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Published: July 16th 2008
Driving Miss Daisy.
Greasin' up. Urrrggghhh !After a lazy Saturday spent recovering from the July 4th celebrations by simply taking a leisurely ride up the beach for a spot of lunch and very little else I deemed Sunday to be another day of exploration and decided there was no better place to check out than the adjoining neighbourhoods of Santa Monica and Venice Beach, forty five minutes drive north of Long Beach. The two areas, in particular the eclectic and vibrant Venice, are recognized as two of Los Angeles main must see attractions as much for the eccentric variety of their inhabitants, an assortment of muscle men (and women), fortune tellers, street entertainers and the general arty farty set as anything else. Time for a spot of one of my favourite past times, people watching.
I’d been told that due to parking restrictions in and around the beaches the best bet would be to load the bikes into the Jeep, park up on the outskirts of Santa Monica and head for the sea front so after somehow squeezing the two bikes into the back and at the same time managing to reproduce perfect tyre treads all over
Driving Miss Daisy.
Santa Monica Boulevard the pristine ceiling of the Jeep we headed north.
On arrival in Santa Monica I dropped Phil at an outdoors store in order that he could purchase a walking stick to replace his now redundant crutches whilst I found somewhere to park and then we saddled up and headed for the famous pier. I was disappointed to see him emerge from the store carrying a modern, spindly retractable thing that resembled a car aerial with a tiny corked handle that would fold up to the size of a ruler. I’d told him to get a thick wooden one with knots and a horses head just like Albert and the Lion but he’d short sightedly chosen practicality ahead of style.
The beach between Venice and Santa Monica, much like many in Southern California is equipped with a winding, snaking concrete cycle/skate path that bisects the sand and after cycling the three miles or so south as far as Muscle Beach at the southerly end of Venice, we walked back up through the market stalls, entertainers and general freakfest that lines Ocean Front Walk. Although the place was teeming with tourists and day trippers much like ourselves it was still
Driving Miss Daisy.
Hooters. Delightfully tacky yet unrefined. people watching of the highest order, especially around the open air gym area where an assortment of freaky greased up bodybuilder’s were warming themselves in preparation for a demo of their pecs and glutes to a grandstand of observers and after three wonderfully entertaining hours we headed back to Santa Monica and grabbed some lunch in Hooters, a national institution diner style eatery where the scantily dressed waitresses gave the impression that the one and only pre requisite for gaining employ is neither academic qualifications nor glowing personality, purely possession of a chest that gives the impression of defying gravity. We headed back to Long Beach not having seen anything of Venice’s famous inland streets and waterways leaving us more than enough reason to return pretty soon.
Wednesday was D Day on the driving front, 9:30am the allotted time for the second part of earning the right to have yet another credit card sized piece of paraphernalia to bulk up my wallet, the California practical driving test. Remembering recent past brushes with American protocol I arrived early and waited patiently in the car park before driving up and joining the line of cars queuing to sign in at the
Driving Miss Daisy.
Another form of constabulary transport. hole in the wall.
I was waiting fifth in line for the fun to start when an angry looking, hefty woman who bore more than a passing semblance to Bella Emberg came marching into sight sporting a clipboard under her arm and a face like thunder. Whatever it was that was making her look so damned miserable I have no idea but I thanked my lucky stars that the luck of the draw hadn’t paired me with her as she carried out a few checks of the mechanics of the car at the front of the queue before squeezing in the passenger door and departing. Twenty five minutes later and I still hadn’t reached the front of the queue but my documents had been checked, I was relieved I’d actually remembered everything and I was all set to go.
Another instructor came out, spoke a few words to the driver of the vehicle in front, checked the lights and indicators were working then said something else. In response the drivers arm protruded through the window and proceeded to go through a series of what at the time seemed unnecessarily complicated manouevres.
“Shit” I exclaimed aloud. Hand signals,
Driving Miss Daisy.
Voodoo skulls at Venice. of course. They surely must have been included in the DMV booklet that I’d looked at for all of ten minutes in Palm Springs but they certainly weren’t on the pages that I’d viewed and if one thing was guaranteed it was that they would differ completely to ours in the UK. To have been the same would have been just too simple. The only logical signal for a left turn must surely be an outstretched arm but what of right turn and slowing down ? With no option for 50/50 or ‘ask the audience’ I reached for my phone and called Phil.
Thankfully after three rings he answered and without introduction I blurted out my question.
“What’s the hand signal for turning right ?”
It was obvious from his delayed reaction that he wasn’t aware of the answer, he was in the office in a meeting and I heard him enter into conversation with whoever he was with and obviously unaware I was just seconds from my test a casual and leisurely discussion on all the possible alternatives ensued. In a bid to hurry him up I interrupted and asked again.
The conferring stopped and
Driving Miss Daisy.
Garden buddha at Venice Beach. like the captain of a University Challenge team Phil spoke. “We think it’s turning your arm with your finger pointing to the ground” was his less than convincing reply. If Bamber was around he'd have offered it straight to the other team.
“Okay, thanks”. I hung up and then immediately realized that in the panic of making the call whilst at the same time ensuring an examiner hadn’t crept up on me I’d neglected to ask about slowing down and it was only when I tried to picture what his answer actually translated to mean that I realized I had no idea whatsoever. Turning your arm which way ? And at what angle ? The car in front hadn’t yet departed so I reached for the phone again and called Rainer, he’d only passed his test a month or so earlier so surely must remember
“What’s the signal for right turn”
I’d obviously caught him unaware’s. “Shit dude” he replied in his strong Sev Afrikken brogue, “I din’t remember”. Having given him a few seconds to think about it I asked again and he replied, again unconvincingly, that he thought it was left arm out and bent
Driving Miss Daisy.
Tarzan second home at Venice Beach at the elbow to point at the sky but quickly added that he wasn’t sure and that he’d check on the DMV web site and call me straight back.
“I’m about to go so if I don’t answer you’ll know you’re too late”. At that instance the car in front started to depart and I was suddenly in poll position. In response to a simple question I’d had two answers that would be physically impossible to place any further apart. Was I about to become the first person in history to fail a driving test without even moving ?
By now it had gone ten, over half an hour since my scheduled start time. I’ve driven a car for over twenty five years yet strangely felt nervous, as much for the inconvenience failing would entail as for the embarrassment and the confusion and uncertainty created by the two phone calls had frayed the nerve endings a little further. Then, in the passenger side mirror out of the corner of my eye I noticed movement behind, focused and felt my heart sink. Bella Emberg, no doubt fresh from issuing a fail to the poor girl who’d departed with her
half an hour earlier was returning for her next victim, me.
My fingers fumbled with the controls as she stopped alongside my window and when I finally managed to wind it down I attempted to greet her with a friendly, happy face. She was having none of it.
“Your Papers?” she snapped in a voice that smacked of Roseanne Barr at her most whiney.
I handed her the paper clipped papers given to me by the altogether happier lady at the glass window who’d even gone as far as to wish me good luck and she scanned through them before holding her arm out with my tattered UK licence in her hand.
“I don’t want that” she hissed almost throwing it into my lap. This was going to be tough.
After checking my wipers, lights and signals were all working satisfactorily she hit me with the million dollar question.
“What are your hand signals?”
I hesitated for a split second waiting for her to be more specific. I could quickly have issued one internationally recognisable hand signal in her general direction but thankfully resisted.
“There are three hand signals, left turn, right
Driving Miss Daisy.
Paddleball at Venice. turn and slowing down, what are they ?”
I stretched my arm out of the window wishing it was a foot longer so that I could have poked her right in the eyes. “Left turn” I announced, confident I was right but realizing at the same time that that was it, my options were exhausted. I had no further ideas. Phil and Reiner’s answers were as different as chalk and cheese but for some reason that I am still not sure I chose Phil’s, almost certainly because it would be a lot easier to blame my failure on advice given by the RVP as opposed to the office intern. The problem was I wasn’t even sure how his answer should have been interpreted and I ended up performing a mixed impression of an injured swan trying to take to the air and a feeble imitation of Ricky Gervais’s infamous ‘The Office’ dance routine flapping my arms around uncontrollably in the hope that one of the movements could be construed as the correct one. Bella’s reaction totally knocked the stuffing out of me. Instead of remaining impassively silent or even making a derogatory sarcastic remark both of which would have
been preferable she simply let out a short nasal laugh, not a laugh of happiness or amusement but one of total contempt, as though here was one more simple lamb to her slaughter. It got worse.
As she struggled with her seat belt to get into the seat next to me the deathly silence was interrupted by the loud shrill ringing of my phone. I hadn’t yet started the motor so technically I could still have answered it but didn’t think that having Rainer shout the answer to the hand signal question I’d just dismally failed would have gone down too well. I ignored it praying for the answer phone to kick in with each ring.
She gave me some short sharp instructions and told me to start the vehicle and proceed straight ahead unless she stated otherwise. I put the car into drive gear, removed the handbrake, drove along the edge of the building and turned left as instructed at the end, all the while powered solely by the automatic gear of the Jeep. As I turned into the corner she let out a loud yelp.
“Sir, you must slow down. You are in a car
Driving Miss Daisy.
Voodoo skulls at Venice. park, there may be pedestrians”.
WTF. My foot had barely touched the accelerator, I couldn’t have been traveling faster than 5mph and she was yelling at me to slow down. This was going to be tough. Throughout the test which lasted about fifteen minutes I proceeded at all times within the relevant speed limits including a 200 metre stretch within coned road works where a 25mph restriction had been placed. Driving at 25mph in heavy traffic seems slow enough but when there’s nothing in front or behind it appears walking pace and the 200 metre stretch seemed to last forever in total silence.
On three separate occasions she screamed at me to slow down and warned me that I was losing control of the vehicle. Balderdash. Then there was the reversing. She ordered me to pull over and then to reverse. Looking over the right shoulder whilst reversing is alien to drivers familiar with sitting on the right hand side for as long as I have but I hadn’t moved back more than six foot and had barely moved away from the kerb when she squealed slapping her hand on the dashboard at the same time “Sir, you’re
Driving Miss Daisie.
Cannibal. Urgghh. He was campaigning for, of all things, vegetarianism. veering from the kerb. Stop.”
It was all I could do to contain myself from questioning her decisions in a manner that would at best have seen me receive an automatic ban, at worst spend a few months in the slammer. She told me to reverse again and I did so in a straight line six inches from the kerb using just the nearside door mirror.
Finally we pulled to a halt outside the test centre. I sat waiting for her to tell me I’d failed but for a good ten seconds she just scribbled comments on the assessment paper and then spoke.
“Sir, you’re borderline, you drive much too fast, you lost control of the vehicle several times, you corner far too wide and you’ve got to watch all these things. I’m going to let them go but you gotta be more careful”. With that she handed me the assessment paper and without so much as a by your leave started to get out.
“Thanks very much” I called after her struggling to contain my elation but she’d already gone without a word, eager to strike the fear of God into the next unsuspecting poor
Driving Miss Daisy.
Phil finds a home from home. 'Til we found it didn't sell beer. soul in the line. The assessment paper had fifteen different strikes through, obviously for things that she deemed incorrect and I noticed the maximum allowed before being classed a failure was fifteen. It appeared I really was borderline. One of the strikes was for not looking over the shoulder to reverse (I thought that was what mirrors were for), four were for excessive speed and three were for cornering too wide losing control of the vehicle in the process. A further two large circles perhaps nut surprisingly signified unfamiliarity with hand signals.
In the six weeks or so since I’ve been out here I have witnessed at least ten separate incidents of people standing at the side of the road in the process of sorting out papers following a collision, seen two actually occur, have been hit myself in a car park and have seen cars too numerous to mention sporting memorabilia of a previous bump. I feel as though I’m (now) a competent driver and I just hope that somewhere, someday I come across Bella again when she is behind her own wheel, just to see what action she takes to deal with a seemingly out of control
Driving Miss Daisy.
Hilda Ogden eat your heart out. SUV attempting to ram her off the road !!!.
Footnote: Changing the subject completely this week I received an e mail from a subscriber to this blog who shall remain nameless who I originally met on my six month round the world trip. They were writing to inform me of their decision to unsubscribe to this blog and I quote "........ whilst I know you are a good person and don't have ill intentions (no, none at all), I am struggling with your references to other cultures (oops). I would NEVER say you are racist (thank God for that) but some of the words are insensitive and there's definitely some sterotype's in there". If there's anyone else reading who has been offended by anything written in these blogs then I truly apologise, it's just that white socked, baseball capped, tobacco chewing, banjo plucking, yee harring, hillbilly red necks are so stereo typical. !!!
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Very entertaining.Hilda Ogden.Bella Emberg.Albert and The Lion.These references mean that anybody under the age of forty has no idea what you're talking about. Looking at the drive test sheet I realized that Helena would have failed miserably just in the short time it took to drive me to Alfie's Cafe yesterday.Send Bella over to sort her out! Oh yeah,and tell her to bring the girl from Hooters over with her - almost as good looking as Clare,my new Saturday Kid.Cheers!