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It’s storytime again, and this time, like so many others before, I was prodded to share this online. It was Friday, June 19th, and I had just flown to Washington DC from San Francisco for my friend Jess’s wedding the next day. Jess said she could pick me up at the airport, and I, in turn, said that I would pick up our friend Kenzie from the airport 4 hours later. Kenzie’s family lives outside the city, and her parents left the house unlocked and her car keys on the table. I spent the morning at their house, working remotely, and a little before Kenzie’s flight was to arrive, I grabbed her keys and got in the car. Being that I was so excited to drive her Mini, I jumped in the car and turned it on. Or tried to.
When I realized that her car was manual, I panicked…just a little bit. “Crap, crap, crap, how am I suppose to pick her up?” The brilliant person I am decided that everything is online, so instructions on how to drive a stick must be online (aside: this is where everyone says – tabas! you thought you could drive stick by reading about it online?). I ran back in the house and searched “How to Drive a Manual”. I read a few lines on About.com and felt sufficiently able to go on my way. Or at least start the car, try to reverse, and stall.
I go back in the house, read some more and then call my friend Katie who is at work. She tells me enough to get the car to the front of the development where I can get cell phone service and call her back. Katie gives me a couple pointers, I make it out of the development and on my way. Or so I thought.
Driving the two lane roads and coasting through my first right turn worked out alright until I had to get on Leesburg Pike – at least 4 if not 5 lanes on each side. The first light I get to, I stall. It turns green, I have to put the blinkers on, people behind me are visibly annoyed. I break a sweat. Second light; the same thing.
I turn into an abandoned parking lot and call Katie again. She tells me she has to work and can’t talk. I call my Dad. He picks up. I put him on speaker phone and he gives me our first father/daughter lesson as I drive around an abandoned bank parking lot. Park, reverse, forward, drive around the decrepit teller window. Repeat. He tells me he regrets not teaching me how to drive stick (there’s a first for everything!), and tells me some funny stories about my older sister’s steep learning curve. Being the supportive father that he is, he tells me if I’ve gotten 3.5 miles so far, I might as well go all the way to the airport. I think differently!
Finally Kenzie calls me to tell me she landed and I tell her the story – “Kenzie! I don’t know how to drive stick, my dad’s teaching me right now!” She thinks I said that my dad taught me once before, not just this moment and tells me to come pick her up. I repeat myself and when it finally clicks she says “Tabas! Why are you driving my car?? You knew it was a mini.”
“I really wanted to pick you up, I’m excited to see you ” I exclaimed! “But I didn’t know all mini’s were stick”. She proceeds to make me feel clueless; apparently all mini’s are manual, or were when she bought hers. We try to figure out if I should come get her, or if she should take a cab to where I am, or if I should attempt driving home. We pick option #3, and I get back on Leesburg Pike. Surprisingly, I made it all the way home without stalling once; I must have learned something.
Of course this became the story of the weekend at the wedding. That, and we were running so late to rehearsal dinner on Friday that we got dressed in a gas station bathroom.
Back in the day, before the gold rush of 1949, San Francisco existed primarily as a port city, with boats leaving for far off places like Shanghai, China to bring back goods to the Pacific Northwest for trade. Newcomers to the city quickly found jobs staffing these boats as deck hands and sailors alike. Tons of people were coming from near and far to the city, including boats that sailed from the New York, all the way around the southern tip of South America, because the Panama Canal wasn’t open yet, north to the California coast. One of those boats carried an Irish dude named Jim Kelly.
