oh...stick.

[here]

Matt and I are going to colorado for a family reunion. We are stoked. To be totally honest...I was actually hoping to have a little baby bump by the time this reunion came along...but I guess I will be drinking beer along with the rest of them. Anyways, Matt will be driving out a little early and then I will follow (by plane...yay!). For the trip its better for gas mileage for him to take my car instead of his truck. Which means only one thing....I need to drive his truck while he takes my car. Its a stick. I don't drive stick. So.... this week I learned how!! I feel like I'm 15 again. Super nervous...super hard to learn. But actually a little less herky-jerky than I thought I would be.

Once I tried to drive stick shift....mom, dad, kel....you remember that wretched night. We (mind you...we are a pretty tall family) all crammed into a little VW beetle one night when my car was getting fixed...this was a rental. I thought it would be fun to learn how to drive stick...on a car that's not mine. Well we went to a parking lot and let me tell you... it was hell. I think it all ended with me throwing the keys at my dad...yelling/crying...and him driving us home. It was bad, so this is my memory of driving stick shift about 11 years ago. Haha....so after alot of anticipation, Matt explaining to me over and over and over what a clutch is and what the sequence is of using such an awful invention....we took to the parking lot at 1am, because we just couldn't sleep with all the nerves (well, mainly my nerves). It went ok. Sure kind of jolty a good 80% of the time...and definitely some stall outs....and yes some, "oh shits"...like oh shit how did I get into 5th gear, I wanted 3rd!!?! Or....oh shit here comes a car!! Yeah....so I have some practicing to do. But I did it! And I was more successful than I or Matt thought I would be. It will work. So we are doing some "dry runs" to my work with Matt in the truck so that I feel more confident. But man, I feel like a loser not knowing how to drive a stick shift. Our kids will be learning this, along with how to drive an automatic. And 1 of the 2 vehicles we own is a manual transmission...I need to know how to drive it. So...yay, I'm learning something so incredibly basic yet o-so difficult.