6079smith wrote:

kerble wrote:sure. I'm a champ at driving my 15 passenger van. Automatic gives me one less thing to think about while driving, so I can just enjoy driving the way I like.

Nah, I didn't mean it in a 'look at me I'm great' way, I guess I just I find the idea of a driving culture based around automatics a bit strange, or at least people making a big deal of something I take completely for granted. I'd imagine I'd have loads of grief driving manual in, say, England. What's that gearstick doing on my left? Why's everyone on the wrong side of the road?

I didn't take it as such. I'd love to be better at stick, but I'm not going to buy a car to do it, so it's really slow.

Fuck all-a y'all.

I don't have a driver's license. I didn't even have a learner's permit until recently. Why? Because I have never had access to a car to learn. I've dicked around behind the wheel of friend's cars a couple of times, so in emergency situations I could get somewhere. Those are funny stories, almost landed one of my buddy's car in a creek. Sure as hell none of them were stick, though.


Not crap.

crap.

my wife wisely never went on a second date with a guy who couldn't drive a stick. wait, she never dated anyone else besides me.

my mother-in-law is offering us her 1985 subaru automatic (80K miles) for my son who is now 12.5. i will take it as long as i can sell it and buy him a stick shifting car.

Soon enough gasoline-powered cars and the transmissions necessary to implement their power will go the way of the hand-crank.

There won't be any "stick".

zom-zom wrote:Soon enough gasoline-powered cars and the transmissions necessary to implement their power will go the way of the hand-crank.

There won't be any "stick".

bullshit.

traffic in India is so congested and bad that they can't have automatic cars, since the transmissions drop from all the stopping and starting. Automatic cars are nonexistent there.

When gasoline engines become obsolete, so will manual transmissions. India, Shmindia. No difference.

zom-zom wrote:When gasoline engines become obsolete, so will manual transmissions. India, Shmindia. No difference.

Zom have you been hacked by Clocker Bob?

No, you ignorant something-something.. etc.

I was around twenty when I learned stick. I had a job as a tow truck driver and one day they assigned me truck #8. Bigass Hurst shifter, nothing on the column. Uh oh.

Well, these guys do it, how hard can it be?

I waited until the lot was clear and nobody would see me. Then I put ol' #8 into first and limped to an empty parking lot around the corner at 12000 RPM and 98 dB.

Twenty minutes of really fucking up the clutch and I had it. I thought I was the nuts. Headed out to pick up some cars.

Then I learned about being stopped on an incline in traffic.

I knew enough to stall rather than roll, thank god. Five minutes of angry honking later, I got the right ratio of up to down.

Came in handy a couple of years later when the band toured Europe. The guy we brought to drive couldn't drive stick and that's all we had rented. I had to take over.

Got caught in a 16-hour long traffic jam headed to Berlin - was the Sunday of the first weekend the East Germans lifted their travel restrictions. I had that '89 Opel Kadett purring and nudging along five yards at a time while playing a Game Boy the whole time.

It is true that most of the time when I meet someone who doesn't drive at all, they turn out to be a problem. Not driving stick I can kind of forgive.

-r

Marsupialized wrote:What kind of asshole dosen't use a saddle?

An asshole that's gonna be really sore.