Skip to main content

SNOW + MANUAL TRANSMISSIONS = STAY OUT OF MY WAY

I began driving manual transmission cars in my early twenties. Ever since, manual transmissions have been my choice. From my old Triumph Herald to my VW Bug (the original, not the recently marketed faux-Bug) to (I'm ashamed to say) an AMC Hornet Sportabout to a rickety old Toyota wagon to a series of Ford Taurus 5 speed wagons, we've always had a stick shift in the drive...until recently.

About five or six years ago, we took title first to a Caravan then a Taurus, both automatics. Understand, all of these vehicles - with the exception of the VW - were bought used. Find a good body, replace the drive trains as necessary. That's my motto. But folks...American folks...don't buy sticks any more. Ford quit putting out the manual wagon. No used sticks to be had. So we bought what we bought and drove lazy.

Then, this spring we closed down our small business and didn't need the Caravan for deliveries and therefore didn't have to support its 16 MPG motor. Ain't cars.com a wonderful thing? I searched for a manual transmission vehicle and lo and behold, a four cylinder, 5 speed Toyota Camry was waiting for me. I sold the old Caravan for $1,500 and bought the Camry for $2,000. It's a 1995 with 150,000 miles on it but it was a one-owner car, the owner was a mechanical engineer, and he had every piece of paper that he ever spent on the vehicle. I call him Gandalf the Gray and he's a runner.

So we had our first snowstorm of the season and I'm doing a late night blues show on the radio and it's one AM and the snow's coming down hard and I'm on my way home. By George, I've got a front wheel drive 5 speed under me. And suddenly I'm in the left lane going 20 miles an hour faster than anybody else on the highway.

Damn, I love 5 speeds.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

RESTAURANT TEN, UZES: RESTAURANT REVIEW

Ten sits just off the market square in Uzes, one of the prettiest villages in southern France. The newly renovated space is airy and comfortable with tables of sufficient size and sufficiently spaced to provide for a pleasant dining experience. Service was cheerful, fully bilingual, and attentive without being overbearing. The food presented well to both eye and tongue. And the rate of approximately 30 € per person for a party of five included starters, mains, a dessert or two, two bottles of local wine, and coffees at the finish. Reasonable if not cheap eats.  So why am I hesitant to give an unqualified thumbs up?  It took me a while to figure it out. Uzes is a quintessentially French village in a quintessentially French region of southern France. There are those who will say that the Languedoc is just as beautiful but less crowded and less expensive than its eastern neighbors. I know. I'm one of those people. But the fact remains that for many people, villages like Uzes are t

Kreuz Market vs. Smitty’s Market: Texas Barbecue in Lockhart

I was born and raised in New Jersey. I didn’t taste Texas barbecue until I was twenty-two years old. What the hell do I know about barbecue? And what could I add to the millions of words that have been written on the subject? Well, I know a bit about food. I’ve managed to check out a few of the finer joints in Texas – Sonny Bryan’s Smokehouse in Dallas, Joe Cotton’s in Robstown before the fire, the dear departed Williams Smokehouse in Houston, and the incomparable New Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Huntsville . So I can speak from a reasonably wide experience. This will not be a comprehensive discussion of the relative merits of Texas barbecue as opposed to the fare available in places like Memphis or the Carolinas. It’s simply a take on our recent visits to Lockhart and the relative merits of Smitty’s versus Kreuz from our point of view. I’ll get all over academic in a later post. On our way out to the ranch in Crystal City, we stopped at Smitty’s. You have to look

CHÉ OLIVE / LE ZINC, CREISSAN: RESTAURANT REVIEW

No, it's not Chez Olive. It is indeed Ché complete with red star and black beret. I have no idea why and I wasn't about to ask. The French are the French and not to be analyzed too closely when it comes to politics, especially these days. Creissan is the next town over from our village of Quarante. We pass through it often and Ché Olive is right there on the main road at the entrance to town. (One of the signs still says Le Zinc. Olive says he prefers Ché Olive though.) Olive opened it a couple of years ago after leaving the Bar 40, Quarante's basic local watering hole that's undergone a bit of a renaissance lately. We hadn't heard much about Ché Olive from our usual sources for dining recommendations. So we just kept passing by. For reasons not central to this review, we decided to stop in for lunch on a mid-week in late December. The bar is cozy, the restaurant open and bright and modern. Newly renovated and perhaps a bit sterile. We were the f