I drove Andrej Bauer's car

[dr4b]

Well, so now it's Kevin Watkins's car, but still. After dinner tonight, we went around the Morewood lot for a bit, and after it was obvious it was too crowded for me to feel comfortable in, we went to Edgewood. There's a nice big deserted section of the Edgewood Towne Centre lot, and so I practiced driving stick around the back of it. Clutch in, gearshift to 1, brake off, accelerate on, ease off clutch, ease off accelerator, drive, clutch in, break on, stop. Clutch in, brake off, accelerate on, ease off clutch, SPUTTER SPUTTER SPUTTER SPUTTER STALL. Repeat until there was more of the "drive" and less of the "SPUTTER SPUTTER SPUTTER" stuff. Kevin is a real sweetie and was very encouraging the whole time I was sitting there being frustrated about not knowing how to start the car without it being jerky or stalling. But I got it a little better eventually. I even got into second gear once or twice. Whee.

Aside from that, today was blah. I played some DDR and stuff in the afternoon, and we had dinner at Tasty's, and I hung out in the lounge before dinner.

Comments

[baka.livejournal.com]

aaah *tear to my eye* I remember when I learned how to drive stick.

[elletweedy.livejournal.com]

Congratulations! I remember trying to learn to drive a stick shift. The story (which I'm sure I've told you) goes like this: Mom: "Laura, I need you to run some errands for me." Me: "But, mom, I don't know how to drive a standard." Mom: "You'll figure it out." :)

Don't worry about the stalling. We all did it. :)

[cellio]

Congratulations! It sounds like you got past "SPUTTER SPUTTER STALL" a lot more quickly than I did when I learned.

Oooooh, stick....

[mg4h.livejournal.com]

And each car tends to have their sweet clutch spot in a different place. (This is the point where you should start adding gas, if you don't it stalls out.) When we got the clutch replaced in our car, the spot MOVED and I had a few surprising stalls when I didn't remember where it was now. Oy.

[blk]

Don't worry about stalling. We all stalled. Heck, I still do it sometimes.

[mh75.livejournal.com]

Yeah, i still stall every once in a while. One memorable time i forgot that i was driving a standard while coming off the freeway. It was an impressive jerk when the engine quit.

ah well, thats why i have a warantee on my clutch.

The good news is, Deanna, that after you find first gear, the rest are easy. (Eg. its easy to switch from 1st to 2nd or vice versa.) Its just that very starting part thats a problem.

You may try the following too, which helped me:
while sitting still, very slowly ease off the clutch. Keep your right foot away from the brake and the accelerator. See if you can ease the clutch all the way out without giving the engine any gas. It just helps you get a feel for a clutch.

Sometimes when i'm at a stop light i still play around like this. I also try things like starting in second instead of first (if i'm headed down a hill).