Driver's License - finally!

I've finally completed my driver's license.

Today I took the final driving exam and all went well as expected.

It was a quite long tale to get a driver's license that began when I first turned 18 (age that you're allowed to drive a car). At that time I only drove small motorcycles and didn't had any money to support a car nor my parents had the conditions to afford buying me one.

As the years went by, I worked in very distant places and public transportation also seemed like the best option since I could use these voyages to work either on train or bus and don't worry about driving for hours.

Last, I've moved to the Azores and even thought I worked and lived at the same city, a car was never essential as everything was perfectly reachable by bus, friend's ride or even walk to where you wanted to go.

I also had several other reasons to avoid driving a car - they're not cheap to maintain and the oil prices make a significant weight on the monthly income.

Ironic my reluctance in driving a car, since kid that I had already collected permits for all kind of vehicles, had my first driving license when I was 12 to be allowed to ride a bike on the city street, later with 16 got my motorcycle license, with 19 I was allowed to jump off airplanes with automatic parachutes, 21 got my license for driving motorcyles above 125cc, with 23 was allowed to drive armored vehicles like artillery tanks and such but never - *ever* - desired to take formal lessons to be allowed to drive a car in the street.

Not driving a car was a personal statement that allowed to do things differently and I had lots of fun this way.

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But this year, many things changed in my life and I can no longer afford to think on my own personal preferences.

Becoming a parent brought many new things needed to take into account like the need of carrying my wife and our kid to wherever they need.

Also, where I work they even enrolled me on the driving course so that I could take this license without any costs so what would be the point in saying no?

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But even thought I am now allowed to drive a car, don't expect to see me buying one anytime soon. For the moment I will only drive my wife's car whenever she needs help, otherwise I'll prefer to keep driving my electric motorbike until I can get enough savings to buy myself an electric car - I don't consider myself an ecologist but I truly hate the thought of depending on gasoline to move around and being forced to spend so much money on this fuel.

It's revolting to think on the millions of people affected by this monopoly so I prefer to be amongst the people who use alternatives - who knows if maybe one day they don't become the main stream trend?

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Next year by September I'll be moving again to main land, maybe then it will be a good occasion to take a trip around a few european countries and show my wife how things outside Portugal look like, she never even visited our neighbor Spain and I'd really enjoy some good vacations finding new places with her.

:)