[LMB] OT: Parallel parking

[Mark Goldfield]

So how do you know you can?t drive a manual transmission car?

Gwynne: Good point - maybe I should try it!  Unfortunately, I don't know
anyone with a manual car who'd let me try - the only one I know is my
nephew's work truck, and he LOVES that truck.
I just have a feeling that it's really a thing for people with better coordination
than me. But maybe it's worth a try!

If you want to try a manual transmission, I strongly suggest taking one or two lessosn from a driving school.  It avoids grinding the gears on a friend's car while you are learning.  I did that before buying my first manual transmission vehicle (a 1988 Subaru GL wagon) and found the 2 lessons were enough that I could drive home my new car only stalling a few times.  A week of daily driving and I was comfortable with it. Don't try learning on hills or at night.

I had a driver's license for about 7 years before that and mostly drove rental cars with automatic transmissions. On one trip to San Francisco the car rental place at Oakland airport tried to give me a manual transmission car after a flight that arrived around midnight. They thought I could just learn to drive one on my own at night, in the very hilly San Francisco.  I insisted that they honor the reservation for an automatic even though I had to take a much larger car than I wanted.  It would have been a disaster.  I do really enjoy driving a manual trnasmission vehicle.
Mark