Experience Drive-1

My 230th post. Its been almost a month since I sat down in the driver's seat of a Honda City for the first time. (I'm not very sure if it's fine to post this up.)

Monday, 7Th September at 9.50am, I went for the first driving lesson. When I first received my booking slip, I saw the car number, and thought,"Oh,ok. One. Six. Eight." I did not notice the "hidden meaning" the digits meant when pronunced in Chinese until my fourth lesson. Still can't get it? Wait till I post the 4th one then. My first impression? Scary, but when you're in the car, you get the feel as though everything was going to be fine. Here's something funny. However, for the first few lessons, I had a bit of a trust issue when he helped me with the steering, as well as the braking. I can't remember exactly what he said, but I was sure he told me something while we were going round a right bend, I locked my hands on the wheel while he was trying to help me with he steering. He said calmly,"If you don't let me help you, we might both end up going through the fence." It sounded funny, but if I had not allowed him to step in during that moment, we both might have ended up off the road.

There was an introduction to the car, such as the various parts, pre-drive checks, how to change a car tyre, and of course, how to start, move and steer the car. Being the slowest learner the world has ever seen, took me pretty long just to know the relation between the clutch, brake and accelerator pedals. We went through the fundamentals of driving. Depress the accelerator, listen to the engine, notice the engine revolving at 1,500 rounds per minute before slowly releasing the clutch(to the point where the car vibrates slightly, and the engine revolution decreases, also known as the 'biting point') and feel the car inching forward slowly. That's, easier said than done. Before that, we would count for 2 seconds the moment I achieved the biting point, before slowly releasigthe clutch and allow the car to move forward solely using the accelerator pedal. There was something he said when I was doing it for the first time. "Every car has a diferent biting point". I nodded, although I did not understand fully behind the meaning of that sentence, until the days I had 2 lessons with different instructors, which of course, meant I would be using different cars.

We went on to practice steering the car around right bends for the remaining time before calling it a day. I stalled the car for a record number of 5 times on that day. The lesson was fun, yet scary at times, especially when the car went wide at the bends for a couple of times during the last minutes of the lesson. Stalling, wasn'ta frightening experience, but it sure was embarrasing.