A Sunday Drive

 Stick shift is DUMB.  Let's just get that out of the way right now.  I learned to drive 127293874 years ago, for the first time, in the family automatic minivan.  And it was good.  Easy-peasy.  Gas for go, brake for stop.

When I conceived of this list idea last year, the stick shift lesson was one of my first ideas, but it has taken me almost the whole year to get the nerve to actually try this.  Today was the day!  Time's a-tickin'!

Mom has a little red Mazda Miata that just happens to be stick shift, so I had a vehicle, and Dad has the patience necessary to teach me this new skill, so I had a teacher, too.  Here we go!  We headed out to the church parking lot to figure out the basics before we got on any actual roads . . . .

Sitting nervously in the driver's seat . . . 

Not how my interior looks . . . 

ALL THE PEDALS.  WHY SO MANY PEDALS???

Haha!  Love this.  Am glowing like a saint in the paintings in the Louvre.  :-)

 Okay.  So once I'm told all the basic facts--push in clutch, step on gas until the needle thing gets to "2," let foot off clutch, and go--we try this out.  Oof.  Do you know how EASY it is to just kill the car?  Like, if you do any of these steps in the wrong order, or if you don't do them to the degree the car likes, it just shuts completely off.  Pictured the engine frowning with its arms crossed.  "NO," it would say.  "NOT LIKE THAT.  Try again, please."  Oy.  Okay.  Just started it up and tried again, and once I mastered the parking lot, Dad and I moved our operations to the cemetery!  Nice and slow, and the occupants didn't mind my tooling around the roads slowly and with trepidation.  From there, we took to the back roads of Elkville, which, in addition to being picturesque farm fields full of tall corn and leafy beans around pretty stripcuts, have oil and chip roads.  Dad knows all the twisty-turny roads and how fast I could go on them, so he gave directions and instructions back there through the mostly empty roads.  Perfect for finding out how to accelerate through the gears.

See?  Wind in my hair!  This is fourth gear!

And the verdict is this:  driving stick shift is not easy-peasy.  Your legs will be tired from tensing up every time you have to clutch--and you have to clutch A LOT.  Am very grateful that I was able to get my license with an automatic car.  That said, very much like the Beretta lesson, there is comfort in just knowing what to do.  One more skill in this world is no longer a mystery to me!  And if I had to, I could get the Miata to DuQuoin or Herrin or Carbondale with my newfound but non-expert skills.  Well.  That is, if I don't have to go in reverse.  Or take off from a dead stop on an incline (your car will roll BACKWARDS).  But other than that, I'm totally ready to chauffeur you to wherever you need to go in a stick-shift car!  :-)  I will practice those other things . . . .

The keychain is a Hawaiian turtle--for good luck!  Appropriate,