i carry a big stick

somebody once told me that real men drive a stick.

hmm....




that must mean, that i am a wuss.

don't get me wrong though. i can manage both manual and automatic transmission.

does that make me half a wuss then?





i recently had the opportunity to drive a stick. after well over a year and a half of continuous automatic driving, i am back to the kind of transmission that i learned in.


used to be, i'd have the hardest time to drive an automatic and i had to mentally tell myself what i was driving. now, i find that i am telling myself that this machine has a clutch.

i think R.E.M. said it best: Automatic for the People. Or something like that.

i swear, automatic transmission driving people are so spoiled. they just don't know it.

well, think about it: you only mostly use one foot as opposed to working the clutch and blending gas etc. then there's the hanging on the hill thing. i've come to the point of understanding how to do that semi-smoothly though.

i never thought that i'd say this, but i have to sharpen my skills once again.

it's not like it's atrophied to the point of disaster, but it needs work. the finesse of transitioning gears are definitely gone, but not unrecoverable.




i think the one thing that i love with a stick is the power that it gives you.


that, by itself, overrides everything i dislike about it.