Reverse

I am going to admit something that bothers me a bit. I have been driving for, oh, 25 years now, and I haven't mastered backing up. This bothers me because I consider myself a capable driver, and let's face it, an all-around capable person. But I just can't seem to back up without the odd incident.

Tonight I was leaving my friend Diana's and ended up in the ditch. In my defense, her driveway is dark and a bit sketchy (sorry Di), and she did say I wasn't the first to end up there. I drive a VW camper van, which is long and not the easiest thing to see out the back of. I couldn't really see the gravel/lawn edge I was trying to follow (where are my glasses anyway...), and was fixating on a bush at the end of her driveway. Problem was, I ended up on the wrong side of the bush.

I was starting to feel like something was going horribly wrong, and when I saw Kim, who was leaving at the same time, stop and get out of her car and run over to me, I stopped. Lucky for that, as I was a couple of centimeters from backing off a small embankment at that point which would have done some damage! As it was, instead I was just embarrassingly stuck and had to call a tow truck.

Cowichan Towing to the rescue! The picture is blurry

as I was laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation.

This isn't the first time this has happened. A couple of incidents come to mind; perhaps there's more but I've blocked them out. Almost 20 years ago I was backing out of a boyfriend's driveway and somehow managed to back through the rose garden. Let's just say his mom didn't really take much of a shine to me after that. And about a decade ago, my friend Norm had just moved to Nanaimo into a house nicknamed the "Hammond Bay Hilton", with a driveway that had a steep ditch on either side. Yep, I ended up in that ditch too. At least I didn't need a tow truck that day as my car was small enough for us to push out. There was the time I was towing a trailer full of bark mulch and got stuck at the end of a dead end road. I was rescued by a kid who didn't even have a driver's license but got me turned around.

I've kept this inability well hidden, in fact most people wouldn't even know that this is a problem for me. Last month Jason and I drove my mom's minivan to California. Jason couldn't figure out why I was gushing over the back-up camera! Now he may understand.