Saturday, February 9, 2008

Honk! Watch out!

Ha! Lucky you all weren't in Australia today. I took to the roads for my first driving lessons. That's right -time to cower in fear... I'm driving a large vehicle with a very wide turning radius, on the wrong side of the road, and the best part -it's a stick! I killed it only 3 times though. I expected it to die a while lot more. My patient Aussie-Dad was giving me instructions and my Aussie-mum was in the back, seatbelted in. Brave souls. There are far too many pedals and in all the wrong places. At least I didn't hit anyone, yet.

It was my first driving lesson since the car has been in the shop getting converted to "gas" -LPG. The LPG is equal in price to gas in the USA roughly, whereas "petrol" here is twice as expensive as fuel in the states.

Unfortunately another person was getting driving lessons in the same parking lot at the same time. Scary eh? It was even more scary once you saw that it was a 7 year old kid sitting in his dad's lap. I so was better than the little kid. I mean, all he had to do was steer, and I had to reach all those pedals!

7 comments:

Aaron said...

It's just one more pedal right?
And now I'm going to have to look up what LPG is made up of! I've never heard of it. And thanks for the comment about the Visitors Map.

Jeditherapist said...

oh, no Julie's driving, we shall all cower in fear. Well, at least we are all safe here in the states. I miss teasing you, I should do it more often. I remember a time when...well I'll save that for later. Hey, today's my b-day I'm 31 already. This is Clay in case you are wondering.

Mr.Anderson said...

Whats the extra petal for?

Aaron said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquefied_petroleum_gas
My question about LPG has been answered!

Lady Arden said...

Hi Clay and Happy birthday -I'll e-mail ya, k? :)

Aaron, thanks for the clarification on LPG myself, I hadn't had time to look it up yet. I had been vaguely told it was propane or butane. It's quite common for cars here to use, and the Aussie government subsidizes converting cars to use LPG instead of normal petrol. Converted cars then can run on either fuel.

Lady Arden said...

Oh, and the extra pedal is the clutch. :) I've just never driven a standard before so gear-shifting is all new to me.

Bluecanary said...

As a devout standard driver, I wonder how I would adjust to having to shift with my left hand. I have driven on the left, but the whole confusion of having the steering wheel on the threw me off enough that it kept me in the left lane. But the vehicle we had was one of probably 5 automatics on the whole island of Mauritius.

I'm glad you have a blog again. It's great to see that things are going well for you.