1-year driving anniversary!
So sometime around the middle of this month marks the 1-year point of when I got my N drivers license. So within the year, here are some highlights:
- driving myself for the first time...I came from The Zone and was heading somewhere. I was behind my friend. The jerk decides to CALL ME on my first time driving MYSELF. So I get the phone out of my pocket, look down for half a second, and my friend beside me shouted WATCH OUT! and I almost rear ended my friend in front of me at 60km/h. But I stopped in time...
- driving to work myself for the first time (with success of never getting lost)
- I drove my parent's old '90 Tercel to church. When I left, I went to go straight in front of the empty space in front of me and out, so I didn't have to back up, but I totally forgot there was a cement bumper there. I ended up going over the entire bumper with my front wheels. A few friendly people helped me push the cover back over it again.
- There's a nasty intersection...I think it's No. 2 Road and Francis or something. I THINK it was the same intersection, but I did some really stupid thing where I was stuck in the left lane and cars in front of me wanted to turn left, so I couldn't go straight. It turned yellow, I quickly changed to the right lane, and waited for the car in front to finish its left turn, then I'd dart straight and beat the red light. Little did I know that another car would turn behind so I slammed the brakes and so did he. As I made the mistake, I backed up and let him go. I think I did that very similar thing again in the same intersection (both times I was trying to pick up my mom from work) so that wasn't pretty.
- I HATE HATE turning left when in front of you a big truck is trying to turn left too. It's really hard to see if there's cars in the opposite right lane so you can make your left turn. So I came across one of those and went for my left turn, and saw a car coming right at me. I turned faster and he just missed me. I was with my friend and she was pretty scared I think, haha.
- The Tercel's tires are terrible. Even in medium rain, the car will slide if I'm not careful. One night, I was heading to work and I was going down Willingdon, which is fairly steep downhill. I was careful and I went something like 40 km/h and the guy who in front of me started to stop. I slowly started to stop too, but then I wasn't slowing down much and I heard the sound the car makes when it skids so I tried to do something about it. I reacted fast enough to check behind me, shoulder check and quickly change to the right lane so I turned my steering wheel as fast as I could but I was still going straight. So I ended up rear-ending the guy. We pulled over to the next street and he didn't see any damage to his car. I gave him my number in case he found something later, and luckily he never called me back.
- Around June, I got my own car. To this day, I still can't think of a good name for her.
- I was trying to park my car in this narrow space beside my friend's condo place. Some jerk (not my friend) put a cement block by the side and it was so narrow that I ended up scratching my bumper because I hit it. I almost cried. I never bothered to fix it or anything so there still lies a nasty scratch. Not too noticeable though, only if I point it out.
- Over time I just got lazy and never bothered anymore to put up my N sign. Further to that, I also regularly take more than 1 passenger. I haven't been caught yet so it's all good...
- Some time in the summer, I was driving to work in the late morning and was at the front of the pack on a red light. When the green light hit, I started driving, and went over 80km/h on SE Marine Drive. It's a 50km/h speed limit there and it's impossible to go that slow with that kind of traffic. So along the way, I was waved by a police officer and I knew I had been caught speeding. He told me he caught me at 89km/h and 90 and over would have had my license suspended. He took my license to his car and I remembered I don't have my N up. So when the policeman had his back turned, I took my N from the backseat and threw it in the back windshield. He came back to me giving me only the minimum speeding charge as it was my first ticket and I was still a new driver. He didn't mention anything about my N so looks like I was safe on that part.
- In November, there was that crazy period of snow. It was my first time to drive in the snow and I was pretty terrified, especially as I'm the first one on the road at just past 5am. I took it slow when I needed to and I didn't have too much problems. There was one time though where I was stopping at a yellow light and I kept sliding and sliding, and when it was red and I had fully stopped, I was already halfway past the intersection. Lucky for me it was so early in the morning that there were no cars at all around the intersection...
That's about all that I can recall. Me and Civvy had a good year and I can only see happy times from here on.
- driving myself for the first time...I came from The Zone and was heading somewhere. I was behind my friend. The jerk decides to CALL ME on my first time driving MYSELF. So I get the phone out of my pocket, look down for half a second, and my friend beside me shouted WATCH OUT! and I almost rear ended my friend in front of me at 60km/h. But I stopped in time...
- driving to work myself for the first time (with success of never getting lost)
- I drove my parent's old '90 Tercel to church. When I left, I went to go straight in front of the empty space in front of me and out, so I didn't have to back up, but I totally forgot there was a cement bumper there. I ended up going over the entire bumper with my front wheels. A few friendly people helped me push the cover back over it again.
- There's a nasty intersection...I think it's No. 2 Road and Francis or something. I THINK it was the same intersection, but I did some really stupid thing where I was stuck in the left lane and cars in front of me wanted to turn left, so I couldn't go straight. It turned yellow, I quickly changed to the right lane, and waited for the car in front to finish its left turn, then I'd dart straight and beat the red light. Little did I know that another car would turn behind so I slammed the brakes and so did he. As I made the mistake, I backed up and let him go. I think I did that very similar thing again in the same intersection (both times I was trying to pick up my mom from work) so that wasn't pretty.
- I HATE HATE turning left when in front of you a big truck is trying to turn left too. It's really hard to see if there's cars in the opposite right lane so you can make your left turn. So I came across one of those and went for my left turn, and saw a car coming right at me. I turned faster and he just missed me. I was with my friend and she was pretty scared I think, haha.
- The Tercel's tires are terrible. Even in medium rain, the car will slide if I'm not careful. One night, I was heading to work and I was going down Willingdon, which is fairly steep downhill. I was careful and I went something like 40 km/h and the guy who in front of me started to stop. I slowly started to stop too, but then I wasn't slowing down much and I heard the sound the car makes when it skids so I tried to do something about it. I reacted fast enough to check behind me, shoulder check and quickly change to the right lane so I turned my steering wheel as fast as I could but I was still going straight. So I ended up rear-ending the guy. We pulled over to the next street and he didn't see any damage to his car. I gave him my number in case he found something later, and luckily he never called me back.
- Around June, I got my own car. To this day, I still can't think of a good name for her.
- I was trying to park my car in this narrow space beside my friend's condo place. Some jerk (not my friend) put a cement block by the side and it was so narrow that I ended up scratching my bumper because I hit it. I almost cried. I never bothered to fix it or anything so there still lies a nasty scratch. Not too noticeable though, only if I point it out.
- Over time I just got lazy and never bothered anymore to put up my N sign. Further to that, I also regularly take more than 1 passenger. I haven't been caught yet so it's all good...
- Some time in the summer, I was driving to work in the late morning and was at the front of the pack on a red light. When the green light hit, I started driving, and went over 80km/h on SE Marine Drive. It's a 50km/h speed limit there and it's impossible to go that slow with that kind of traffic. So along the way, I was waved by a police officer and I knew I had been caught speeding. He told me he caught me at 89km/h and 90 and over would have had my license suspended. He took my license to his car and I remembered I don't have my N up. So when the policeman had his back turned, I took my N from the backseat and threw it in the back windshield. He came back to me giving me only the minimum speeding charge as it was my first ticket and I was still a new driver. He didn't mention anything about my N so looks like I was safe on that part.
- In November, there was that crazy period of snow. It was my first time to drive in the snow and I was pretty terrified, especially as I'm the first one on the road at just past 5am. I took it slow when I needed to and I didn't have too much problems. There was one time though where I was stopping at a yellow light and I kept sliding and sliding, and when it was red and I had fully stopped, I was already halfway past the intersection. Lucky for me it was so early in the morning that there were no cars at all around the intersection...
That's about all that I can recall. Me and Civvy had a good year and I can only see happy times from here on.