Truck

My parents were at an auction today, and purchased a '92 Ford F150. This serves two purposes: that it can serve around the farm as a pickup does and that I can drive it to school and other places. This is pretty great.

I've never driven a truck before. (The vehicle I've practiced in is a '98 Camry.) It's similar to driving standard cars, but the lanes seem really narrow because the seat is up so high. The pedals have different sensitivities than the Camry, of course, but I got used to that easily enough. There's currently an issue with the steering wheel's straight-ahead position not corresponding to actually going straight, but that can probably be fixed by some wheel inflation.

I'll have my license soon, possibly within weeks, so this is great timing.

Thanks, Mom and Dad!

The Real End of Driver's Ed

Today, I did the last behind-the-wheel and observational driving lessons necessary to get a driver's license. I now will never have to see anybody involved in driver's ed again, which is actually kind of sad because I liked a lot of the people in my class.

Anyway, now all I have to do to get my license is turn 16 (in 6 months 3 days) and have 50 total hours of driving logged on my permit. These are both achievable goals.

I did a lot of other, far more interesting things today, but I probably shouldn't talk about them because HIPAA!

The End of Driver's Ed Class

Today was the last meeting of my driver's education class. We did very little; it was just a celebratory pizza-eating day. However, today does mark the end of an important (but short) passage in my life.

Driving is a great freedom; it will allow me to expand my teaching/coaching business by getting around to more clients. Of course, I can't actually get my license until a few months after I turn 16, so I do need an adult with a driver's license to be in the car with me while I drive.

I am well on my way to the necessary 50 hours. Driving home from the chess club is an excellent source of night driving. I'm guessing I have maybe 1 hour of night driving done and almost 5 hours total.

The First Drive

With my new learner's permit, I am permitted to drive around with adult supervision. I started doing that today, keeping a log of my hours as directed in the GDE book.

My father and I used the Toyota Highlander to drive around the farm to introduce the way of driving and practice techniques like turning around. We also went on the (generally empty) highway to get the feel of driving on major roads. This went on for an hour and helped me quite a bit in understanding what generally needs to happen to operate such a vehicle.

Me, with key and permit

In car

To celebrate this milestone, my family invited me to drive to the Pizza Hut in a town about 16 miles away. I did so, both ways. My hands were sweating the entire time, but the entire experience was very relaxing (for me at least, I can't say the same for my parents). I'm most comfortable driving at 40 MPH, but my speed tends to creep up gradually. One challenging thing, especially on highways, is that I can't always tell where I am in my lane and therefore am unsure if I need to adjust my position.

This is very exciting! I've already logged about two hours of driving, including some at night (on the way back). 50 hours should be easy to do in 9 months.

Level Up

Today is an important day for me! I took the last final, thereby ending the academic year, in which I received all A's, at least for the normal year. (We shall see how I did on the finals, but that doesn't have a huge weight, not as much as people make it out to be.) Also, I went to the DMV to apply for a learner's permit.

The only final I had to take today was the Spanish one. I thought it started at 9:00 and therefore arrived at 8:30 to be prepared. It actually started at 8:30, so I had 15 fewer minutes by the time I went up to sit in the exam room at 8:45. Fortunately, it was a fairly easy test and I had plenty of time to complete it. I also, as I wrote about yesterday, reset and turned in my iPad.

After a failed attempt to go to Coldstone Creamery with some friends (they were closed), I went instead to the DMV. After a wait, they had me take an eye exam, which I barely passed; apparently, my right eye is considerably weak. Then came the actually interesting part: taking the computerized traffic law test. After getting the practice question wrong, I went on to get a perfect score on the real test, skipping one strangely-worded question about buses. I can drive now, kind of!

I feel like this day is important; I've survived my first year of high school and have started the driver's licensing program.

Driver's Education

It has begun! Less than an hour ago, I left the driving school that will lead me to (hopefully) get my driver's license. The first half-hour was comprised of waiting in line to process some paperwork and choose some dates for driving tests. Once all that was done and the line behind me finished, we had 31 students in the class.

The other teacher (not the one I gave paperwork to) instructed us to read the first six chapters of the Rules of the Road book on our desks. Since I had already started reading it while waiting for the rest of the line to be processed, I finished the assigned reading quickly and started reading ahead. The last few minutes of the two-hour class were the most interesting: actually summarizing the reading. He said that the other classes will involve much less silent reading, which should be more interesting. We shall see.