Driving

I could not agree more!  I don't have any music accounts whatsoever.....I tend to follow my mood on the day....often just repeating the same track or few tracks throughout a prolonged period.

yes the ability to be able to look in a box, shelf, glove compartment and actually see what's there rather than scrolling through menus.

also the limited amount of tapes in a space makes the decision paralysis less of a thing. how do people use spotify etc, I just look at it and think, wow, virtually everything that's every been released ever, where do I start. sometimes limits are a good thing.

Yea - the 120'S were just too unreliable for me and my equipment at the time.

I still have all my purchased albums from the 1980s and 1990s on cassette.  They are lovely "handable" things to use.

playing it safe with the c90s :) the 120s had a tendency to get chewed up now and again due to the thinner tape and I think (I might be wrong) you got more print-through with them too :)

Now there's a surprise!  Me too.  C90's all the way baby!  Very glad to see you still around Mr Snowman......I am hopeless at "birthing" communications with others, even when I REALLY want to.  Will be in touch.

Automatic restricts you to an automatic car (generally a little bit more expensive) but would make learning an order of magnitude easier. You can always do another test for a manual transmission car later on if needed though and I'd imagine learning in stages might actually be easier than having to deal with it all at once. Electric cars are automatic anyway, so looks like manual transmission will be a thing of the past, possibly in a couple of decades.

It took me ages to learn to drive because I was only doing one lesson a week for an hour and I learn best when left to it, I'm not great with instructions especially not having to take them in whilst driving (which wasn't all muscle memory then). I also had a lot of anxiety about it, found the whole thing very stressful.

Having my own car was great for being able to get about but also for having some space I could be completely on my own, listening to music etc with no body to complain or pester me and obviously it made things a lot easier employment wise. Definitely worth the hassle.

The instructor can make all the difference too. It'd be worth looking for personal recommendations.

If I am driving I can do navigation and driving or talking and driving. If you're talking to me when I'm driving we're going to miss turns etc no end. Chatty passengers are a nightmare. When I'm in unfamiliar territory / complex constant lane change city centres, music has to be turned down too. I don't feel I have the time required to work out what lane I need to be in according to whatever the often ambiguous signage is saying, which leads to a sense of pressure. Doesn't help that other drivers tend to be unforgiving imbeciles who have problems with people needing to change between lanes. Some of the most childish behaviour is that I see of drivers on the roads.

Who ever came up with the idea of marking the intended use of lanes with painted words, on the roads themselves which have cars on top of them most of the time needs a stern talking to too.

Also before the age of the sat nav, remember using the motorways when they're full of HGVs in the nearside lane blocking visibility of the exit signs? The whole system is a design nightmare.

There's a few places on the ring road here there are two lanes to exit the roundabout to go straight on which immediately merge into one lane, the reason for this, obviously, from a traffic engineering perspective is to prevent back pressure on the roundabout which would block up perpendicular flow of traffic however, there are people who exit the roundabout then immediately straddle both lanes to prevent traffic from passing them on their way to the merge point several hundred yards later on. They seem to see this as some sort of queue and people would be "pushing in" as opposed to an intentional design to get traffic clear of the roundabout. IMHO these people should be banned from driving :)

As an overall experience, I'll avoid driving if I can at peak / busy times. It drives me mad having to deal with other people on the roads and the sense of being trapped due to traffic or other people making their own senseless decisions really irritates me.

Anyway, bit of a rant. :)

I took out the failed combo sat nav / cd / radio unit from my car (about 20 years old) and soldered in the cassette deck I'd saved from my first car in the 1990s. Best thing I've ever done. I'm amazed there's not some kind of retro provider still making them, they're the ideal music / radio machine for a car. auto reverse, a few c120s, just push one in and distraction free, reliable music. has anyone had any other tech that's still been running as well as they day you got it that's almost 30 years old?

yes. some of us still have compilation tapes we made in the 1990s :)

Well my car is indeed from the 90s so … :)

Peter said:

some of us still have a tape player

a what? LOL.

the last time I saw one of these in a car was in the 1990s

some of us still have a tape player

Hi would any of mind me asking as parent, how you coped with learning to drive?  My daughter is almost old enough now and I am thinking an automatic car would be easier for her.  She struggles with limb strength for the pedals and may not manage the multitasking of pedals and gears in a manual car.  I would love her to learn as she loves listening to music in my car whilst we go for a drive.  And I feel independence to do this would be so good for her.  At the same time I don’t want to suggest driving it’s just going to end up making her feel worse about herself.  

I try to keep talking to a minimum and focus on the driving and the music I've got playing otherwise I'll get easily overwhelmed with stress.

I found music to be therapeutic, when driving.

Gone back to buying CDs, for that purpose.

NAS87693 said:

Does anyone really concentrate when driving, avoiding chatting to passengers

I only find this an issue when going somewhere new where there is a lot of street signs and traffic to take into account - driving in city centers for example.

With practice I was able to choose what needed to be focussed on for more wel known trips so I could have a conversation with my passanger(s). Then again I've been driving for nearly 40 years so have had ample time to learn.

I certainly did when I started driving. I liked to have music playing at all times to relax me and help me focus too.