For those of you who don’t know, I’m 23 and have yet to get my driver’s license. I passed the Ohio written test with flying colors but I hadn’t gotten the physical part of driving done. I’d been out twice in my parents’ minivan which has the tightest steering column on the planet and freaked out, so my parents have (for the most part) left me alone with only a few occasional snide remarks from my dad. The local driving schools have yet to contact me (and yes, I’ve called them) and I can’t really wait much longer. So… I asked Jon if he could take me to a parking lot to do doughnuts today.

I was doing really well at doughnuts, so we moved on to neighborhood driving. That went well, so I decided to try 30th Street (in Heath). Well… one thing led to another and when I finally stopped the car and got out, I’d moved from 30th Street to State Route 79 to Interstate 70 and driven to Columbus. Jon treated me to dinner in Bexley (Chipotle for me and Grinder’s for him) and I drove back to Newark. 90+ miles on my first day of driving on 5 different types of road and me being really OK doing it. Boo Yah!

(Part of it is that Sable, our ’84 Volvo, handles the road really well and responds to the driver impeccably so all I really had to do was watch the road. I did have a few tight spots such as missing the exit for SR-79 on the way back and having to sneak on, almost hitting someone head on while trying to get in the left lane on Hebron Road, and almost hitting a stop sign while turning on the side street leading to ours, but hey… it was my first day.)