And I Ride, And I Ride…

I have an ongo­ing love & hate rela­tion­ship with cars. I like cars. They hate me.

It all started when I was 17. After I com­pleted the com­pul­sory 50 hours dri­ving ed, I reg­is­tered for the test.

The first time, I failed because I didn’t turn around a lit­tle painted dot at the mid­dle of an inter­sec­tion, although I did yield. It was sup­posed to be a round­about. I appar­ently though it was mod­ern art.

The sec­ond time, the instruc­tor declared:

– I knew exces­sive speed was dan­ger­ous. But I never thought going this slow could be even more hazardous”.

See, it’s not I’m a bad dri­ver. I’m just cautious.

I know the rules of the road very well – I passed the writ­ten test eas­ily. But I never seem to know where I’m going when I’m dri­ving. For some rea­son, when I’m in the pas­sen­ger sit, I’m a per­fect dri­ver : I can antic­i­pate, give advices, I see where I’m going and I enjoy the ride.

Totally dif­fer­ent story when I my hands are on the wheel. To me, merg­ing onto a free­way is what jump­ing in a cir­cle of fire is to a cir­cle and fire pho­bic per­son. I slow down, know­ing that I’m not sup­posed to, one leg on the break and my hands tightly clutched on the wheel, I glance at my pas­sen­ger and ask the dreaded question :

– Can I go ? Can I go ? Can I go ?

At this point, I have to jus­tify part of my driving-disability by stat­ing that I have a minor eye con­di­tion called blind­ness. The guilty one is my left eye. It doesn’t help when you’re try­ing to merge on a free­way in Canada where peo­ple usu­ally drive on the right side of the road.

But if in the land of the blind the one-eyed is king, the blind in the left eye is a bet­ter dri­ver in coun­tries where you drive on the left side. I loved New Zealand and Australia.

First thing we’ve done in Auck­land was to buy a second-hand car from a back­packer for 500$. It had a crack on the wind­shield and brakes smelled of burnt tires when we drove for too long, but I loved it. I didn’t take long for the Man to get used to dri­ving on the left side so I was rather keen to try. Just to check if my curse could be reversed in the south­ern hemisphere.

But I didn’t know how to drive an auto­matic car. My first attempt was almost dis­as­trous. I started the car, one hand on the stick and… and the car moved by itself. In front of us was a wall. Yes, I did find the breaks before crash­ing into it. I’m not that stupid.

Within min­utes, I was dri­ving on the road out­side the city. I had dis­cov­ered cruise con­trol and couldn’t believe I both­ered with man­ual cars before. For the first time of my life, I didn’t think of shift­ing gears or whether I was going to be able to get the damn car started after stop­ping at a red light !

– So, how am I doing ?
– Mmm… pretty good, but you’re dri­ving on the wrong side of the road.

Shit. Well, I guess the car curse is still on, then.

Back in Canada, I can only be a sea­sonal dri­ver. What, I’m not gonna drive in the win­ter, are you nuts ?

I enjoy the straight wide roads as much as I enjoy cruise con­trol, but I’m still not com­fort­able enough to drive. I’m not even going into my park­ing skills. Oh well, I’ll never expe­ri­ence road rage, I guess…

Now if you’re nice, next time, I’ll talk to you about my expe­ri­ence with buses…

Related arti­cles:

1. Snow Fall !
2. A Driver’s License Story
3. Pic­ture of the Week: Fender Bender
4. The Grand Pacific Drive (I)
5. Ten Things I Can’t Do (and really, does that matter ?)