Stick Shift Driving

Please laugh-this is meant to be FUNNY!

I cannot say that I never wanted to learn how to drive a stick shift vehicle. From the age of 16-22ish, my brother taught me how to drive them. David loves vehicles and often buys one, fixes it up, then sells it on eBay or Craigslist, or wherever. In that time period, I can remember driving these stick shift vehicles: an open air Jeep, Mazda Miata, old truck, newer truck, and mustang. I never drove more than literally to Grandma's house and back. I wanted to be able to get someone from point A to point B in one piece, and of course be able to say I could do it.

Here he is on his birthday in 2010!

When Jason bought his stick shift vehicle, I was proud of my ability to drive it, and I drove to the pool and back (about 4 blocks) and to Kroger (about 3 miles away) pretty often. By often, I mean less than 20 times in 3 years.

I can say that I never wanted to purchase one, depend on one, or drive in reverse. I was in for a real treat on January 10, when I all of a sudden, I had to drive Jason's car to get to a swallow study :( You have to use the running boards to get into my 4-Runner, and we simply could not get into it. This is not a "souped" up vehicle, but it does sit higher than an average car. So into Jason's car we went with the destination of downtown Atlanta. So, 8 lanes of traffic on

one side of the highway, then residential streets when closer to the clinic-GREAT! (this picture, I took on a weekend-it took about an hour on the day we went) I cried. Who wouldn't cry? The car stalled only twice on the way there and only twice on the way home! On the way home, Jason said, "at least no one has honked at you," and I swear within 10 minutes I was honked at! We were in traffic, and inching forward about 20 yards at a time. I was not wasting my energy on the inching and someone honked. Anyway, what a stressful day. January 18, we drove about 4.5 hours to the mountains for the group trip-keyword MOUNTAIN.

SO-as of today, I am a stick shift driver. I can drive you in Atlanta traffic, up and down a mountain, go in reverse, and do a U-turn (I got so excited about this one that I wanted a high five-Jason gave me a dirty look). The car still stalls, but usually only once a trip. Please though, do not ask me to parallel park :)