January 4, 2015

Discovering Dargatz #117 - Clutch Chaos/Manual Mayhem/Stick Shift Stickiness

It didn't take long before I realized that I was going to need much more practice to get the hang of this manual driving. I needed to borrow a vehicle to get to my college internship and the only thing available was my roommate's hatchback gray Civic with a manual transmission. It was normal and expected that my initial attempts under the tutelage of my roommate in Lot 60 involved some impressive whiplash starts and stops. However, one would think that practice and experience would soften these abrupt motions. For some reason, learning this type of driving took longer than I had hoped, ultimately dashing my confidence and leading to the daily squeal of tires in and around Madison. My logic was simple: after embarrassing myself on more than one occasion and stalling out, I decided I would rather have people laugh at my squealing tires while I was safely driving away rather than having them laugh at me as I re-started the car. While I did eventually improve on my clutch and shifting exchanges on my weekly treks to my internship, I was excited to finish off my required hours and get back to the wonderful world of driving automatic.


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