Driving Lessons, and Being Driven.

Nicholas hit a major life milestone on Monday. Taking advantage of the holiday he started lessons on how to drive a manual transmission car.
Yep, he’s learning to use the Man Pedal!

He’s been driving for several months, and has completed driver’s education (what little there is of that in the USA!) He’s fairly competent on the road, in his mother’s slushbox-equipped machine, so the time is right for upping the difficulty level. I’ve been emphasizing “smoothness” to him while he’s driving Sue’s car, in the hope that he would appreciate its importance when he arrives here.

Lessons began in our driveway, with some discussion of the physics involved in how a clutch operates. I demonstrated the “smoothness” concept by closing the Jetta’s trunk on 6 standing beer bottles in front of our barn. Then driving the car up our steep driveway between the barn and the house, around the house and down the hill and around the corner into our garage… and opening the trunk to find the bottles all still standing. They clinked together a bit on the hill, but none actually fell over. 🙂 A few laps around the driveway with me at the wheel, explaining foot & hand actions while driving was followed by handing the car over to him and having him try. Launch from a stop is of course the hardest thing to do, and that was the entire focus of Lesson One on Monday afternoon. Having a Diesel to learn, with hundreds of foot-pounds of torque from idle on up certainly helps. Doing the start of the first lesson on the gravel driveway helped too. Nick got the hang of starting from a standstill OK… only killing the engine a few times. After he seemed to get the process down we went to the second half of the lesson: pavement.

We switched drivers and I piloted the car down into town and an industrial park near the airport with empty streets and parking lots with circuits around each building big enough for trucks with trailers. Putting Nick back behind the wheel, he started over with launch control, now with more traction under tires. It was a tad rough for a while, but started to get the hang of it. Two hours in he was very pleased with himself, even getting into 2nd gear now and then. To keep him humble I pulled one of the bottles out and stood it up on the passenger side floorboard and challenged him to start from a stop and not knock over the bottle. He was unable to do it, despite lots of effort. Mentally worn out he asked to end the lesson and head home.

I drove home, and Nick stood the bottle up. I was able to drive most of the way home, through 10+ miles of turns, lights, hills, and stop signs without knocking it over, though I wasn’t perfect. It did fall over 5 times, much to Nick’s joy. He was surprised how I could keep it standing most of the time however. As we approached some corners he’d say “Oh yeah, it’s gonna fall now!” only to be followed by a “How did you do that!?” 😉

The answer is simple: Thirty years of practice!

I can recall my Life Drawing professor in college having us do three one-hour drawings on the first day of class. He put them away for the entire semester and on the last days of class had us repeat the effort, then produced our earlier work for comparison. The differences were amazing. I’ll put the bottle away for a few months and spring it on Nick sometime before he takes his driver’s test at the end of his learning-permit year. Should be interesting for him to see his own improvement.

On Monday night I saw Christopher as well. He had spent the long weekend with his high school friend Rob Pieffle, who is attending the University of Washington. He made his way from Evergreen State in Olympia up to Seattle on public transportation, but was unable to accomplish the reverse trip the same way due to the commute-focused Tacoma-Seattle leg of the trip. I volunteered to provide the ride for him, though he had to drive to allow me some rest. I met him at the Wallingford location of Dick’s Drive-In. He took the wheel and drove us to his dorm at TESC in Olympia. As always it’s nice to see him. We chatted while he drove (very smoothly I might add!) down I-5. I’ll be heading down to collect him for the summer break sometime in the next 2 weeks.