Once again a post with no knitting content. In fact, I am feeling at loose ends and anticipate a bit of rambling …..
The election is less than a week away – I came across this interesting link at Pam’s site. Truth be told, Pam had linked to this herself — so in blog etiquette, to whom do I link? Is one supposed to have an endless succession of links in order to give credit where it’s due? We need a blogging Miss Manners. hmmmm, there’s an idea!
Shall I regale you with my Onslow experience yesterday?
If you have the idea that I am a with it, together, unflappable type of person and don’t want to be disabused of that notion then look away, go somewhere else, run along.
As I have said before, Onslow is a six-speed manual and it has been a learning experience for me. I have been doing wonderfully well, surprisingly well in fact. I have been concerned about a particular hill and the traffic light at the top of it – this hill is on one of my regular routes around town.
I began practicing on hills. Anytime it was possible, I would stop Onslow on a hill and then throw him into first and proceed. It was working! I realized that Daughter #2’s flute teacher lives on a huge hill. The flute teacher’s hill made that other hill look like a complete nothing. Why hadn’t I thought of this before? During her lesson on Monday, I stayed in the car and just drove on that hill. Up and down, starting and stopping. I could not believe how great I did! I figured I had gotten the knack and that since this hill was by far the steepest thing around, all my worries were over.
So yesterday, I am driving home and come to the light at the top of the hill. I can feel my heart rattling around in my chest — I have such a case of nerves. I tell myself that this hill is minor compared to the other. I do some square breathing. thunkity,thunkity, my heart is racing. I am having stage fright, performance anxiety — what the hell is the matter with me?!
Sure enough, I stall. Okay, I restart Onlsow, push the stick into first and start moving – backward!!! In all of my panic, I had put the car into reverse!! As you can imagine, I am so completely rattled at this point I put it into first and just floored the gas and actually peeled out across this intersection.
Never before in my life have I laid rubber. My mother didn’t raise me that way.
purlingswine 
::giggle:: I’ll bet no one’s eyes were bigger than yours! At least you’re not being questioned by the police… On a trip from Wisconsin to Oregon, I was determined that my sister would learn to drive a stick. Attempting, numerous times, to leave a gas station, only 100 miles from our starting point, a policeman (who’d noticed us and circled the block a few times) finally stopped to see if we were having any trouble (I’m sure he thought we were three sheets to the wind). My sister was mortified. I got behind the wheel. Years passed before she finally mastered it…
I used to stall out in toll booths all the time with my first manual transmission in the 70s. I told ya–you need one of them older subarus with patented hill-holder technology. It was my salvation. We kept that car for about 120,000 miles.
Dahling, I believe you may just be the ONLY legitimate case of HAVING a glass of wine before you drive!
You are making my scar hurt! I’m laughing so hard! I can just see you; eyes wide, mouth agape! Onslow fishtaling across the intersection, black stripes smoldering behind you…. Poor cop would just laugh till he had donuts coming out his nose.
I love ya, Ann. Now, are you and Onslow coming to LI Knits???????????
Bill Cosby used to do the funniest bit about learning to drive a stick in San Francisco. Whenever he would stop at one of the steepest hills, invariaby someone would pull up right on his bumper. As anyone who is just learning to drive a stick knows, the biggest fear is controlling the clutch on a hill to keep from rolling back into the car behind you. He said he would put his hand out the window motioning, “Come around idiot, come around.” They couldn’t hear him because they were to busy motioning to the person behind them, “Come around idiot, come around.” Hee!
When I learned to drive, we had an ancient Corvair which was a 4speed on the floor. Many hours were spent in various situations learning to drive this car with my dad in the “co-pilot” seat. My dad actually survived teaching 3 girls to drive this car. My middle sister stalled out once on a huge blind curve of highway. My dad said that was the night he found how quickly two people could fit in a bucket seat. On another occasion I was on a country lane with quite a hill. As I was furiously trying to work the clutch and not roll back into this oil derrick, Dad said, “Somehow she put it in L for leap and got us out of there.”
Good on you! Learning to drive stick was one of the hardest things I ever did and remains the proudest physical accomplishment of my life. Knitting was NOTHING compared to that :)
Good on you! Part of the UK driving test is the dreaded Hill Start. Instructor takes you to the steepest hill in town, and you park the car facing upwards, parking brake on. Then, by cunning co-ordination of parking brake, clutch, and accelerator, you have to move up the hill *without rolling back so much as a centimetre*! You roll, you fail, no do-overs.
If you can a hill start, you can do anything. If it’s any consolation, I’m a Brit born and bred on manual transmissions, and when we test drove the Mini I lost count of how many times I stalled the darned thing because the clutch was different to my beloved Ford Escort. Happily Hubby did equally badly, worse even, because his car is an automatic.
Because drivers ed was cheeper if you took it in an automatic, that’s what I did, dispite the fact that all the cars at home were manual. So I did well, passed the test for my learners permit, and went to have my father drive me home. On the way home, my father pulled to the side of the road (in the car that was later named Timothy the Wonder Car), got out and told me to get into the drivers seat and drive home. In the stick shift. At rush hour. Merging into traffic coming off of I-95. Uphill. Having never driven stick before.
Once I recovered I learned to love driving manual….