Driver

Owen got his learner's permit before Christmas 2022 and started on his required 40 hours of driving with some lessons with Grandpa Don. Over the course of the next year and a half, he did hours of professional driving lessons, lots of driving shifts on the way to and from Iowa, plenty of driving from Iowa City to the pond and back, some late night drives back from the Telfair-Cha's (thanks Owen!), and a several hours of intensive parallel parking practice before his first try at the road test. 

He had finished all the required hours so we scheduled a test before he left for Stanford. Owen drove us over to the DMV and instructor confirmed he could use our car (the parking brake requirements weren't entirely clear). The first thing they had him do was parallel park between two sets of cones in the DMV parking lot. It turns out all the practicing we did regarding real world parallel parking conditions wasn't quite what we needed to prepare Owen for the DMV requirements: you can only reverse once and pull forward once during your attempt, and the cones and cement block didn't quite provide the visual cues Owen had practiced with. Owen was more than 12" from the 'curb' and so the test was immediately terminated and they told him to come back and try again. Just for good measure, I tried parking between the cones and didn't manage to get close enough on my attempt, so it really wasn't easy.

We scheduled another try for the morning after Owen got home from Stanford (wanting to give us enough time for one more try before Iowa if needed). After reviewing a few DMV approved parallel parking tips, Owen was up for another try. This time the instructor told us we couldn't use our car, so Owen had to use one of the DMV cars for his test. I was nervous, but Owen wasn't phased and he nailed the parallel parking on his first attempt. 

Last time they didn't let him try any of the rest of the driving exam, so he wasn't sure what he was in for, but it turned out all he had to do was drive a few blocks around the neighborhood and he was done. We had a little scare when going through the paperwork to verify his 40 hours, it turned out that the 10 hours of night driving didn't count (the 40 hours need to be before 9pm, and the 10 hours of night driving are needed for your full license, not your provisional license), but he was just 30 minutes shy of 40 and the friendly people at the DMV let me add the time he was driving that morning to get him to 40, and we officially have a licensed driver!