Driving Introduction

As mentioned earlier in the week, we now own a car. As Chrissi is currently a lady of leisure - still to start her new job - I had the luxury of driving to work both yesterday and today. I wanted the chance to do a bit of driving on my own before the trip at the weekend, at the least - and also it'd be an easier trip to work, and make it easier for me to get to poker yesterday.

Mixed results, but here are some of the highlights:

Directions: On five trips up and down the A3, I've left at the right exit three times. Of those, I made a wrong turn not long after - meaning I took a scenic route to work yesterday, and in the evening I took a loop around Raynes Park to get back to nearly where I started. Only one missed turning yesterday, however, which is an improvement - and that was as it suddenly became obvious as I was going past it and didn't feel quite like making a sharp turn.

Lighting: I may have forgotten to turn my lights on at the beginning of my journey back yesterday. This did not happen today.

Rain: First trip yesterday morning was in heavy rain. While this may have meant flooding and problems elsewhere, it did mean that I had to play about with lights and wipers and other such details which I had been hoping to avoid on the first day. But glad to get it under my belt too!

Most embarrassingly: For this I blame the automatic which meant I had less to think about when pulling away, but I managed to forget to take the handbrake off. Not only this, but I blamed the automatic, thinking it was a bit jerky and harder to control than using the clutch of the manual. I managed to do a three point turn, get to the end of the road and pull onto the next road before I realised the revs were too high and I simply wasn't going up the gears, and suddenly became aware of what had happened - strangely enough, that made it easier to control. Haven't done that again since ...