Sped

I  have that new mouth guard I've been trying--I think it's a little big for my jaw, and it's hurting my gums in some spots.  But it did warn me that the first few nights that might happen, so I'm trying to give it the benefit of the doubt.  I'd rather have sore gums than lose my teeth by 45, so I'll keep trying to find something that works.

I met the guys at Mexican for lunch, brought Kaylee home some food for a few minutes, then went out to the airport for the day.  We just did airport stuff.  Run up the PT, Steve and I flew the RG around after it got a lot of work done at Muncie including becoming ADS-B compliant, so I stole Nathan's miniPad and tested out the ADS-B traffic and weather (worked great). 

Steve and I went to dinner, and Kaylee originally said she didn't want to go, then changed her mind when I got to the restaurant, so I ran home and picked her up, and we had a nice family dinner out.  Afterwards she and I made a stop, ran home, and she requested that I run her out to a parking lot to practice her first driving lesson.  It was 10:15 at night, but...why not.  She wanted to be somewhere that nobody would see, and brought up her former school's parking lot.  Not a bad idea--the parking lot is good-sized, not a lot of obstacles, and there's no way to see who is in it when driving past.  So we did.

We started off with a tour of the car, how to work the mirrors, what the buttons were.  Explained the gears, practiced shifting gears with the foot on the brake.  Practiced letting of the brake, letting it roll, stepping on the brake.  Practiced driving around the parking lot with no gas pedal--just off the brake, and it would coast.  Went ahead and added the gas pedal in, practicing accelerating and easing off of it then braking.  And she picked it up fast enough that I started throwing in some other stuff.  I had her do a weave pattern, even get into some pretty tight turns, accelerate through some turns, brake and then accelerate through turns.  No problem.  I had her put it in reverse, swerve back and forth a bit, then straighten it out and back up in a straight line...which she did.  We parked in a couple of slanted parking spaces, figuring out the spacing and getting parallel with the lines and such.  There are a couple of tighter round-about turns there, and she was looking through the turn, not right off her nose, was nice and smooth...seriously, she did great. By the end she was maneuvering around the parking lot in a fashion where it shows she really needs to be able to get somewhere with more room where she can pick up more speed and practice actual driving.  I wish I had a set of controls on my side for that though.  

As she relaxed and did great, she said "I feel like a real teenager now!"  But the one I loved the most...she was asking about how fast she could take turns, so I was having her do them at different speeds, and one of them that was a little faster, you could feel yourself tilt a little, and she rolled out of the turn, laughed, and said "You know, Mom, my foot went looking for a rudder pedal right then.  We really needed to coordinate that turn."  Yes ma'am.  :)  :)

She drove for almost an hour in that parking lot, and finally the bathroom called, and it was past 11 pm, and it was time to go home, well accomplished.  That was actually pretty fun.  I wanted to take a picture of her sitting over there, but it wouldn't have been right.  Another time.  She looks both awful young and awful grown up at the same time over there...