What a way to celebrate my 200th post. Ow yah… by passing my G2 exit…
For those who don’t know, here in Canada, we are on a “Graduated Licensing System” That is, you have to go through levels of licenses before you are “fully” licensed. Each province have slightly different requirements, but they’r eall pretty much the same. The first license possible, which you can get here in Ontario at the age of 16, is the G1 – what some people may know as a Learners Permit. To drive with a G1, you need to be with a fully licensed driver who has had at least 4 years of experience. In order to get your G1, all you need to do is a written exam.
Next in the chain is the G2 license. Which allows you to drive by yourself with some restrictions: Absolutely Zero blood-alcohol level (which implies that some people can drive after drinking… mroe on that later), can’t have more people in the car than seat belts (again implies that you can have more people in the car with a different license… more on thatl ater)… But the most important thing there is that for the first 6 months, G2 drivers who are under 19 can only carry 1 passanger in the car at a time. To get to the G2, you need to do a G1-Exit Road Test, also know as the “City Test”. Which you can do either after 1 year with G1, or after 8 months if you have a driving school certificate.
Alright, we get to me. The final level – that is the full license is the G license. They call it that by the way cause the “class” of vehicles that we drive are “G”. Motorcycles are M. E are school buses wityh up to 24 passengers. But the best if the B class, which allows you to drive almost every license class (except A and M). Anyways that’s besides the point cause I don’t plan to drive shcool buses. G is all I need, and possibly M… sometime in the future, when I’m no longer subject to the rules of my parent’s home. LOL.
To get to the G, you need the… whaddayaknow G2-Exit Road Test. Which actually is part “City Test” – like the G1 Exit, but also part “Highway Test”. And of course it’s alot stricter.
Anyway, here’s the deal with my license specifically – and all licenses in general. They expire. Uhuh, of course licenses expire, can’t have em forever. Gotta take a new picture and stuff right. That’s every 5 years. Now let’s count back here now. 5 years expiration, I got my license the day I turned 16… And I’m about to turn 21. Yup my license was about to expire. So this is why it was really urgent for me to get this test. This is the last stipulation (that i’m going to explain… there are others of course) for the G2 license. You need to be fully licensed before your license expires, or else, you get bumped back down to G1. And it has happened. Most recently, to a friend of my who I’m not going to mention, LOL. But you know who you are and you read my blog. So LOL!
Actually it was kind of a good thing – for me that is, not for him – that this happened to my friend, cause it really woke me up. I’ve been procrastinating on my license for so long. To show the length of this procrastination, the first opportunity I had to take my G2-Exit was the summer before I left for Capernwray the first time. Uhm… LOL. that’s 3 years ago now. Then I had the opportunity again pretty much every summer (and Spring, and Fall… just not winter) to do my exam. But nope. Been lazy about it.
So now, here I am sitting, I think it was June or July, when I get this letter from the Ministry of Transportation. It was a reminder of all of that. Then a little later than that, I hear about my friend loosing his license. So yeah, that really got me going – though technically I still procrastinated a little bit. I didn’t book an exam until early August, which meant that today was just about the first opportunity I would have had to do it. Almost exactly 1 month to the day that my license expires.
Phew. So yeah. Horay for me. I’m now a fully licensed driver. And now that that’s done, I’m gonna go renew my license, after I beautify myself a little bit. LOL. My image with the gotee and short hair is officially going to be my image for at least the next 5 years.