Driving Practice

Lindsey needs to get 50 hours of practice driving in before she can take her driver's test. This includes 15 hours of nighttime driving. We're not sure when she'll be able to take the test since the DMV has been closed due to the pandemic, but whenever they re-open, she'll be ready!

This has been a perfect time to get practice driving in for Lindsey. There's no such thing as rush hour and she can practice driving Uptown and other places at night and they aren't too crowded. She's got an app that tracks her time and the kind of driving she practices.

This past week we went for a drive and before I know it 30 minutes have passed. I checked her app and said, "Wow, we've already been driving for 30 minutes! Feels like so much shorter than that."

She replies, "That's because I'm such a delight."

We both laughed so hard she almost had to pull over.

The Trials and Tribulations of GPS

Last night I took Lindsey and a friend of hers to a counter-protest in downtown Minneapolis. I'd heard and read that traffic was going to be challenging. All the roads around the Target Center were closed to make room for the protesters, we had to get down there around rush hour, so leave extra time or plan alternate transportation.

My plan was to park in a ramp far away from the action and walk to the Target Center. That way we would also be away from all the traffic and could leave downtown relatively easily. It didn't exactly work out that way.

We parked in the first ramp I saw and I dropped a pin on the map to note that I had parked there. We walked to the Target Center no problem with just a few quick turnarounds when we first made it out of the ramp. I hate it when pedestrians exit parking ramps on different sides than where you entered, I always get a little twisted around at first.

We went to the protest, had a great time, ate dinner at The Local (also a great time), and then headed back to my dropped pin....which looked nothing like the ramp I had parked in. We found a staircase, went up a flight and looked around. No car, and not familiar surroundings.

So we went across the street to another ramp that looked more like the one I had parked in. Nope, no there either.

We all remembered coming down a blue staircase that was marked "2B," because we were laughing about "to be or not to be." The staircases we were trying were marked by a letter or a number, not both. They were also either purple, orange, brown, or a variety of other colors, not blue.

What. On. Earth.

Lindsey, Ava and I walked from ramp to ramp in a four-block radius for nearly an hour before Lindsey finally collapsed after yet another staircase. "I think my feet have had it, Mom," she said. It was now way past Ava's requested time to be home and getting late to be lost in downtown Minneapolis.

I ordered a Lyft and decided to try to find my car the next day. The driver told me how he always takes his parking stub with him when he parks because it has the ramp address on it, that way he always knows where he parked. This told me two things: 1. That's a really smart idea and I should do that in the future. 2. He's lost his car before or he wouldn't do that, so I'm not the only numskull who's done this.

We went home and I slept fitfully, wondering if I'd remembered to lock my car, if I had anything valuable in there, if someone had broken into it...my mind went wild with catastrophizing. My brain is good at that.

As soon as my sister got off work the next morning she came over to my house, had a little breakfast, and we went back downtown to search for my parked car. Both Google and Apple maps marked my car in the same place they reported it the previous night, so I was interested in seeing where they hell it was and how many ramps we'd have to check before we found it. Kristi drove the same route into downtown as I had the previous night, hoping we'd come across the ramp from the same direction and it would jog my memory.

We found it immediately — the first ramp we checked. The ramp was under construction and the previous night I had gone in on a side that was dark and had many roped off spaces. The pin had dropped on the opposite side of the block, where it was well-lit with multiple ways in and out, which was why the ramp didn't look familiar to us when we searched it the previous night. Plus it was divided into two separate parking areas that did not connect. No wonder we hadn't found it the previous night.

Kristi and I left and were driving our separate ways when she called me.

"You're gonna laugh," she said.

After I'd found my car, she set her GPS to get out of downtown and head back home. After exiting the ramp, the GPS system was having her take all kind of winding side roads, not the main roads of downtown. It was making her turn this way and that, and she couldn't figure out where it was having her go until it gave her a detour for Cedar Lake Trail. Cedar Lake Trail? That's a bike path! It thought she was biking so it was having her take the less traveled streets of downtown! She pulled over, re-set it to know she was driving, and it safely and quickly directed her out of downtown and back on her route home.

"Some day we'll laugh about this," we said last night when we were taking the Lyft home. I already am.

She Can't Drive 55

Lindsey behind the wheel of her dream F150 at the State Fair this summer.

Getting your license sure has changed a lot since I was 16. When I was learning how to drive, my classmates and I were handed the DMV driver's handbook and put in a simulator where we goofed around for an hour a day for one week. I tested for my permit after that, then I did two or three behind-the-wheels with Mr. Berceau, our biology teacher, and eventually took my driving test. I'm sure I did lots of practice hours so I could pass the test, but had the opportunity to do more when I failed my test the first time I took it. Oh well.

Lindsey had to complete 30 hours of classroom training before she could even get her permit. After that, she needs six hours of behind-the-wheel instruction with a certified instructor, then 50 "practice" hours with an adult. Which means, a parent. Which in our house means me, because we all agree that Wayne would not have the patience or composure needed to be the parent with a new driver behind the wheel.

These 50 hours should be a good mix of neighborhood, highway, daytime and nighttime driving. The night time driving is mandated — 15 hours required. There's a handy little app called "Road Ready" that can track all of your practice drives and awards you badges based on the kind of driving you do.

I had forgotten how much driving is habit. Deeply ingrained, instilled habits that experienced drivers forget to teach. Like, when you back out of parking space, you need to begin turning the wheel in the direction you want to go before you take your foot off the brake. If you don't, you end up doing what Lindsey did one Saturday afternoon, which had to be quite amusing to passersby. She parked, backed up, re-parked the car in the same spot, backed out, re-parked, backed out, until I finally realized she wasn't turning the wheel in the opposite direction before taking her foot off the brake.

She has tried to take the car out of park before she's started it. She's almost gotten out of the car before realizing she hasn't yet turned it off. She's mistaken the gas for the brake and vice versa. (But realized it quickly and corrected her mistake.) These are all deeply ingrained habits for people who have been driving for years, and they all have to be remembered by a new driver every single time.

It's so fascinating to see these habits build upon themselves. Things that were difficult to remember are becoming habit. Neighborhoods are now a snap, and now we're moving on to highways, then freeways. She's building her skills and her confidence and is always careful.

Posing with my car with her student driver sticker...and damage done in an unrelated incident.

This brings me to the title of this post.

The first time Lindsey drove down France Ave, the main street in our neighborhood, she felt like she was flying. She checked her speed and discovered she was going 20 — 5 miles under the speed limit. When we hit four-lane roads that are 40 mph, she dutifully pulls into the right lane, knowing that everyone else will be speeding around her in the left-hand lane because she's only doing 35. And she drove on a highway for the first time this week, telling me she felt like she was driving a spaceship, her elbows locked as she gripped the steering wheel, eyes fixed on the road. A semi-truck passed her on her left and she was like "Whoa!" She may have hit 55 for a minute or two, but most of the time she was being passed by a parade of vehicles.

This experience is making me realize how much trust we all have in others when we are passengers. I have to work hard to keep  my mouth shut and not point out every little hazard that I see when Lindsey is practicing. She sees it, she's slowing and signaling appropriately, she needs to not rely on me to point this stuff out because I won't always be with her. It takes a lot of trust to be quiet and let her learn.

Let's just say she and I are out of our comfort zone, but getting comfortable there.

Do you guys know each other?

To the lady in the Saturn with all the "save the earth" stickers all over the rear of your car that I was stuck behind for 20 blocks last night -- do you know the lady in the Oldsmobile? The one who sells Mary Kay?

No? Oh -- well maybe you guys went to the same driving school.

Just checking.

To the lady in the Oldsmobile with the Mary Kay sign in the back

My apologies for being close on your tail this morning. I was headed to work and wanted to make it there close to on time. I typically take city streets, as you do, to avoid the traffic on 35W, and then pick up I-94 later on.

The challenge with going 20 mph in city streets, as you were this morning, is that the lights are timed so that if you go the speed limit, which is 30 mph by the way, you will hit every light green once you hit one light green. It's pretty neat that the city set things up that way. As a matter of fact, you can even go as fast as 32 mph and will still hit every light green.

But, when you are stuck behind someone going 20 mph as I was this morning, you tend to hit every light red. And with the number of lights between 36th Street and Portland, this meant that 10 minutes were added on to my commute today because I was stuck behind you.

I don't know if you knew this, but if you are coming up to a green light and you see that the pedestrian signs are blinking red, that means that the light is about to turn yellow. It's a neat little trick. As a matter of fact, sometimes you're even given an idea as to how soon the light will turn yellow when the pedestrian sign looks like this:

See, that little number counts down the number of seconds until you can no longer begin crossing and the light turns yellow. Isn't technology amazing?!

So if you see one of those, you might want to speed it up just a little bit, maybe to say, 25 mph, to make the light. But if you choose instead to continue on at your 20 mph speed, you are guaranteed that it will turn yellow on you and on the person stuck behind you, and once again you'll be sitting at a red.

Which is why I unintentionally tried to speed you up by riding your tail. I didn't mean to, it's just that I wished I'd been in your place and could have made you go just a titch faster so I could get to work on time. No matter, I lost you at one of those lovely red lights when you were able to sneak through at your snail's pace and I was still stuck at the red. So I hung out for a while and lost you, then made up my time on I-94.

Thanks for the lesson in patience.

Ever feel like you just can't leave work?

Me too.

The Andy Rooney in Me Wants to Know

Why is it that I am intimidated by people who cross the street slowly?

I don't mean slowly in that they have a walker or are elderly, or that they are shepherding children across.

I mean slowly in that they saunter, they pretend that everyone else in the world has as much time as they do. They glare right at you as if to say "I dare you to run me down."

Often times they are crossing against the light -- it's like instead of seeing a don't walk sign like this:

They saw one like this:

I drive through a neighborhood on my way home that I've written about before -- I call it a "bootstrap" neighborhood, one that is working hard to change themselves, to create a better place to live.

Every once in a while I'll see a certain character in this neighborhood. This character has the big slouchy coat, the pants halfway down his ass, the hat on whatever way it's supposed to be on nowadays, and just the right shoes to set it all off. It's hard to tell if it's just a teenage style or if these are truly people from "the hood."

Here's the difference:

When I'm driving down the street and the stylistic teen is jaywalking, once he sees my car he puts his hands up defensively and quickens his pace. Once he reaches the corner he may even give me a small wave before continuing in his sauntering mode.

The other teen will continue walking in his slow, steady saunter, forcing me to slow WAY down to not hit him. Then, once he's walking right in front of my car, he'll stare at me as he goes by slowly. I stare straight ahead, pretending not to see him staring at me, and turn up my music.

The other day I saw a guy walking out of a bar, beer in hand. Yeah, I know, it's 5 o'clock, maybe not a bad time to be drinking a brew, but to walk across the street with one, well, that's another thing. And then to walk across the street with a beer in hand and force traffic in both directions to stop to avoid hitting him as he saunters across is another. And THEN, as I watched in my rearview mirror, his pants actually, I kid you not, completed their slide the rest of the way down his legs, and the last I could see they were around his knees as he waddled along the sidewalk, pretending he was cool when he actually looked like a toddler trying to run to the potty. He had on white and green boxers, in case you were wondering.

I had never seen the inspiration to the song "Pants on the Ground" until that day.

But back to my Andy Rooney question:

I think the difference is that the person who quickens his pace respects himself. He respects his own life, wants to live it, doesn't care to be run over, and also respects others enough to get out of their way so they can go about their business.

The other, well, it doesn't seem that he respects himself. Surely someone somewhere must care if he gets run down, yet he saunters as if to say "I dare you to." Doesn't he want to live? Isn't this really NOT worth risking your life for? Because some day he'll get the driver who just happened to be looking down, grabbing a cell phone, changing a tune, and his saunter will be cut short.

Is it just me?

More Boring Pictures of my city AKA Why You Should Really Read This Post

I know, I posted pictures from my commute a week ago, but now that I've finally relinquished myself to my commute, I thoroughly enjoy it. I do. I listen to my favorite radio talk show in the morning on the way in, and listen to my iTouch music choices on the way home at night. It reminds me of my long, loong commutes I used to have from Mankato to and from the Twin Cities, when I used to get a whole hour and a half in the car all to myself. This was BC (before children), so I didn't understand how very precious an hour and a half of alone time was back then.

Now, I get it.

So I cherish my 30 minutes in the morning, I cherish my 45 minutes at night. I sing at the top of my lungs. I test out vibrato in my voice -- can I even DO vibrato? Do I sound like an opera singer or a pop singer? And how awesome is this that even though other drivers can see that I'm car-singing (don't care, by the way), at least they can't hear me. At least until summer, when I crank down the windows. And then, still, I'm pretty sure I still won't care.

I admire the scenery around me. I've been watching the progress on an old, three story, massive home that's been under construction just off of I-94. At first I thought it was under demolition -- they literally gutted it straight down to the skeleton of the house. Happily, I see that they are now re-roofing it, and busy working on the interior at the same time. Great, not a demolition but a re-construction. Happy happy, hope I get to see the interior when it's done.

I look at the sky, and the skylines, and the statues and the buildings in all their engineering intellect, and I am grateful. I am grateful I live in such a vibrant, fabulous city, and am grateful that I have the means by which to explore it, and the perspective with which to appreciate it. I am grateful that I fit into the city, and the city fits around me, and I couldn't be happier living where I live.

Student Driving

Yesterday as I was driving in to work I saw a sorry sight. The photo here is not it, but is a good representation of what may have happened had I watched this person much longer.

A car with "STUDENT DRIVER" plastered all over it (roof top sign, doors and trunk) on the on-ramp, trying to merge into bumper-to-bumper traffic on a major artery in the Twin Cities. The person driving was clearly having issues trying to look for traffic behind while driving the car straight and not losing too much speed. They were at an almost complete stop, making merging nearly impossible and backing up everyone on the merge ramp behind the car.

At least everyone in the vicinity knows it's a student driver and hopefully cuts him or her a little slack. And it got me to thinking of my relatives who live in Tracy, MN, population 2,000, who go to other towns to take their driver's test where there are NO traffic lights, no traffic per se, except for the occasional tractor. Those who figure that backing in and out over and over again to parallel park is "good enough." (You know who you are!)

I am pretty sure they would have flunked the test in the Twin Cities. Then again, they are smart enough to not even try to take the test here!