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I’m back with the photos and updates as promised. The thing about little aircrafts is that they kinda dip from side to side and make your tummy churn. Interesting how the noise of that engine makes everyone shut up immediately . I did a brave thing and took a picture just above San Francisco before my knuckles turned blue from my deadly grip on my seat!

This was my first meal after we landed. Tacos! Haven’t had them in ages so you can imagine how they made my tastebuds dance! So incredibly delicious.

And this here is my dream car monster truck! Now close your eyes and imagine Hip to be Mom sitting way up there and tearing down the highway in one of these! Cool, huh!

Just a few of the things that got me real excited .

Anyhow I spent the past couple of days running around with Steev on various errands. It’s scorching weather, and me and my umbrella, well, we’re are BFFs now. Wish Mary Poppins could see me now !!

So I was in a good mood today and decided to let Steev drive. He drives his dad’s car more than he drives mine. I probably should let him practise more often but a part of me is saying, let him practise on a stick shift saloon first before he tackles an automatic 7-seater.

He’s driven my minivan around the neighborhood a couple of times. This afternoon, as we turned the corner onto a 3-lane road, some jerk in a big black pickup truck decided to tailgate us, causing him to edge to the side, almost hitting the tail of a car that was just turning into the McD’s drive-thru. Gave me a heart attack!

The rest of the drive was pretty smooth. He handled the highway very well, I have to give him that. He didn’t speed. He didn’t do any of the things I’ve seen other new drivers do. He just cussed a little. He probably got that from me . We live in B.A.D (Bad Attitude Drivers) City where cussing is a necessary stress reliever!

And you know what? It’ll be a while before I’m comfortable having Steev drive alone. I know, I know, more and more parents are allowing their high school kids to drive themselves to school, and Steev’s already a college sophomore. So why am I such a scaredy cat?

Every day, I see those teens climb into their cars outside the girls’ school and it never fails to horrify me the way they slam on the accelerator and veer out onto oncoming traffic and other kids walking out the school gate, without so much as turning their heads . A car is a lethal weapon, not some harmless vga cable with audio!

Steev’s not a bad driver. He just needs to chalk up more experience on handling emergency situations like cars emerging from out of nowhere, cars trying to run you off the road, cars driven by people who don’t give a damn.

It’s not him I’m worried about. It’s those other drivers out there who don’t know if they’re coming or going, and simply don’t care!

Raine and 3 of her friends signed up for driving school over the weekend. Yes, it’s just a month since Steev got his driver’s license and now it’s Raine’s turn. The theory part is usually conducted at a center not too far away from where we live. I just assumed since Steev and all his friends had their class there that that’s where Raine and her friends were going to be at.

The driving school has a van to ferry them there which was all well and good.  I was going to pick her up and take her out to lunch. We had it all planned. Except neither Raine nor I expected they were going to be transported to another driving center located in a small town more than an hour’s drive away from the city.

Her text messages started coming in at the rate of 1 per minute. Mom, they’re taking us somewhere far! Where? Dunno!! and our text messages just kept flying back and forth. From some of the names of places they were speeding by in the van, Hip2bDad and I huddled over Google Maps checking out possible locations and calling up for directions.

We weren’t exactly panicked but we were really, really concerned. True, I hadn’t thought to ask but couldn’t the driving school have informed us? Within minutes, we were heading out to look for this place “hidden in some plantations with horses and mountains nearby”. We had no idea where it was. The only thing we had to go by were the sketchy landmarks Raine was texting us.

We sped down narrow roads, winding roads and near-deserted highways like this one:

… and drove past clumps of trees and bare land with no buildings in sight. Living in the city, we’re used to seeing buildings, lots of them and the thought of our princess out there in a place with no buildings was not a comforting one!

It took us 2 hours to find the ’shack’ tucked deep in an obscure spot off the beaten path. It’s absolutely the craziest place to house a driving center! This is the country road leading from the driving center. We could almost reach out and touch the hills and there was barely another human in sight!

We couldn’t even find a place to buy lunch for the girls We had to resort to pulling up at a gas station to grab some bread rolls, potato chips and canned drinks!! It was the best we could do under the circumstances.

After we dropped off lunch, we went home to wait. There was still a half day left to the driving course and the van was to bring them back to the city. To the parents of Raine’s 3 friends, this was not a big deal at all. The girls called home but their parents weren’t unduly alarmed. They were comfortable not knowing where their teenaged daughters had been taken.

Not us. We dropped everything and jumped in the car. We couldn’t not know! We had to see her and know where she was! It was a long day! Raine finally arrived home around 5 in the evening, safe and sound, after a 2-hour ride back in the stuffy, speeding van. She’d been away a whole day but it felt more like months. I’ve never been so relieved to see her!

Twas a stormy evening when I got home from sending Raine to her tutor’s house. A short while later, Hip2bDad went to collect his golf shoes from the top of my minivan where he’d set them to dry earlier… and they were GONE!! His new shoes, gone!

Of course! I’d driven into the storm without realizing they had been sitting on top of my minivan. How was I to know? Mind you, the roof of a minivan is pretty high up and it’s not as if I were born with a periscope on top of my head !

The only thing left to do was to keep an eye out for ‘em errant shoes on my way to pick up Raine later. Easier said than done. Ever tried looking for a brown shoe on the road in a torrential downpour? Not easy, I tell ya! I felt like Cruella de Vil cruising at snail’s pace, peering out of the window, stalking a brown puppy shoe!

I spotted what looked like a shoe on the ramp leading onto the highway. Steev confirmed it was but there was no way I could stop the car on that busy ramp! OMG! I guess that’s it, it’s probably bashed up anyhow though Steev said it didn’t look like anyone’s run over it – yet!

I drove on and on the way back, we spotted the other side of the shoe a couple of corners from the tutor’s house. That road was pretty quiet so I pulled up alongside the shoe and Steev hopped out to retrieve it. Is it Daddy’s shoe? Yep, and it was still in good condition.

Now for the other shoe. I had to make a turn and head back in the opposite direction to get back to that ramp where we’d seen it earlier. I was in two minds whether to attempt the dangerous feat of stopping on a busy ramp in pouring rain to make a dash for the shoe!

Luckily when we got there, there was no traffic. at. all. On that usually busy ramp? Wow, someone must be looking out for us! I quickly put on my hazard lights, stopped as close as possible to the shoe and with both Steev and I keeping an eye out for approaching traffic, Raine hopped out and in a flash was back in the car with the other shoe!

What an adventure! The most amazing part was that no one had run over either of the shoes. They’re good as new after a day out in the sun!! Hip2bDad is smiling again. And this story definitely deserves to be a chapter in The Adventures of The Hip Family to be handed down the generations !

Yesterday’s torrential downpour was exceptionally bad. Or maybe it was because it happened at a time when I had to send Raine to her tutor’s house and we have to pass through a low-lying area which is very prone to flooding.

I was driving at my normal speed which, even on a regular day, annoys the heck out of folks. But you know what? I pay more road tax than many of them so I figure that gives me the right to drive like a tortoise if I want to. If people don’t like it, they can speed right on ahead. Into the flood.

Which is exactly what one Toyota did. He sped right past me into the deepest part of the flood, rudely splashing water all over my minivan. Bet he never read the story of the tortoise and the hare.

Minutes later, I saw him stalled at the stop lights. Motionless. Stationery. As in Stuck! As in Helpless! With flood water in his exhaust pipe!

The tortoise wins, hehehe!

Now that Steev has gotten his driver’s licence, I guess he’ll be asking for my car keys soon? I think it’s a little too soon though. I’m just a little worried about him driving my minivan which is more than double the size of the crickety little car he learnt to drive in. I’m thinking maybe I should get an insurance quote as well as let him get a little more practice first.

Steev went for his driving test today and I was the one having nightmares last night. Isn’t it always the case that our kids will sleep blissfully the night before a test and we are the ones tossing and turning?

And sometimes it’s for good reason. He hasn’t had a whole lot of practice. Not as much as I would’ve liked. In fact, I think he probably has more practice driving a golf buggy than a car. So I wasn’t exactly wide-eyed all night for nothing.

Well, aside from a few ‘heart attacks’ with the test car which turned out to be a crickety old junk with a hand brake that wouldn’t release unless Steev physically hammered it down with his fist and a clutch that refused to budge, everything else went just fine .

So hey, we have a brand new driver in the family now! Woo-hoo for Mom who may actually be able to farm out her Mom’s taxi service some days! Hmm, nice thought that!

So I drove over a rock masquerading as a harmless ball of newspaper and it ripped a hole in my engine oil tank and caused a major oil slick on my driveway. Can you believe that?

As I said, I didn’t even think to snap a photo in all that panic. This picture is just to give you an idea but it’s nothing compared to the thick layer of gooey brown engine oil spread out like a giant amoeba over one quarter of my driveway.

The tow truck man was kind enough to offer me a few pointers on how to go about cleaning it up. But after analyzing the situation and discussing with my 3 teens, we decided we would first sweep the oil into a dustpan and pour it into a thick plastic bag. That took care of most of the oil.

Then we used old newspapers to wipe and soak up what’s left. A messy, backbreaking task. After we’d gotten rid of most of the oil, we poured hot water on the stained area and then scrubbed it several times over with detergent and baking soda. It was really hard work and I’d rather be trying to fix a Linksys router instead.

Luckily, my 3 energetic teens somehow managed to turn it into some kind of fun community project ! My minivan spent the night at the mechanics and it’s back now. Happy days till… the mechanic sends me the bill, ugh!