16 with a G1 License

YIKES! He's SIXTEEN already! Last nite, our family got together to celebrate our nephew's 16th birthday. He also passed his G1 Driver's License, so look OUT Ottawa!

Left - Mike, Alexander, Al & Karen; foreground my mother's husband Wilf, then me.

Back row - Connor, Mom, me and Wilf.

Alexander now has a digital camera to capture his own memories.

Gosh I remember at this age a box camera was what we wished for ... humm think I still have mine boxed away somewhere ... have times changed that quickly? Guess so. No more thick photo albums to find space for, no more negatives to keep track of, just file folders on hard drives and now LCD digital photo frames that one can hang on the wall and watch hourly if one chooses as the memories scroll by.

Now it takes a computer wiiizzzz, endless wires, electrical hook-ups, not nimble fingers that handle negatives or those black triangle sticky corners to hold the pictures in place. That was so simple, wasn't it?

A G1 license, rather than a permit we used to call it, has a whole lot more stipulations and can take 8-10 months before you pass the requirements to graduate to a G2 license. With this G1 the new driver can't drive on roads over 80 k/h (or as we call them in Canada 400 series), not drive between 12 am - 5am (think those are the hours), not carry any passengers other than the G licensed driver training them, nor ever have any alcohol. A big difference from my days, altho I can't agree more with the requirements.

Times are a changing ... just where will we see ourselves in another 20 yrs?