He can drive (sort of)
Steve Braunias updates his attempts to learn to drive.
So there I was the other day driving like a beast. I had my foot to the floor and my hands gripped the wheel and I was moving fast, real fast, living out certain basic principles of physics – speed has no direction; velocity is an object's speed in a particular direction. I was at a go-kart track.
My first column this year stated my intention to learn to drive. At 58, I could no longer tolerate my role as one of life's passengers. A friend very kindly gave me driving lessons for two days a few months ago, in Dunedin, in Aramoana, in Milton – I rode that Nissan Maxima through Otago like a man discovering what it means to be set free. I was set free of myself. All my life I've thought of myself as someone lame, someone not up to scratch. Not being able to drive was proof. It formed my character and shaped my destiny. But for two days that bleak perception began to alter. Driving was a kind of regime change. I didn't know who I was anymore. Good.
That set into motion more or less exactly nothing. I got back home and asked a couple of people if they'd give me driving lessons in Henderson – I really fancied the idea of ripping along the back streets of West Auckland, one of the great homes of motorsport in New Zealand. Neither came through. One was a so-called friend; the other was Green Party MP Golriz Ghahraman. She used to teach new migrants to learn to drive; I argued the case that I was also a stranger in a strange land, a non-driver in a motoring state, and appealed to her sense of public service.