When I moved here I didn't even have a drivers license, so I didn't know how to drive. After a couple of years I started thinking more and more about learning how to drive, and W was about to move out of state, and living in a dry cabin without a drivers license can be....tricky. So, I went to the DMV, picked up one of their tiny books on rules etc, and went back after a few weeks and took the written test. Passed, and got the permit. Then I went driving with a friend of mine, in his truck, and compared to Sweden most cars here are automatic, so driving that truck was pretty easy. I practiced with him, maybe 3-5 times.
Then W was going to teach me how to drive his car, that I later bought when he moved. Well, his (now mine) is a manual, and I remember up at my summer house in northern Sweden when my dad tried to teach me, for fun, on one of the back roads how to drive....that just did not work for me. Driving with W didn't really work that great either, and I stalled out almost every time I got to a stop. Then W moved, and I asked another friend of mine to drive me to the driving school because I booked a session (which is way cheaper here compared to Sweden). The car I was driving there was an automatic, I don't even think they have manuals at the driving school. At the end of the session my teacher said:
-well to bad you didn't sign up for the drivers test because I think you would have passed!
He went on to his next customer and I tried to schedule a new appointment for the test. But that was tricky, my schedule didn't quite align and by the time we were almost done with everything the teacher came back and said that he had some extra time if I wanted to take test. So I did, and I passed and then I had a drivers license, and a manual car that I didn't quite know how to drive.
I taught myself how to drive the manual by doing my errands very very early in the morning, or late in the evening, and today I have no issues driving any car!
When you go out in the field you drive a truck, so next step was getting used to drive a truck. Driving the field truck turned out to be really easy, and fun, also this truck is super old! Every time we go out in the field we also use ATVs to get around from one end of the watershed to another, and these can be tricky to drive in uneven terrain if you have a lot of stuff on them.
However, today I had to go out into the field and the truck I was given is a real "monster" truck, a "spaceship" it's literally taller than me. It's scary to be near other cars in it, I mean in the parking lot, backing up and turning because it's hard to see where the rear end is. In the end though it's just another vehicle and once you get used to it, it's like riding a bike.
