STOP!!!

Wednesday 7th March

Yippeeeeee - today I have managed to overcome one of the major requirements which comes with moving to Pennsylvania and acquire the hallowed accolade of a Pennsylvania State driving licence. The state acknowledges reciprocal arrangements with licence holders from France and Germany and citizens of these countries are able to pick up a local licence with nothing more than a by your leave, but for us Brits, we need to partake in the full local rigmorale. Fortunately when arriving Stateside the good citizens of PA allow British alien immigrants to drive on an international licence for 6 months but the clock is certainly ticking to "upgrade" to a local licence before your driving privileges are removed. The test is a two part process with a computer based theory test and the the road test. Having successfully managed the theory test a couple of weeks ago, I arrived for the driving test with two pieces of advice ringing in my ears - do not exceed the speed limit and stop at the stop signs. The instructors are against you from the start since you arrive with. O accompanying local licence holder, simply yourself and a little pink photo card but once the paperwork is done, and the jokes about driving on the "right" side of the road, the testegins. Well, in round 1 I managed to be ejected humiliatingly from the test within 1 minute. Apparently I had ignored the second piece of advice and let the front bumper of our car trickle over the stop sign line before coming to a complete standstill. By tracking the driving test web site I managed to get a cancellation slot for the next day and this time got up at 6.30 am to go and practice my stopping and parallel parking. Round 2 - well I got around the whole test this time but still managed to fail - apparently stop really does mean stop and yet again I didn't. Well, this was now getting on my nerves so I returned for round 3 a couple of days later. All was not looking great wheninstruct inner failed the previous person in 5 minutes and that the whole local road network was in chaos due to a major gas leak, but this time I made it through. Another hurdle tackled.