blogging away

Last time I blogged about my first day of learning manual transmission. I've spent Thursday, Friday, and today at my cousin's house to practice even more. Now I can finally drive the car without severe jerks and stalling! After registering it at the DMV and getting insurance on it today, I drove it home from my cousin's house and decided to take some pictures of it.

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The first car I got was a 94 Civic, automatic transmission. After driving my mom's Rav 4 around, I loved this change since handling and speed was so much more superior. However, ever since I've been into cars, I always wanted to drive a manual. However, since I got a car, I was like aw forget it. I got this car from my car mechanic cousin for only $1200.

Life was going good, until the Civic broke down after two weeks. TWO weeks! So, I sent it up to my cousin to fix it up. Unfortunately, it was an engine problem (the car had 200k on it) so it would cost a lot. However, since he is my cousin, he did an engine swap but the Civic still behaved abnormally. Then my cousin came up with the idea of giving me a car he was trying to sell. A manual transmission, generation 5 Prelude.

I was so excited, I accepted the trade immediately, but the problem was, I had no idea how to drive stick. I only knew the basics as in I must press in the clutch to start in the engine, press the clutch to change gears. My cousin agreed to teach me so I went over to his house this morning. Manual transmission is more difficult than I thought, and people make the experience even worse.

So basically when I got there today, he drove me around for a bit in the car. The car was so powerful, I was amazed. We got back to his neighborhood driveway, and he asked me if I'd like to try. So I jumped into the driver's seat, put it into 1st gear, put down the brake, tried to accelerate and the car started jerking like crazy. My natural automatic driving instincts tell me to step on the brake when a car is acting weird, and without pressing the clutch, the car stalled. I get applause from my cousin's neighbors that were outside. Wohoo.

Well, with getting a little hang of it, I was actually moving with the car, however the car was so jerky, I still knew I had a lot of work to do. My cousin took me to an empty parking lot, with a car auction going on on the other side (there was a fence). He made me practice accelerating from the first gear, releasing the clutch slowly so that the car won't jerk. Then something lame happened here as well. You know that one guy from the Simpson's that goes "heer-heer!"? Well, I stalled at the parking lot and somebody from the other side at the car auction does "heer-heer" thing to me. I was like wtf? I'm at an empty parking lot trying to learn and I still get shit like that? Great! I have realized, the future will be harsh while learning how to drive stick shift.

Eventually I got the hang of going to first gear from a complete stop without the jerkiness and my cousin asked me to turn onto the street. The street made me nervous as hell and the way people treat you if you're a manual newbie doesn't help at all. My acceleration from a stop is still pretty slow , so I started getting honked at a few times. Putting my shoes into other drivers, I would have probably done the same thing, but being the manual noob, it is only discouraging. I was trying to accelerate the fastest I can but then that would make me release the clutch waay too early and the car would be on jerk mode again.

Despite the harsh treatment, I thought driving with a manual transmission was way more enjoyable than an automatic. I am planning to practice with my cousin over a whole weekend and hopefully will improve massively so that I can be a normal driver (no jerkiness, no stalls)!