When I went out driving last week with S, a family friend, we just drove around the parking lot of an out-of-business grocery store at the end of town. There are light poles that I had to slalom in and out of, getting the hang of turning his big van, but there wasn’t really much else to do there.

Today we went out on the open road. I drove from my house to the gas station and then on to the country roads that surround the town I live in. Luckily his van is an automatic, so I was able to concentrate mostly on steering. On our drive in the Price Chopper parking lot I did a lot of over-steering and over-correcting. Today S showed me how to tell how much correction is enough if I am driving too far to one side of the road (which I have a habit of doing. I'm afraid of the middle of the road!), and told me to focus as far ahead of me as I could see, relying on my peripheral vision to do most of the work. This was a huge help, as I felt much more relaxed and stayed on my side of the road a lot more easily.

We drove pretty far out of town, and it was a beautiful day. I had the window down a little, and the sun was shining in, and it felt very liberating to be in charge of a vehicle that could take me anywhere.

I have a little bit of anxiety about other cars. I am still not very good about keeping to the right side of the road without being too far onto the shoulder because I feel like passing cars in the left lane are very close and that makes me nervous. I think I improved, even just in the couple hours that I drove today.

I expressed to S my desire to learn as quickly as possible, and told him that I would like to set a goal for myself. I told him that I want to be comfortable enough to drive to the bus station in Seattle when we go pick up Kevin on the 28th. He decided that if I am going to reach that goal, I needed to get on the highway right away.

I drove up to where the back roads met the highway and set the cruise control at 55 (It is too hard to concentrate on both steering straight and maintaining the right pressure on the gas pedal, and the speedometer is so distracting! Most of the lesson was spent concentrating on keeping the van between the lines while I let the cruise control keep the speed). S didn’t tell me that we were turning onto the freeway until I needed to be in the turn lane, and my correction is still a bit jerky, so when I was turning onto the on-ramp an oil canister slid from under the seat and wedged itself under the gas pedal. I was trying to take it slow but there was someone behind me so I tried to accelerate, but I couldn’t because of the oil can. Without much warning to the driver behind me I had to stop in the middle of the road on the on-ramp to clear out the foot space. This had me a little bit rattled and my turns were not as smooth as they were earlier, but I calmed down pretty quickly.

We drove to Safeway next so I could do my grocery shopping and not have to figure out how to get two cases of bottled water home, and being around so many other cars and people stressed me out. I was looking for a parking space I could just pull into and easily drive out of without having to reverse while S was directing me into a space near the front of the store. It was the worst parking job ever. It looked like this: |\.

Overall I feel like I did really well. Once I started looking as far ahead of the car as I could, it was much easier to stay centered in my lane without thinking about it too much. My next lesson is on Monday, and there will be no cruise control. I will have to learn to balance my concentration between steering straight and going the speed limit. One thing about S was that he encouraged me to go the speed limit when I was worried about going too fast. It's a little scary how quickly you go from thinking 35 is too fast to thinking you must not be going fast enough at 40.

We're going to pick up Danielle at the airport tomorrow and I'm excited. I haven't seen her in over a month, and come the end of April she is moving to L.A. Her intention was to be back in town for her birthday on the 8th, but there was a problem with her flight last Sunday and she just postphoned her return trip until this weekend. She'll spend the rest of March packing and getting everything in order, and she's going to spend a few weeks in April staying here with me before she returns to Los Angeles to pursue a career in comedy. Wish her luck!