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Another Rite of Passage
Mar. 20th, 2011 11:31 pmI took ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
alyveritya driving today. Our original plan was to go to the local high school's parking lot (it being a Sunday), and she'd exercize her learner's permit by learning in a big flat carless space. But I managed to miss the turn, and instead turned into the parking lot of a local music school. As it turns out, their parking lot was more appropriate to our purposes, as the high school's tennis courts were quite popular today.
I hopped out of the car, and we swapped places. The first time (a few weeks ago), she was intimidated by easing out the clutch to engage the engine; the car lurched, the engine stalled, and she overdramatically reacted. This time, she was able to get the car moving, which thrilled her to a large degree. As we were headed for a snowbank, she hit the brake and stalled the engine, sort of forgetting the fact that she'd need to hit the clutch to keep the engine going.
She started the car again, turned the car, drove the length of the parking lot, turned again, stopped again, stalled out again. So we practiced stopping without stalling, until she got that down. She put the car in reverse, and backed out of a parking space, learning the fascinating difference in steering while in reverse.
She never got the car into second gear. The point wasn't to go fast (yet), it was to get some of the rudimentary skills down.
We kept this up for a couple of hours, and then I drove the car to our original destination. The high school parking lot had cars parked in it. I drove a circuit, with her describing everything I was doing. Then she drove around the lot in the same circuit, passing parked cars instead of empty space, and then she backed into a parking spot.
She feels much more confident about the whole concept, and she starts driving lessons with a professional tomorrow. (This is distinct from "Driver's Ed", which she's been taking for a while, which involves no actual driving.) She'll be in a car with automatic transmission then, so the things she found hardest to handle won't even be a factor.
alyveritya driving today. Our original plan was to go to the local high school's parking lot (it being a Sunday), and she'd exercize her learner's permit by learning in a big flat carless space. But I managed to miss the turn, and instead turned into the parking lot of a local music school. As it turns out, their parking lot was more appropriate to our purposes, as the high school's tennis courts were quite popular today.I hopped out of the car, and we swapped places. The first time (a few weeks ago), she was intimidated by easing out the clutch to engage the engine; the car lurched, the engine stalled, and she overdramatically reacted. This time, she was able to get the car moving, which thrilled her to a large degree. As we were headed for a snowbank, she hit the brake and stalled the engine, sort of forgetting the fact that she'd need to hit the clutch to keep the engine going.
She started the car again, turned the car, drove the length of the parking lot, turned again, stopped again, stalled out again. So we practiced stopping without stalling, until she got that down. She put the car in reverse, and backed out of a parking space, learning the fascinating difference in steering while in reverse.
She never got the car into second gear. The point wasn't to go fast (yet), it was to get some of the rudimentary skills down.
We kept this up for a couple of hours, and then I drove the car to our original destination. The high school parking lot had cars parked in it. I drove a circuit, with her describing everything I was doing. Then she drove around the lot in the same circuit, passing parked cars instead of empty space, and then she backed into a parking spot.
She feels much more confident about the whole concept, and she starts driving lessons with a professional tomorrow. (This is distinct from "Driver's Ed", which she's been taking for a while, which involves no actual driving.) She'll be in a car with automatic transmission then, so the things she found hardest to handle won't even be a factor.
