Our city is divided.
The main four lane road running East and West has shut down on the West side lanes. It’s the Aorta of our city. With the West bound lanes closed it makes getting to the businesses on the North side near impossible.
If you’re familiar with the city you know there are plenty of options to get where you need to go. Insider information…
If you’re a new driver, you’re screwed.
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Growing up in rural Minnesota, with acres of rolling hills as far as you could see and not many houses I had plenty of opportunities to practice driving well before I was of driving age. My parents had a wood stove and their farming neighbor would give them free timber. My dad would drive his big flatbed truck and I would follow him in a little Mazda pickup truck to the neighbors house, we’d load both trucks and I’d follow my dad home.
I can’t even tell you how many times I drove that path from ages 12-15. By the time I did reach permit age I was READY for the road.
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My oldest turned 15 a couple weeks ago. We spent the day together, he passed his permit test and we went straight to the DMV for his permit. He was confident and ready for the road!
The DMV representative had asked him if we were going to go out in a parking lot and practice. We dodged the question with a, “yeah maybe!”. The truth is my son’s been testing out driving for a while now. He has some road experience on the same rural roads I gained my experience on, though now they are paved and much better to drive on. He’s always moving cars in the driveway and going down the road, not far but testing boundaries. He had been telling us for months, “when I get my permit, prepare to never have to drive again!”.
Being the current chauffeur of the family I couldn’t wait for the break! Sitting in the passenger seat and relaxing while someone else has to pay attention to everything, sounded amazing!
We got out of the DMV and I handed over my keys. He said he wasn’t ready and I was shocked but thought it was just the nerves of the first time… I assured him we’d take all the back roads, I explained the route we were going to take and what he would expect. These are roads he’s been down HUNDREDS of times, it will be easy.
He got into the drivers seat, buckled in and backed out of the parking lot. If I would have been watching as an outsider I would have wondered if he thought he was driving a semi instead of my jeep with the amount of space he needed to get out of the parking spot BUT he did really well. The first stop sign, the first round-a-bout, the first stop light, everything was going swimmingly.
Taking a left onto a highway with cones blocking off the shoulder went better than I thought. I was slightly concerned for the life of one of the cones but he missed it. We’re leisurely driving on the frontage road of the lake, a road hardly traveled, when he gets to the final stop sign before our destination.
The traffic was pretty heavy for this time of day and especially on this road, NO one uses this road…. Cars started stacking up behind us and my son’s nervous energy kicks in. He’s tapping the steering wheel to a heart racing beat, getting more and more nervous as the gaps between the cars shrink. He told me he shouldn’t have driven and I told him traffic is something he’s going to have to deal with.
After a decent amount of time, he took the left and we made it safely to our lunch date.
He made me drive home after that. He was a little angry at me that I forced him to drive in the worst traffic, but then I remembered… our main roads are closed, the traffic isn’t normally THIS bad. I tried to tell him it’s only because of the construction but he’s a teenager that knows everything…
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Since the maiden voyage, he’s been driving quite a bit. Comfort levels go up with practice and while he’s taking back some of the adventures he said he was ready to embark on he’s getting more comfortable and confident.
It won’t be long until he’s driving a manual in the mountains.
In the meantime, I’m going to try and keep my calm and hope he starting to pull up to the stop sign so I can see if it’s clear to go; not stop 10 feet behind the sign. I don’t care what the drivers ed book tells about distance behind a stop sign. You need to see before you start going.
Safe travels,
Jes xoxo