Cars & driving | Hip to be Mom

The night before we left for Disneyland, we were having dinner at our friends’ place and someone mentioned it might snow on the Grapevine. It had been cold and rainy, yes but snow?

My 3 teens were somewhat thrilled but I was a little concerned, least of all that I’d opted for the cheapest auto insurance. More so that I’ve never driven in snow before and I wondered if we might need chains. But our friends assured us we’d be okay and to just be careful.

So off we drove into the grayness the next morning, all packed and ready for our Disneyland adventure. This is the turn-off to the Grapevine from Highway 99. Hauntingly beautiful!

Once we got on the Grapevine itself, the hills rose up around us. With each turn came more hills and valleys. It was beautiful in an eerie sort of way but beautiful nonetheless, so different from any highway views I’ve ever experienced in my travels.

The view of this lake was breathtakingly surreal. I slowed down to have a better look. We almost expected the Loch Ness monster to raise its legendary head from the murky mist.

I think I’ve used the word “beautiful” about 5 times in this post. There was certainly no sleeping through views like these. Everyone was wide awake and snapping pictures left and right.

So there, we made it through the Grapevine, for miles through the incessant rain, murky mist and gusty winds. But heck, no snow (whew!).

A thousand miles in 2 weeks

Posted by Clairity Comments Off

Dec 282010

I’ve only been in California for 2 weeks and already I’ve driven over 1,000 miles. Crazy but true! We’ve been up and down the coast from San Francisco all the way down to Los Angeles in the freezing cold. Brrrr!

Driving is fun. We can jump in the car any time and stop anywhere we want. That’s what I love about traveling on our own sans tour groups.

Like they say, time flies when you’re having fun and quite honestly, I haven’t had time to send out holiday greetings or to return thank you cards either. We’ve done so much these 2 weeks I just can’t wait to tell you about it. So please stay tuned for my upcoming posts .

Joy ride

Posted by Clairity 1 Response »

Sep 172010

I have been renting a car on weekends to take Steev shopping. The people who work at the car rental probably know me by now . Last weekend, I was there again on a Friday and they gave me a shiny red Kia Rio which is the smallest car they have and probably the cutest too.

Except its stiff steering wheel gave my arms a deadly workout (which reminds me, I haven’t been to the gym in months!), its windows have to be cranked up like my grandma’s sewing machine, and it has no central locking (which means I have to open the door with the key, then slide across to the passenger side to open the door for Steev which wouldn’t be so bad if I weren’t aching all over from all that packing and moving!).

Saturday morning, Steev and I were planning to drive out of town to Tulare and I honestly could not see how my arms were going to take that long distance beating. So I took the car back in to the rental place and asked for a swap.

Well, guess what? They were out of compact cars! I heard the manager telling one of the guys to give me another car. Just great! What I didn’t know was they were going to give me a quadruple upgrade – a Kia Optima – which would’ve cost me double the rental, only I’m getting it for the same price + car insurance.

It’s a luxury car, the manager tells me, it’s top of the line. Sweet! It’s automatic everything. It runs like a cheetah. It’s sleek, silent and powerful. Such a joy!

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!