I had a dream last night. It was a fairly short dream, but it is important enough to mention it! It started out by being fairly basic, I was going for a ride with my sister Loretta somewhere. Now that catch is I was driving and it was in my Saturn.
For those of you who don’t know, I purchased a Saturn 2 door coup with a manual transmission after getting back from New Zealand. I needed to get around and William was tired of driving me from place to place. Furthermore, renting a car became too expensive, so I thought I would purchase a “cheap” car and sell it when i was ready to get something more substantial.
Well it turned out that I purchased the car without knowing how to drive a manual car, and boy was I scared. The first day I took it out onto Vista Ave. for a quick spin and I got scared shitless when I slammed on the clutch instead of the break. Learning to drive the car was rocky (I had a good teacher), but I never felt too comfortable in the few months I owned it. I could drive from the Vista Apartment to the Los Gatos house, Fritz’s house, Safeway, Target and Wal Mart, but other than that I felt stranded. Going up hills was always extremely scary for me, and I remember one time throwing the car into wild spasms on Page Mill Road trying to stop going up hill. (I never took Page Mill again after that run-in.)
I think you get the picture, manual cars and Jim don’t mix! Well back to the dream. Well as I mentioned I was driving my Saturn with my sister Loretta. I don’t quite remember within the context of the dream where we were going, but where ever it was we were lost. Being lost is a bad thing – it meant we might encounter hills.
We were driving up this multi-lane road, an extremely steep San Francisco-esque street and at the top of the hill the traffic light was turning yellow. I remember looking down at my dash board to see how fast I was going and all I could see is this annoying analog clock where I would have placed the speedometer. I was also worried about the car stalling so I was looking for the meter that shows your RPM but the display was so small I couldn’t read it.
The one thing I knew was I was going too fast. I remembered that my friend Geoff said you can always down-shift to slow down, so I did but I forgot to engage the clutch. For some reason the car didn’t stall but it made this terrible noise and I was still going too fast. I then started to slam on the breaks and they were less than responsive (maybe I was stepping on the clutch?)
The light then turned red, and I wasn’t going to stop in time. I saw on-coming traffic from on left and I started to turn the car right to go with the flow of traffic I would be blocking, but it was too late, the cops saw me. There were two cars, one was a normal black and white and the other was an unmarked black Camero. I pulled over onto the corner and a female cop got out of the Camero.
At this point I was crying in the dream. I was so scared about driving the car and I almost got killed by on-coming traffic. I also just realized that I didn’t have my license or registration on me, which was of course the first thing the cop asked for from me. I told the cop that I didn’t have either document but I remembered my drivers license number. My sister also handed the cop her drivers license which happened to have the same address as mine and told the cop that she was my sister.
I then woke up. I had sweat all over my body and my eyes were teary. It is funny how dreams can be, but the one thing I took away from that dream was that I should never buy another manual car, no matter how cheap it is.
3 responses so far ↓
Reina // 2005/01/21 at 02:04
i have had the same problems when i first started learning to drive a stick. i bought a 1988 mustang from one of my good friends who had recently bought another car. so i was excited when he brought the car to me after my firs payment of course. but as i started to drive it i would have alot of questions but no one to talk to because everybody i knew drove an automatic and really, to me, no one person can tell you how to drive it you just have to get in and go. so i would practice in the yard with the parking brake and feeling the engine start whine down but that didn’t help. i’ve been driving for 4 years now and really only 2 years ago i started driving my car everywhere. just like you, there were certain places i wouldn’t go in my car because i was scared i’d stall and have people looking at me or that i couldn’t get out of a parking space because i was scared i’d be hitting the clutch too hard and people would look like, ‘gosh! does she have to hit the clutch so hard to get out? she’s going to need a new clutch before long.’ if the car was moving and i wanting to go reverse the car would make this like cranking noise. but after my mom’s car broke down i had to drive my car everywhere. there was no dropping my car off at her job and going to where ever i had to go in her car. so after a long while, i was just like hey! forget it. if i mess up, i mess up. i had to learn and now i’ve learned to downshifting trick and i can’t stand when someone in front of me hits on brakes hard but its ok, i just downshift and i won’t have to hit my brakes so hard when i do slow down. its mind over matter.
Bill Wilson // 2005/08/22 at 05:54
Sorry for all the trouble you folks have had. Learning to drive a clutch is just like learning anything else, patients and time. Normally I’d tell you to quit your whining and buy an automatic if you can’t stand it. If I had the choice I wouldn’t drive anything else because you have complete control of the vehicle and the power sent to the wheels and when. The new automatics are great and do an excellent job of that these days. I still like clutches better. It’s one of those things you have to have a taste for. You shouldn’t knock it just because you don’t have the knack to learn it. Automatics limit your ability to down shift when you really need to and they don’t stay in the lower gears long enough when you want to really hit it hard because they are set up for the best fuel economy. There are racing automatics that you can setup any way you want, but try buying one on a budget.
If you end up on a hill with a stop light at the top try using your hand brake. That way when you take your foot off of the brake you don’t roll back. If you hold the button in you can gradually let the brake off as you let the clutch out and apply power. Go practice where there isn’t any traffic. My wife is a little Thai woman and loves her stick shift because it stopped her friends from wanting to borrow her car all of the time because they could not drive a clutch.
Bill Wilson // 2005/08/22 at 06:22
1. Keep the heel of clutch foot on the floor. Much better control that way. The same applies for your gas pedal foot.
2. Always push in your clutch when you apply the brakes hard.
3. Keep your foot off of the clutch when you are not using it and don’t use your clutch foot for anything else, exspecially the brakes for any reason.
4. If you have your clutch in even alittle bit by the time you reach 8-10 mph you’ve held it in to long. Even getting it out by 5 mph is good. It all depends on the amount of gas you apply. If you apply too much, of course you are going to stall and jump or spin your tires.
5. Sure use your clutch to slow down but only to a certain point not in close quarters like traffic.
6. Learn the sound of your engine and the feel of your car. Don’t depend on your RPM indicator all cars don’t have them anyway.
7. Adjust your seat so you can push your clutch in all the way everytime you shift.