A ride on a motorbike and a trip to the grocery store.

We’ve lived here for over a month and I figured it was time for me to have my first ‘official’ motorbike driving lesson. Nathan’s been driving me around since he basically is a professional motorbike driver, and I feel very comfortable and content with him being my chauffeur. However, I knew I needed to learn, and I’m a firm believer in doing things that scare me, so tonight I took control of the wheel (handlebars?).

Charlotte, Charmander, Charcey (after the one and only Charcey Peterson)– look how beautiful it is! So beautiful I had to post this picture in two separate blogs;)

My main issue with driving is that when I want to brake, I pull the throttle (look at that terminology! Just kidding, I had to ask Nathan). So, I’ll see a little truck cutting me off and I’ll say, “Hm, I should stop so I don’t hit the mini truck.” and then I pull the throttle and rocket towards the mini truck, and then I 100% panic and pull the brake and jolt to a stop. Graceful, right?

Anyways, we went to a section of the city with big, wide roads and very little traffic. I took a couple of warm up runs down the street and around the roundabout. I’m also pretty bad at turning, so I would just keep going around the roundabout until I felt comfortable with turning. I thought I was getting pretty good, driving 25 mph you know? That’s like decently fast. And then I realized things are in kilometers here, so I was basically going 15 mph. Confidence crushed. After a while, Nathan and another friend encouraged me to venture out from the one street I had been on. I decided to go for it. I found a slightly busier (but still very empty) road and then I turned right onto a little bit busier street. Long story short- I ended up on a highway driving across a bridge not knowing where I was headed. I (surprisingly) didn’t cry. All that was running through my head was, “Hm, there’s a sign. Wish I could read it.” or “I wonder what that circle sign with a big red ‘X’ means”. I executed a u-turn perfectly and got on the highway coming back towards where I started. All was well until I needed to make a left turn across the highway. I kept getting scared and so I just kept going farther and farther away the other direction. Soon enough I had another truck that was turning left so I followed it back on the highway towards my starting point… except I was on the truck/bus/car side of the highway. Here, the highways are split up with big vehicles on one side and motorbikes on the other side of a median. I was on the wrong side. I think at this point I just drove as fast as I could and refused to look in any direction besides right in front of me. If I was about to get hit by a big ol’ truck, I didn’t want to know.

Well, I made it back in one piece. Nathan admitted he was getting worried about me. I told him I slightly considered pulling over and texting him that I was okay, but my phone was in the seat of my bike and I wasn’t sure I would know how to open it. Needless to say, Nathan drove us home and all was well. I’m sure I’ll get back on the bike sometime, but I am much more comfortable riding on the back (unless Nathan hightails it over a speed bump).

In other news, we are getting better at grocery shopping! Our first trip we brought significantly less money than we thought, meaning we had to put back things from our cart (tears may or may not have been shed). The next trip I got so overheated and hadn’t eaten enough so I really thought I was going to pass out for a hot second. This last trip was very uneventful, but I did find some *interesting* things.