Von is sad about the slow demise of manual transmissions. I am, too. But only a little.
My first car was a manual. My father bought it for me when i came home from college on a t-giving break. He picked me up at the Albany train station, and said "This [this beetle-green Hyundai Excel] is your car! I'll drive to the Northway (aka I87), and then you can take it from there". I'd driven motorcycles before, so I knew what I had to do, but I'd never driven a stick-shift car. Still, here's no better teacher than necessity, so, I learned how to drive manual in 70mph traffic - to make it even more challenging, I wasn't allowed to go more than 55mph because this was the car's first day out, and we Had To Obey The Manual which explicitly said we shouldn't exceed 55mph for the first 500 miles.
While I was there, I took my brother for a drive and, embarrassingly, stalled many times at stop signs and such. Ugh. But after a week of driving around my home town, it was time to go back to school.
It was on the way, so I stopped in Syracuse to see my mother and sisters. She was living up near S.U., at the time. S.U. is on a hill. Because it's Syracuse, there was snow the night before, which melted, and then refroze by the time I got into town. And when I started up the hill to her place, I caught a red light on a steep, black-icy, side street. Of course there was a car behind me. And of course the ice was so slick I was sliding backwards just waiting for the light. And when that light changed. I stepped on the gas, popped the clutch, and that little Hyundai screamed it's skinny little tires on the ice - and the car in back of me eased back away from me - until they dug through and caught pavement and we went rocketing up the hill like a cheap teal demon - bug-eyed and white-knuckled, screaming and trembling.
Good times!
Also, Animals is better than The Final Cut.
Animals is more than better. It was clearly the best. Especially when Les Claypool does it.
Wish You Were Here trumps them all.
when Les Claypool does it.
i haven’t heard that… i will investigate.
[From the ObWi post]
Sounds like Von is a Java programmer. Setting up a servlet seems to require a lot of useless proficiencies, too. I’d prefer to have the architecture just work out of the box, thanks.
i have owned only two vehicles and both were manual – a 1984 vw jetta gli ( 177,000 miles when it died ) and a 1997 honda cr-v ex ( 100,000 miles and still rolling ). both were 5 speeds and both have been most excellent to drive. learning how to drive a manual secured me two jobs – one job involved tractors and the other involved large stake trucks. plus manual transmissions are much less expensive to repair.
1. And since no one drives stick any more the only way a man. car can be stolen is if someone carries it.
2. That is so not a fair comparison.
clearly the best
trumps them all
…puzzled by this group of Pink Floyd listeners who are not familiar with The Dark Side of the Moon.
a stick would probably help prevent tragedy in cases like this…
Most cars in the UK are manual. I’ve only ever driven an automatic once and found it hard to resist using one foot for the brake and the other for the accelerator. Once I tucked my left foot under the seat it got a lot easier. :)
Apparently you can learn to drive in an automatic and hold a special automatic-only license but I’ve never met anyone who’s done this.
And I prefer Wish You Were Here to Dark Side of the Moon … just.
I’ve only ever driven an automatic once and found it hard to resist using one foot for the brake and the other for the accelerator. Once I tucked my left foot under the seat it got a lot easier. :)
totally. my last two cars were stick. when i got my current one, an automatic, my left foot was bored and twitchy.
a special automatic-only license
wow. :)