Read This, Featuring Manuals

I saw a couple of weird things on the road today.  One was a driver stopped at red light holding her door open for the entire duration of the light.  As far as I could tell, this was just to let the smoke from her cigarette out of the car.  And - to go back to a previous rant - it was a convertible.  So if it was that important to her, she could have just dropped the top.  Yes, it was a little chilly today, but hey, if you're going to hold the door open...

The other thing I noticed was I got passed by a guy driving a Volkswagen GTI.  It was one of those guys who was driving Really Fast, and nearly rear-ended a parked courier van while trying to pass me on the right.  Fortunately he thought better of it and waited to pass me on the left.  Albeit in a hospital zone.

As often happens, for all his Really Fast driving, we both kept stopping at traffic lights, so he ultimately never got more than a car length in front of me.  That stuck in my mind because every time we started going again, his car rolled back a few inches.  Not enough that he might hit me, but enough to make it clear that he was driving a manual. 

I know I'll have to give up much of my car-guy cred for admitting this, but I've never driven a manual transmission.  Thus, I don't know how hard it really is to start on an uphill, but the impression I had was that it wouldn't cause that much trouble, at least on the modest incline we were driving.  So I'm assuming that either: he'd bought this street-racer car that he didn't know how to drive properly, or he was letting it roll back just to make sure everyone knew he wasn't one of these losers driving an automatic.  I could believe either one.

Personally, I would like to learn to drive a stick-shift.  Aside from regaining that street cred I just gave up, it would be nice to avoid that $1,000 or so added on to any new car prices.  Trouble is, I don't know how a grown adult goes about learning the skill.  I can't exactly go back to driver's ed.  I guess I'll just have to hope my ability to use manual transmissions in video games will transfer to real life.