This Newbie Driver's Learning Experiences

Last week, I took up some driving classes to, apart from learning how to drive, help me prepare for the behind-the-wheel test with the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), a requirement to get a California Driver License. Getting that license is long overdue I think as everyone has been convincing me to get it for more than a year now.

Anyway, the classes were for 6 hours and cost some considerable amount of money. Considering that I'm a newbie, I think I did pretty well in learning the fundamentals. I never had any driving experience in the Philippines, except from taking a 7-hour driving class for manual (stick-shift) transmission cars. This time, it was for automatic transmission. I don't think I am totally prepared at this point, though, to pass the behind-the-wheel exam, which involves a DMV officer observing my driving from the passenger's seat.

Today, I drove around Tarzana with Jamie just to practice some more driving. Apart from my doing wide turns, forgetting to signal the car, and other beginner's mistakes, we were going quite well (I suppose) driving from my house to hers, around her neighborhood, and towards Blockbuster and the library to borrow some DVDs that we could watch at home.

At past noon, as we went out of the library with the DVDs that we borrowed, we found out that the car won't start. Even if we turn the keys, the car engine won't even try to rev up. It turned out the night lights were left on and so the batteries died down. The car had a battery charger on the trunk that we could use. Admittedly, I didn't even know what a battery charger looked like before this day but I thought at least it has a manual that we could follow. But that wasn't our problem.

We couldn't open the car hood (and hence we couldn't charge the batteries). We were pulling the switch from inside the car but there seems to be a latch that prevents the hood from opening up for more than a few inches. The latch or hook appears to be stuck from within and there seemed to be no way to work around it.

Fortunately, the owner of the car beside us is just about to leave the library and we sought for his help. This kind man was able to open the hood in seconds. So what about the latch that was troubling us? Well, there was a small lock in the front-middle part that you have to push to release the lock. On hindsight, I can't believe we missed that. He proceeded to charge the battery while demonstrating it to us. We were also advised to leave the engine on for about 25 minutes to enable the battery to charge.

Anyway, THAT was something I didn't expect to learn this day. Much thanks to that guy who helped us. It was a crazy experience standing at noontime in the heat of the sun and being clueless on how to make a car start. I was also able to work on my U-turns, 3-point turns, and parallel parking. Thanks a lot to Jamie and the guy who helped us.

Next time, I'll make sure that, at the very least, I know how to open the hood of the car that I'm driving. Who knows, someone might come around and offer to check the engine...