The Skid Machine!
Everyone remember Driver's Ed? It was a joke, right?
Mine was, anyway. There were three parts to my Driver's Ed class - simulator, classroom and in-car practice - and the first two of those were ridiculous. The in-car practice was helpful, of course, but when two thirds of a class is a complete waste of time, that's a baaaaad sign. The classroom bit was really just to get us to memorize formulas we'd never apply anyway (how many feet ahead/behind do you have to be before you're allowed to turn on your high beams? Who the hell cares; none of us have that kind of spatial awareness. Nobody does), and the simulator involved watching a movie filmed in the seventies while turning a wheel on a stand and pressing levers nailed to that stand. Playing Gran Turismo for five minutes was more educational than that thing. More interesting, too.
But there was one thing in that class that taught me more than the rest of the classroom and simulator combined, and it was called The Skid Machine.
The sad thing was, it wasn't even a required bit of the class. It was purely optional, and I was the only one from my school who bothered attending that semester. Only two other students showed up to it, both from a neighboring school. I knew one of 'em, Elizabeth, from middle school, and had a huge crush on her, but that's as much as I'm prepared to say when sober.
Anyway, getting the hell off my love life, the Skid Machine was a car with its rear wheels replaced by oversized shopping-cart free-turning wheels. Those wheels would whip around to face whatever direction the car's momentum carried them in. It was like driving a car in a perpetual skid, hence the name.
They took us to an empty parking lot and taught us how to deal with the perpetual skid the car put us in. The details of how to deal with the skids were important, of course, and of immense help, but the instructor spoke two sentences at different times that would've been worth the trip independent of actually driving the Skid Machine.
The first was "I wish we could allow the parents that brought you to drive this thing, because then you'd see how much better and quicker you kids learn it than they do." His point was that bad habits, once learned, are worse than no habit at all when it comes to dealing with the unexpected. Interesting, informative, and dead-on accurate.
And the second was "When you go into a skid, look where you want the car to go, not where you're afraid it will go. You'll subconsciously steer the car where you're looking, so if you look at an obstacle, you'll hit that obstacle." That bit of advice is just as applicable to riding a bicycle as driving a car, and while it might be an exaggeration to say that it's saved my life, I do think that it has at least spared me from injuries that I quite probably deserved.
Two bits of advice from ten years ago, brought on by icy roads. Maybe they'll be helpful, maybe they won't be. In any case, drive safe and stay warm, y'all. You're my friends. I want you around for years to come.
Mine was, anyway. There were three parts to my Driver's Ed class - simulator, classroom and in-car practice - and the first two of those were ridiculous. The in-car practice was helpful, of course, but when two thirds of a class is a complete waste of time, that's a baaaaad sign. The classroom bit was really just to get us to memorize formulas we'd never apply anyway (how many feet ahead/behind do you have to be before you're allowed to turn on your high beams? Who the hell cares; none of us have that kind of spatial awareness. Nobody does), and the simulator involved watching a movie filmed in the seventies while turning a wheel on a stand and pressing levers nailed to that stand. Playing Gran Turismo for five minutes was more educational than that thing. More interesting, too.
But there was one thing in that class that taught me more than the rest of the classroom and simulator combined, and it was called The Skid Machine.
The sad thing was, it wasn't even a required bit of the class. It was purely optional, and I was the only one from my school who bothered attending that semester. Only two other students showed up to it, both from a neighboring school. I knew one of 'em, Elizabeth, from middle school, and had a huge crush on her, but that's as much as I'm prepared to say when sober.
Anyway, getting the hell off my love life, the Skid Machine was a car with its rear wheels replaced by oversized shopping-cart free-turning wheels. Those wheels would whip around to face whatever direction the car's momentum carried them in. It was like driving a car in a perpetual skid, hence the name.
They took us to an empty parking lot and taught us how to deal with the perpetual skid the car put us in. The details of how to deal with the skids were important, of course, and of immense help, but the instructor spoke two sentences at different times that would've been worth the trip independent of actually driving the Skid Machine.
The first was "I wish we could allow the parents that brought you to drive this thing, because then you'd see how much better and quicker you kids learn it than they do." His point was that bad habits, once learned, are worse than no habit at all when it comes to dealing with the unexpected. Interesting, informative, and dead-on accurate.
And the second was "When you go into a skid, look where you want the car to go, not where you're afraid it will go. You'll subconsciously steer the car where you're looking, so if you look at an obstacle, you'll hit that obstacle." That bit of advice is just as applicable to riding a bicycle as driving a car, and while it might be an exaggeration to say that it's saved my life, I do think that it has at least spared me from injuries that I quite probably deserved.
Two bits of advice from ten years ago, brought on by icy roads. Maybe they'll be helpful, maybe they won't be. In any case, drive safe and stay warm, y'all. You're my friends. I want you around for years to come.