Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Stang
Way back when this geezer got my license (1996), I got taken to a dirt lot near the airport and got to drive in the "skid car". It was basically an old POS and the instructor had a dial that would turn the back wheels, effectively throwing you into a spin/skid. Fun, and actually a good skill to learn in a controlled environment.
The "school" is long gone, but it was "A Driving School" on Parkdale Blvd. There was a discount because one of my teachers at high school was a co-owner or something. Old, wood panelled office/classroom. The old Dodge Shadow that I did my regular lessons in was in horrible condition, and the brakes even went limp going down one of those now-closed roads (because they are so steep) in Crescent Heights heading down to Edmonton Trail, and required frantic pumping to bring them back.
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Sorry - as soon as I remembered the skid car I couldn't stop myself.
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Wow, that brings me back too... I couldn't remember exactly the name of the 'school' I'd done my driver's ed at, but it was in that neck of the woods. The description of "old, wood-panelled office/classroom" definitely matched up. It reeked of cigarette smoke too, like so many other places of business did in those days, haha.
That said rather than having to endure a plebeian Dodge Shadow I had the privilege of 'learning' in a
Neon.
Alas, I did some googling and figured out the driving school I went to was "Foothills Driving School", which was in Montgomery on the corner of Bowness Road and 45th St. Snooping on Streetview shows that they'd moved or gone belly-up some time between April 2009 and May 2012.