M2 License
My plastic M2 license has finally arrived in the mail! Finally I can quit carrying around these various “photo ID only” driver’s licenses and the dumb paper forms that stick out of my wallet funny.
I have two nearly identical invalid licenses now, though, because when I went in to get a temporary motorcycle permit to take the course they said “oh, no, your license says ‘AVENUE’ and we need it to say ‘AVE’, that’ll be 17 dollars for a new card please”, and then they mailed me a replacement plastic license which arrived about three weeks before this new one did. Now that I have a GM2 license, the G-class AVE card is no longer valid. Oh well — more ice scrapers I guess.
Anyway, now I can officially ride a motorcycle at night, go on 400-series highways, and carry a passenger. And that sort of terrifies me, because I don’t in any way feel confident enough in my skills to do any of those things yet. I plan to spend at least another couple of days puttering around at low speed in the neighborhood or the college parking lot…like I said in the earlier post, it takes a surprising amount of coordination to effectively control the engine and handle the motorcycle at the same time. And that’s coming from someone who drives a standard* and commutes by bicycle.
Can’t do any of that without a motorcycle, though! To Kijiji I go…I’ve heard good things about older Honda CBs. A CB350 would be just perfect, I think:
*Why is it still called a standard? I’d say about 90% of North American cars have automatics in them. And now we have cars with CVTs and planetary gears and odd gas-electric hybrid drivetrains…I imagine the term is going to get really confusing to teenagers learning to drive in the future when a “standard” is something only old, rare classics have any more.
good to know some of us still have parents who require the ability to operate a standard!