped the frame of the garage door causing the whole door to fall on top of the car. UGH!
Be thankful you only hit a curb.
{{HUGS}}
Think good thoughts,
e
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Hehehe, ok, so I'm not particulary old hehe, but anyway... I had a good friend and classmate (who later chose to vanish out of my life, but that's a different story), who really liked to drive. He was good at it too despite not being very old. You get your license at age 18 in Sweden, so he'd maybe been driving for two years at most, but he had a lot of distance under his belt despite that. Well, his family had two cars; a red Volkswagen Jetta, and a white Volkswagen Passat stationwagon. The Jetta was the nippier of the two, being lighter and maybe with a bigger engine too I think, so he preferred that one.
He'd done some "road-grip tests" a few times as a joke mostly; I guess he'd been inspired by a famous "moose swerve" test a car TV show in Sweden has subjected hundreds of cars to over the decades. As one does not want a 600 kilo moose to come crashing in through the windshield while driving on a road, a swerve is neccessary to try and avoid said moose, so to simulate this the people in the show put cones on a road to mark down a sort of serpentine pattern: quick turn to the left to the opposite side of the road, ahead for a little bit, quick turn back to the right side of the road.
So my friend did this just for fun with the Jetta, at low speed on a city street. Worked just fine. Then one day we were on our way to see a movie - I think it was Robocop 2 - and there were four of us in the Passat. We were joking about as usual, and my friend asks if he should do a road grip test... "YEEEAAHH!", we all say, except, well, in Swedish of course.
None of us considered we were in a heavier car, with more people IN the car and driving faster than usual (we were on a long straight throughfare street, not one of the winding city streets), so we were going maybe 60km/h, which is faster than the allowed 50. Like I said, we didn't consider that, so my friend just did it.
The first turn to the completely deserted left side of the road went well. The car moved more than usual, but that was OK. The turn back also went well, but what none of us considered was the momentum the car still had going towards the right; it slammed quite violently into the stone sidewalk with both the front and rear wheels. I remember seeing bright yellow sparks from the wheel rim come flying up past the right passenger-side window where I was sitting!
Of course my friend immediately stopped the car. A man from the nearby taxi dispatch center (sounds very fancy, but it's just a small wooden house really) came running asking if we were okay, it was terribly embarrassing. I suggested my friend should tell his parents a cat ran over the road, but he'd decided to come clean and tell the truth. He stayed behind while the rest of us went on to go see the movie.
We joked as we walked to the cinema and laughed nervously in high voices. Guess we were a bit shocked...
"But he that hath the steerage of my course,
direct my sail."
-William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act One, Scene IV
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On fire! |
Location: currently So Cal
Registered: May 2002
Messages: 1179
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Though getting there can be quit the challenge. I somehow managed to get my drivers license and the following winter my cousin was visiting. We decided to go see One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It was January, maybe February, but winter nonetheless. It had snowed the day before, but warmed up that day and some of the snow had melted. but night had again fallen and the temperature dropped below freezing. this can create a road condition known as "black ice." It is a thin sheet of ice on the surface of the road that cannot be seen or sometimes appears to be just water. I had my first car by then, a 1969 Pontiac GTO Judge. One of the finest examples of the old American "muscle car." It was FAST. Just as I was about to pull out of the driveway a friend of mine passed by in his crappy little car that he thought was really hot. He screamed something out his window and honked his horn as he sped by. I looked at my cousin and said "We'll pass him before the stop sign." I hit the gas. The tire squealed. the engine roared. My cousin winced. He was a rather mild mannered, non-risk taker and just the take off scared him to death. As you make a left turn out of that driveway (which we did), there is a quick curve to the right on the road. There was also a patch of "black ice" which of course I didn't see. The rear tires lost their grip, the car began to fishtail. I took my foot off the gas (good move), but put it on the brake (bad move). Still I almost got the car under control when my foot slipped of the brake pedal and hit the gas again. With a sudden burst of speed we were flying through the neighbor's front yard and directly towards two very large oak trees. Somehow I managed to steer the car between them but the rear end of the car slid sideways a bit and caught on of the trees. The car spun around in a 180 degree spin and came to a stop. After realizing that we were both ok, I began laughing uncontrollably. My cousin was not nearly as amused. He got out of the car and walked back to the house, refusing even to ride with me the short distance home. Even in all the mud and snow the car wasn't stuck and was still driveable so I drove home. I don't recall my cousin ever getting in the car with me as the driver and him as a passenger again. It cost a small fortune for me to have the car fixed too. Needless to say we never made it to the movie that night and I didn't see that particular movie for several years.
Think good thoughts,
e
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