8 Months – For Reals this time

It seems just like yesterday that I had my dad drive my car back from the dealership, and then had to prove to him that I could handle the drive back. I remember he was trying to teach me to use the Parking brake when I am on a severe hill to prevent some serious rollback as I got the car going, and me ultimately failing miserably. I also remember my shifts from first to second be rough, my starts being high revs, all that fun stuff.

Well, I’ve gotten better I guess. I can easily do no gas starts, I can do rev matching with little to no problem, my shifts are smooth with the occasional little roughness. I would wager I am actually doing it a lot better than my roommate who has been driving a stick for his entire life. I think that he just stopped caring but either way his car is always bogging down, he is always throwing his passengers around.

Winter Driving in a Stick

So obviously this is my first winter with a stick. The first snowfall took everyone by surprise so I wanted to actually go out and drive a little bit. But I went out a bit too late. For such a light car it wasn’t slipping that bad. However when this big snow storm hit last weekend, I opted for the safer route and left my car at home until I go home for Christmas. But the next snow storm I am going to drive it around in a parking lot and just to see truly how it feels. It shouldn’t be too bad considering that it has a lot of safety technology built into it, such as if one wheel slips power is transferred from it to the other wheels and stuff like that. Don’t really want to mess with that stuff but I want to get a feel of what I should do when the car does slip.