20
May
Towards greater balance, and circuit tolerance!
I realised the true nature of driving today (or at least a simulated part of it). How much can one driver’s limit be tested before he cracks, and starts endangering the entire junction with blinded judgement?
Inside the sheltered environs of a circuit, I found myself waiting impatiently at a T-junction as many budding jeep and 5-tonner drivers struggled to tame the apparently wild beasts. My finger came very close towards getting glued permanently to the horn button on my bike. Though I didn’t use it at all in the end, that I found myself extremely annoyed at these drivers (who obviously had the right of way) was an interesting, and perhaps disturbing revelation about me. Am I a impatient jerk, a potential road bully?
Perhaps what saved my day was my addiction to popular music. I started to hum my favourite tune (from Martika — Toy Soldiers), and it made the waiting seemed all that easier to take. However, it seems that some of my fellow course mates couldn’t take the pressure. They decided to overtake me, and drove straight into the jeep’s path. They ended up pushing their bikes back to the start point (the instructor was seriously contemplating making them run with the bike).
Balance is an important part of life. Without it, one would be… unbalanced. Anyway, we had plenty of it today, after all the balancing tests we went through today, with promises of more tomorrow, we were quite tired of the bike!
The complete test course includes a 6 second driving act on a long flat log (one cannot fall off or stay for less than 6 seconds), ribbed log, a figure-8 course, and finally, a mini-salom. Fail any of the items, and the whole test is a gone case.
I managed to pass all the items on the two assessment they made me do, which is good. Because if that were not the case, I would still be at the circuit making rounds instead of ranting over here!
on May 23rd, 2004 at 6:16 pm
Hey, talking about your circuit training… I have got something to share.. I had my driving test (apparently I failed). Well, I was supposed to do the circuit as usual… All the vertical, parallel parking, crank course, s course slope and directional change. Gosh, everything went well until I reach the point when I was instructed to do vertical parking. And guess what, there was this private test car in front of me. Well she didn’t checked for safety and reversed despite me being stationary behind her. Upon seeing that both cars were going to hit, I asked my tester for permission to reverse and guess what?! He told me to stay put and wait for the car to hit us! What a great suggestion! Guess he was trying to be funny.. But anyways, I didn’t appreciatate it. Guess at the age of 18 (going to 19) we are indeed impatient and reckless… I reversed and honked without his permission…(lucky I did that, if not an accident would have occurred) Well, the tester wasn’t very happy about what I did and lectured me to remain more patient. Needless to say, I wasn’t but I felt that what I did was correct. Well, I really have no comments about the tester but it made me wonder whether there was internal conflict among the testers… Trying to sobotouch each other! haha… What do you think…