…you don’t think you need to know.

I will start at the end of this story and work my way to the beginning.  Why be normal, I always say sometimes.  I found out that you may need to know things you don’t think you need to know on my first trip abroad when I rented a car in Ireland.  The choices were all manuals – no automatics.  Oh…and right hand drive.  That means the driver sits in the “passenger” seat and operates the shift lever with the left hand.  Alllrriiight….and you drive on the left hand side of the road.  Drive safely now!  At least the clutch pedal was still on the left.  Also – 99% of the roads predate automobiles and so they are exactly the width of 2 cars, minus 18″.  It’s a little better in towns where the deficit is a mere 8″ to 10″.  For as many cars as there were without automatic transmissions, there were just as many without driver side rearview mirrors – just the little wires hanging out where the mirror used to be!  Probably from encounters with the occasional large BMW sedan or busses.  But, because I knew how to drive a stick, I said “I can do this!” – and I did.  The rental car had both mirrors intact when I turned it in.

Driving a stick is not a problem for me – I learned to drive in a car with a manual transmission and never owned a car with an automatic until I had been driving for along time.  I am an afficionado of high performance cars and the words “automatic transmission” and “high perfomance car” do not go together.  But the older I get, the more I do appreciate an automatic.  Anyhoo, where I am going with this is – your preference may be a matter of choice.  Or not.  Especially if you are traveling overseas.  If you are traveling overseas chances are you will be renting a car since the completion of the undersea highway system is still some years off.  And if you are renting a car, you will likely be…that’s right: driving a stick.

I believe this falls under the heading of “be prepared”.  Dirty Harry said: “A man’s got to know his limitations”.  And if one of his (or her) limitations is “I can’t drive that car because it not an automatic” then that’s pretty lame.  I think that’s called a first world problem.  What got me started on this?  When I read two different and seemingly unrelated articles today, one at Althouse about travel and the other at The Art Of Manliness about how to drive a stickshift it reminded me of a time when I was traveling and had to drive a stickshift – the beginning.

Oh, and Bill Cosby: