Well, I just wanted to say that I rented my first car today (I just got my license recently); I drove from Manhattan to Nyack, NY (gorgeous town on the Hudson), I didn’t mean to drive to Nyack - I was supposed to go to Cold Spring, NY, but somehow I ended up on the Tappanzee bridge and ended up in Nyack. It’s real pretty there. We walked by Helen Hayes/Rosie O’Donnell’s old house and had lunch at a haunted house/restaurant.
I almost got me and my friend killed taking a hairpin turn at 55/60mph with a solid brick wall against us on the FDR Dr N. - Thank God I steered all good-like.
What’s the deal with “merging” on a highway anyway? I mean, like, yer supposed to accelerate to merge, yet pray that there’s a gap in traffic to merge into, but if people aren’t yielding, you have to friggin-well slow down and pray for a gap in traffic. Am I missing something here?
Congratulations! I don’t think that I would like to learn to drive in NYC, but I actually did learn up in Rockland County. I used to live in Nyack, and my parents are still in that area (Nanuet).
Oh, and, yes, definitely speed up to merge…people will let you in usually. Don’t hesitate on the on ramp or else you will confuse other drivers and that can be unsafe.
Have fun, and say hi to NYC and Nyack for me. Too late for the autumn colors up at Bear Mountain, I guess. Happy Thanksgiving.
But I’ll be a new-monkey-driver’s-UNCLE before I’ll EVER drive in Manhattan. No way. Riding while other people drive in Manhattan is terrifying enough. :eek:
Ohmigod, Lola, you must be the driving goddess. I’ve been driving over 2 years now, and I would never never never drive through Manhattan! Although nobody here uses turn signals, either.
HAH! My mother is driving like 30 years, and SHE won’t drive there. I tell her parts of Brooklyn and Queens are worse (stop signs, not lights, like at most Manh corners). People get it in their heads…
Lola:
Avoid Columbus Circle. Times Square is cake in comparison.
Uh… you were going to Cold Spring? Like Cold Spring Harbor, or are there 2? You meant to go east and went north? And they say GUYS won’t ask directions…
Oh, and MAKE a place to merge on the highway. For places with short merge lanes (14th onto FDR is like 4’ long) I recommend RPGs.
I learned to drive in NYC. Did my driving test in Red Hook, even. I wouldn’t drive in Manhattan even if a whole herd of crazed monkeys was beating me with sticks.
As my driving teacher used to tell me: “Just remember that half the drivers on the road are homicidal, and the other half are suicidal.”
Merging in NY sounds similar to merging in MN; no one will let you on the damn highway.
I’ve driven in Manhattan once. Going in was easy (7 AM on a Sunday). Getting back out was nuts. Those crazy New Yorkers make their own lanes! We were driving from Battery Park to the nearest tunnel (crap can’t remember the name); the street is four lanes wide, two in each direction. There were SIX lanes of cars. No shoulder. Three cars in a space where two should go.
lurkernomore, not ONLY did I go through Columbus Circle, but I also hit every frigging’ square down Broadway! Times, Herald, Madison, Union!
And there is a Cold Spring, NY upstate on the Hudson River in addition to Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island. It’s accross the river from the West Point Military Academy and not too far from that nuclear reactor. :eek:
You ought to drive around the bay area sometime; apparently the speed limit here is however fast the car goes when you press the pedal all the way down. Merging was a little tricky for me when I learned how to drive.
But all in all, congradulations! I was 20 when I got my license; I thought everyone else had a license but me, but my best friend got his a year after I did so it puts it into prespective for me.
I just got my license too (I’m 38 years old, but until recently was an NYC resident relying on mass transit). I may drive my family to Goshen for Thanksgiving, if I don’t chicken out about driving on the Garden State Parkway and the NYS Thruway. Congrats on the trip to Nyack!
