Wheels within circles

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

Hunter is learning to drive. So far, we’ve gone “out” twice. The guy has the trained reflexes of a fencer (the only thing that moves faster than the tip of a foil in Olympic athletics is the bullet that comes out of the rifle in shooting sports). I’m not too worried about him killing me, not right off the bat anyway. He’s still got that endless capacity of learning, a less-dense brain with plenty of room for new connections, and he learns really quickly. He’s somewhat less rash than I am, so he’s got to get things down to a ‘T’ before he feels ready for the next step.

My method is simple: We go around the block, first heading east; next time, heading west. Maybe tonight I’ll count the number of times we go around the block. But he gets better every time. I figure we’ll do this for a month or so. Repetition is the key to muscle memory, which is important, as texters-while-driving types point out, but it’s far less important than simply paying attention to surroundings.

After he graduates from the home block, I have a bigger circle in mind that goes from San Mateo Avenue to Cashill Boulevard to Skyline Boulevard to Gibraltar Drive to Chaparral Drive to Hemlock Way to Cashill Boulevard to San Mateo Ave. If he can do this six or seven times, he can start driving us to the bus stop and back home from his mother’s house.

For highway driving, I’m going to do to him what my dad did to me. We’re going to take a long drive. I think my dad made me drive on a fishing trip or vacation or something. Hunter would enjoy a trip to Austin/Berlin-Ichthyosaur, and he could listen to my music the whole time. I of course have ulterior motives to go to Berlin. I just want to see if they left those “Intelligent Design” cards up in the exhibition.