The ultimate driving test

Being part of a convoy is a good test of your driving skills. No, let me qualify - driving as part of a presidential convoy. It's a crazy experience but very thrilling if you manage to survive it.

We're three girls. But somehow we all got it in our head that when we're old enough we would learn to drive. It is a useful skill, after all.

As a kid, I would observe my father when he was driving. It looked easy enough when you're not doing it.

Hold the wheel, work the gear, shift your feet from gas to clutch to brakes. Easy! Until you finally sit behind the wheel yourself. An aspiring driver misses a crucial step that is part of driving - keep your eyes on the road.

Driving lessons

When told that we wanted to learn to drive, Dad agreed on one condition: we must enroll in a driving school. In short, he was not going to teach us.

Later on, I understood his refusal to be the driving instructor of his children. It can be quite nerve-wracking (no matter how composed you are) to give these lessons to a family member when you're out on the road and any manner of mishaps may occur.

He'd rather pay for seven days of lessons then take us practice driving once we complete the course to help us improve our skills than to actually teach us the basics.

I have cousins, guys of course, who learned to drive by themselves. Well, the youngest uncle would agree to teach them using a very sturdy owner-type jeep.

Initially, they'd go around the compound, just driving forward and backward, while making sure the engine never dies. When you're working with something as heavy as a jeep with very hard pedals and gear, by the time you get the hang of it, you'd be good to go on an actual road with other vehicles.

Of course, during those days traffic was relatively light and roads weren't as wide as they are today. A lot of the time, you even have to drive on rough roads, and that takes as much skill as maneuvering on a six-lane highway.

Anyway, it was driving school for me. Every day my father would ask me how the lesson went, how my city driving experience was and if I learned something new.

We're lucky to be living in a private subdivision with hardly any traffic, save for residents coming and going, which was just early in the morning and early in the evening.

So, there was a small window when Dad can test my new driving skills without being interrupted by other vehicles. I knew it was a proud moment for us both when I was able to drive several hundred meters without the engine dying on me.

Longer drives

Later, we progressed to him letting me drive the provincial highway when we went to Laguna. He'd carve 30 minutes to an hour of his time so we could drive out on the highway to check if I got nervous when on some open space.

It could be quite disconcerting when there are speeding provincial buses and jeepneys on the road with you. I'd often drench my back with sweat after those driving tests with Dad.

Eventually, I got enough practice to improve not only my skills but my confidence more importantly.

Two years after I was driving like a pro, with no record of violations and no accidents either. Hooray! And when we traveled to Laguna, my father was confident enough to let me drive all the way through and back.

Although I started working at 21, it was only during my newspaper stint that I would sometimes take the car to work, particularly to the presidential palace, when I had very early schedules or very late nights.

So, there was this one time when the president's schedule was quite early and just near my house. It seemed a waste of time to travel all the way across town only to come back to the venue which was so close to home.

Presidential convoy

I decided to drive to the venue and meet the rest of the press corps there. At this point I had not decided to drive to the press office with everyone else. But when I learned the rest of the schedule was packed and we had to work quickly after returning from the first event, I quickly made up my mind to join the convoy.

Here's the thing with presidential convoys: it travels very, very fast. The objective is to keep the president on the road in the least amount of time. That's why traffic officers on motorcycles hold up traffic in streets with minimum inconvenience and clear the streets so the convoy can drive by as fast as possible.

It's for security reasons. The longer the president is traveling, the harder it is to keep her safe from whatever threats. Usually, the security group wants travel limited to less than 30 minutes.

One of my colleagues offered to ride with me instead of going back with the press bus. Right after the event, we had to rush to the car and position ourselves in the convoy.

Because we're not a member of the security group or palace team, we had to be in the convoy's tail-end, which can be quite dangerous. The danger is getting boxed out or left behind.

At that point, I was quite confident about my driving skills, and my vehicle's road-worthiness.

We informed security aides that we would be joining the convoy and were instructed to take our position before the ambulance and last security vehicle, which is taking up the rear.

And so the convoy started and made its way back to the palace. And here I learned that you need a lot of courage to be part of their convoy. It meant driving very fast, almost crazy sometimes, to keep up with all the cars.

If I slowed down, there was a chance some lunatic would try to insinuate their vehicle in the convoy and box me out (happens many times). The thing with traffic police is that anyone trying to come near the convoy would be swept away by the motorcycle-riding patrol.

Five minutes or so after we left, I decided to get as close to the press bus as possible and they were about fifth in the order of vehicles. I had never driven as crazily as I did then, trying to overtake other vehicles in the convoy, but I made it.

For a while, the security guys were shooing me away so I had to flash my press card (while speeding along) to indicate I was with the group. They let me in, and I just had to keep up, driving at 70 to 80 kph.

After about 20 minutes on the road, we were finally entering the gates heading to the press office. I could only breathe a huge sigh of relief as I pulled into the parking lot and shut off the engine.

I survived!

It was nerve-wracking having to keep pace with such skilled drivers and I've never been more grateful that I was trained well and had nerves of steel as well as presence of mind to accomplish what I did.

Images: Unsplash