Alaskan Bush People father Billy Brown may have taken on the wilderness of Alaska without flinching, but he may have met his match with this new adventure — teaching son Gabe to drive.
The 28-year-old Discovery reality star explains in a clip from Sunday’s all-new episode that while he captained watercraft before in the family’s Alaskan homestead, he’s never driven a car, which has become a necessity in the Browns’ new Washington home.
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“I’ve driven boats and stuff before, you know, I’m good with a skiff,” Gabe tells the cameras after his first driving lesson. “I’m thinking, ‘I can handle this car, like it’s not that big of a deal.’ But then I get in, and I don’t know what anything does.”
Billy looks a little more worried than when the lesson first begins when Gabe begins to ask him where the gas and brake pedal are, joking that “the object is to keep the front of this car on the road” when Gabe starts off shakily.
Despite not knowing what he’s doing, Gabe is pretty determined to eschew a slow start and go pedal to the metal from the get-go, alarming his dad due to the number of drop-offs and dangerous territory that has become their driving lesson course.
“Getting in the car with Gabe is kind of a life threatening situation,” Billy tells the cameras, “and you know, we’re not a parking lot. We’re on roads that have cliffs, and there’s not a lot of room for mistake, and he’s got an inherent thing— he wants to go fast.”
As the car weaves on and off the dirt path leading to the Browns’ temporary settlement, Billy points out, “That’s a drop-off cliff over there. Don’t mess with it. I do not wanna go down there.”
Gabe explains why he’s struggling to adapt to the much different controls of a car, saying the steering on the family’s truck is much more sensitive than that of a boat. “Cars and boats drive a lot alike in the way that you have a mechanism that turns them,” he says, smiling. “But a ship’s wheel [you turn a lot], and it will start to move a little, and in a car you [move it a little] and it goes. So it’s hard to kind of gauge that.”
The two emerge from the lesson unscathed, but coming pretty close to the tents the Brown family is staying in as they construct a new home. Will there be a lesson number two? Or will Gabe have to stick to walking in Colorado?
Alaskan Bush People airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on Discovery.
Photo credit: Discovery
