are you ready for this, austria?

so, pause on all the deep stuff and i'll catch you up on random stuff that's going on.

i'm learning to drive a manual transmission. mhmm, that's right. jody gets to drive a stick in austria! and, this is pretty cool, i don't have to get an austrian or an international driver's license. i get to just drive! (a little scary, huh?) the scariest thing about learning to drive a stick is that i have to learn how to deal with hills and ice and snow, something i never would have had to deal with in texas. crazy! so here's how things went down.

i've known that i can drive here for about a week now but i've only driven a standard like twice in my life and it was mainly around parking lots. hubert had been trying to get me to drive ever since we found out i could drive. my response was always, "are you kidding? i'm not driving with other people around. they drive crazy enough as it is here without me as a driving hazard on the road. i'm pretty sure we'd die." so, i had managed to get out of it so far, until yesterday.

sylvia and the kids and i were going to a lake for the day but we had to go to a drug store and pick up some things first. she gave me this look and said, "you drive." i said, "are you kidding? we have kids in the car and there are going to be other people on the road. no way." "oh, come on. it's only about a mile. you can do it," she said. now, i'm thinking, "$^*#! but it's only a mile or so. okay okay okay. b r e a t h e...okay." so, she hands me the keys, we strap the kids in, i take off my jacket, because i had gotten suddenly very warm for some reason, and i get behind the wheel.

first, i adjust the seat so i can actually reach everything. then i look at the gear shifter and think, "oh God, what am i doing?" sylvia walks me through all the different gears and i try really hard to feel the difference but all i could really tell was that 2 and 4 were towards the back of the car and that R, 1, 3, and 5 were towards the front of the car and that you had to push the gear shift down to get to R. so i start the car and i put it in R. the car starts rolling back. "okay, this isn't so bad," i think. then, i try to turn the wheel and i discover that not only is the car a manual transmission but it's also manual steering. i wasn't ready for that one. so i start C R A N K I N G it. i mean, whew that was hard work, kind of cranking. then i needed to put it into first and i just kind of move the gear shift forward and hope it's in the right place. it was a miracle that it actually got in the right place because i didn't know what i was doing. i let up on the clutch as i pressed down on the gas and we start moving. YES!!!! oh wait, drat! i have to stop and check if there's a car coming. crap. that means i have to start over again. okay, no one coming. clutch up, gas down, jug-a-jug-a-jug-a, we stall. i try it again, jug-a-jug-a-jug-a. well, they say, third times the charm...and we're off like a sloth. that's okay though because i didn't really want to go much faster than first would allow me. however, i didn't have much of a choice on that because there's a hill that i had to go down and it really was best to have it in second for that. so, i said a quick prayer, a couple of PG-13 words, put the clutch in, pulled on the gear shift, let the clutch out while pushing on the gas and HOORAY!!! i did it! i changed gears while moving!!!! maybe this whole manual thing isn't as hard as i thought it was.

i'm going along great, shaking like jello, but everything is good. the trees are so pretty, especially on this hill. now i gotta turn left because my road dead-ends into another one, no problem, i hope. so i stop and turn left, jug-a-jug-a-jug-a. *@^#...ummm...what now? it's okay, there's no one coming. just start the car again, put it in first and go. (oh yeah, it's a really good idea to use the hand break here if you're on a hill and there's someone behind you and you have to go forward. that way you don't roll back into them and cause all kinds of problems.) so that's what i was trying to do. i try it a couple of times on the hill and every time it's the same, jug-a-jug-a-jug-a. then sylvia thinks it might be easier if we try starting from a place that's a little flatter so i put it in R and we roll backwards down the hill. alright, okay, whew, i can do this. put it in first, i think, and clutch up, gas down, jug-a-jug-a-jug. @&$%!!!! (in my head) what's going on? why won't the car go? we try the gear a couple of times to see if it's in first, we're pretty sure it is, and it just isn't going. so sylvia and i trade places and she gets us up the hill beautifully. she thinks it's just that i wasn't giving it enough power on the hill, which is very easily fixed. i think it's more because i was in third when i should have been in first. when we get up to a flat-ish part of the road she stops the car and makes me drive the rest of the way, which was okay. i think i actually got up to using third! we get to the drug store and i park, which was a lot harder than i ever thought it would be since the steering was manual as well, but i got it in the space just fine. i put the hand brake on, turn off the car and got out of the car. i must tell you that i had a nice layer of "sheen" on my skin. :) "not bad," sylvia says to me. "not bad at all."

so that was my first lesson in driving a stick in austria. it was pretty crazy. and, to make a long story a little bit shorter, i drove again after our outing to the lake and i did fine. i even changed gears while i was going up a hill twice and the car didn't stall. it worked just fine in fact. i even was successful at the whole "starting with the hand brake on" thing but only on flat surfaces. i didn't have the courage to try it on the hill again. i also must say that i now know, really know, where all the gears are and i'm not just guessing. AND...i can do it without looking. i'd say that's pretty good for one day of driving. i wouldn't say that i'm ready to take on the streets here yet, because it's way worse than anything in the US. everyone here only kinda sorta follows the rules so pretty much anything can happen. you gotta be quick on your toes here and i definitely don't think i'm there yet. in fact i can say i'm 101% sure that driving with other people on real roads is still a really bad idea. :)