Burning rubber

Have I mentioned yet that I bought a car ?

Some time ago a friend of mine suddenly calls me, telling me he's buying a new car and has to get rid of his old one. Since I plan to finally(!) get my drivers license, I will need a car to learn how to drive. And so I bought it.

The car is parked behind my house since 31st december. The front-tight tire was flat, so I had to replace it. (I drove the car around in the yard with a flat tire, and really, a car without flat tires is a lot more comfortable).

I spent the better part of sunday afternoon trying to:


After all that, I managed to get the tire of, carry it to the fueling depot across the street and pump up the tire again. Then screwed the wheel back on the car, and everything still worked !
That is so nice.

After a couple laps around the tree in my yard, I tried something different, like starting on a hill and riding backwards up the hill.

Now, I'm not sure if you've ever seen the drive-in to my garage, but it looks something like this:

[img_assist|fid=1017716|thumb=0|alt=6127_large.png]

Steep doesn't even begin to describe it and I wouldn't advise anyone to learn how to start a car on a hill when you are going to practice on such a steep hill.

First of all, I learned to drive with a diesel, not gasoline. The benefit of a diesel engine is that when you are in 1st gear and you press no pedals, the car moves. With a gasoline engine, the engine stalls. That means, if you are on a hill you need to have like 3 feet to do things right.

Anyway, I'm on that hill with noot sitting next to me. He tells me to just release the break and give a lot of gas. So I do just that right ? Right! Don't underestimate the power of first gear, even in reverse. I can still smell the burning rubber from my tires. There is a big black scorch-mark on the drive-way and to top all that, I didn't even get the car up the hill.

Noot and I switched places and he drove it up there (He has about 50 years more experience driving a car anyway)

So what did I learn from all this ? DON'T *EVER* use that hill again to practice starting on a hill.

Besides that, it was fun and I learned how to replace a tire