Yesterday, I took my class five road test at 3:15 PM; also known as rush hour. After waiting a while reading the paper, I got called up and introduced myself as “Cloud”. My examiner introduced himself as “Rob” so we got the ball rollin’ immediately, stepping outside and towards my bright yellow car. He noted upon entering that the interior was squeaky clean, thanks to the 303 Aerospace Protectant I applied a couple weeks ago. Score! Bonus points! Detailing really is addictive.
We rolled out, after mirror checking, shoulder checking, and checking everything throroughly, and I promptly let the clutch out too quickly and almost stalled on the crosswalk. Haha, thankfully I didn’t though. Turning onto Boundary, the light changed yellow just before I entered the intersection at a low speed, and I hit the brake for a second but realized it was too late and kept going. So at this point I’m getting pretty nverous. Completing the turn brought us right into a brutal traffic jam, on the big hill passing under the grandview highway.
Upon stopping and shifting into neutral waiting in line for the light to change, he pointed out that I could just leave the car in gear, and keep my foot on the clutch. So I’m thinking, okay, I’ll do that just to humour him this time. Easier said than done! After holding it down for half a minute, my leg started shaking. He obviously either has a much stronger leg than mine, or only drives Hondas with soft, short throw clutches. When we finally got going again, the car rolled back a significant amount, and when I let the clutch out, I got clutch chatter, but luckily not too bad a case. At this point, though, I’m thinking it’s not a very good start to a road test.
Then on Boundary, he tells me to turn left at the next light. Well I signal, but as I approach, notice that there’s a no left turn sign, so I say that and keep going. Then he says okay turn at the next one, and as once again as I approach with my signal going I see that it’s a T intersection, where there’s no street to even turn into! And then he goes “woops, we must have passed it” and I’m thinking, huh… okay. So we take the next left where finally a legal turn can be made, and go around the area at 50 and 30 getting people rather angry. We stopped at a dead end street at one point, and did a three point turn, once again checking all around many times.
Things got better, though. Later we went through the Burnaby Central and deer lake parkway area, which was some easy driving, me being so familiar with it. During hazard perception, though, a guy saw fit to run a stop sign, crossing in front of me where I had no stop sign, and then promptly stopping in the middle of the intersection. I chuckled, and pointed, saying “hazard”. Haha, I think the examiner was rather amused as well, in an ironic way. I took the kensington on-ramp onto #1 highway, going the entire time at 30 km/h. It felt absolutely ridiculous. Memories of flying around that banked spiral on a nice sunny day crossed my mind. I was pretty surprised that the guy behind didn’t honk! But as soon as the lane straightened out, it was hard throttle all the way, taking third gear to 4500 rpm, which I generally don’t do (yes, I know, I granny it 
). Exiting was a much bigger headache. He made me take the willingdon north exit, where there’s no merging lane, just an abrupt entrance to the street with cars flying down, off the bridge in a hurry. I waited until there was a very large gap, just to be sure.
So that route brought me back to the licensing centre, where he told me I passed, I got my picture taken, shook his hand, and went off happily!
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