driving-o-rama

So, I was planning on continuing my public-transit-oriented lifestyle and possibly branching out into cycling, despite the fact that I can now drive myself (and a limited number of passengers) wherever and whenever I want. Let me tell you about my first full day of having my N-license.

It was my turn to make community lunch for my co-workers, so I had two big casserole dishes of moussaka and a bag full of salad ingredients to take to work. Needless to say, this was not going to work on the bus, and Aaron didn't feel like driving me, so I had to take the car to work all by myself.

Next, stuff happened and plans changed and I ended up driving all by myself to Surrey where I had to do work stuff. This involved driving over the oh-so-scary Pattullo bridge, just days after reading how it is the deadliest bridge in British Columbia. (Read this article from today's paper titled "It's a death bridge" for more info...basically, it's too narrow for four lanes, and there's no median, and there's a curve where people tend to drive into oncoming traffic instead of staying in their itsy-bitsy lane.) This was a 45-minute drive in rush hour traffic.

Then, while in Surrey, I was asked spur-of-the-moment to drive a teenager to the store to pick up some forgotten dinner ingredients. So now I had a 15-year-old kid whose life to risk alongside mine. Did I mention that by this time it was foggy as all heck out there?

After the Surrey stuff was done, I had to drive a co-worker back to Vancouver, over the death bridge, in the dark, in the fog. I think she was nervous, but she's usually nervous about all sorts of stuff, so it's not like it was me, but it still made me nervous to have her being nervous about my driving.

Finally, at the end of my 12-hour workday all I had to do was drive home. I drove about 60km today, all by myself, in scary conditions. And I thought that having a license wouldn't change anything...