Eventually all things merge into one and the years of talking about things we were going to learn either happen or don't and a river runs through it, unless we live in Utah and then it's more like a trail of bros and whiskey runs through it.
But really, I've been meaning to learn to drive stick since I was 15. Maybe at 15 I didn't realize how important a skill it would be to my existence, but Dad sold his Silverado that year and I went on with life thinking the life skills I needed were writing college papers and flirting with people I needed things from (that mostly only works in Spain and Italy when you're blonde, but I'm happy to play the card).
In Argentina my Aussie companion let me drive our manual rental through deserted, flat, rural roads. In college I pretended to learn from my dad, a man as stubborn as I am, but also less patient, and on my uncle's Audi.
Back in January it became clear that I was coming to Italy for Junior World Championships, and I was told that all Italian rentals are manual and that my company has one standard truck to practice on. I vowed to learn on it. Fast-forward two months to the day I wake up at 2pm on a Sunday after my last night of winter bar work and realize I haven't learned a thing, haven't done my laundry, and still have to pack for two weeks of Team Momming 14-20 year old athletes. So, I never learned. I brought an extra coach, not really for the driving, but it allowed me to put off the driving.
On Wednesday, in an Italian village, I tried to drive two girls to the town pool using the old driving knowledge I had. It was downhill there, and not a problem until we stalled in an uphill intersection and I kept trying to get the car into 3rd from a stop, not realizing it wasn't 1st gear. I let one of the girls, a farm girl from Idaho pull it into the parking lot where I stalled around for an hour until two coaches came to collect me and the girls in a van. I had another hour of driving school on hairpin, Italian mountain roads, complete with a reverse out of a dead end street as children ran around the street - at night.
Thursday morning over the breakfast that would fuel a trip to the airport with a coach I asked him "Am I actually ready? Will this really be safe?" and he said "Yes, you'll stall a few times and you'll figure it out."
I stalled first in the town 20 minutes from our village, but that's the fault of the locals crossing the street to go to school.
The real test didn't come until we were still 2 hours from the Milan airport, in the Milan suburbs, and we turned a corner to find bumper-to-bumper traffic for the next two hours until the airport. That's an unexpected way to learn things quick. I had one solid stall on an uphill start, but the large green truck behind me probably didn't even realize it was happening.
Luckily the kids I got to take back from the airport were exhausted from travel and the sweetest, most supportive group I could ask for. I've found this week that 14 and 15 year olds are mean when you're bad at driving. Know why? They've never driven. They think it's easy. Well, yeah, your dad is awesome at driving. Your dad has also been driving as many years as I've been alive. 16 and 17 year olds think you're awesome if you can do it because their first car is probably automatic and they've probably committed a few moving traffic violations of their own. They are the ones that I will drive around in my vehicle.
So, we made it back, and mostly without many blatant errors, other than the time I was coming around a switchback corner in 2nd and couldn't get up the hill so I had to back down it into the hairpin corner, restart on a steep hill from a stop, all while a van came hurtling up the hill towards me. I did it, all because my passengers believed in me.
Plus, I'm hard to miss on the roads and most people seem to be avoiding the crazy blinger in the orange Jeep who can't seem to drive like an Italian to save her life.
I can't wait to get on that train on Thursday for rural northeast Italy.
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