Tudo Certinho: Mental shift

I learned how to drive all over again yesterday. I’ve had my license since September 1, 1999 and have been behind the wheel on numerous joyrides up and down the east coast and different parts of the US….but always with the convenience and luxury of an automatic car. Yesterday I had my first ever experience driving a stick shift. And dam, what a time and place to learn.

My first lesson in driving manual threw me in the deep end of the pool and forced me to swim right away. After cruising around on German countryside back roads learning the gears shifts I found myself on the autobahn of all places twenty minutes later topping out at 170 km/hr and dodging Porsches and BMWs flying by even faster. As I’ve mentioned about work, there’s a lot of travel time on the road and because of my stick shift deficiency my coworker has been doing all the driving up to this point. He’s going to China next week for a conference and I have to do some meetings on my own. So if Naki wants to go to the meetings Naki has to drive to the meetings. We had a 5 ½ hour road trip from Munich to Berlin so figured that there’s no better time to learn.

Learning to drive stick after working only automatics up to now was a mind twisting, muscle memory challenging, paranoiac activity. Driving, as with any action that has had lifelong repetition such as speaking or reading, is automatic and instinctive. I don’t have to think about it. I just drive. But you throw a new step in there that alters the normal motions of driving, and I now have to think through and be mindful of actions that would otherwise come naturally. So not only am I learning a new step and being conscious of all the actions that come with it, but the typically routine aspects of driving normally controlled by instinctive feel such as signaling, checking blindspots, and keeping my speed are coming to mind as well. It was a whirlwind of things that I haven’t consciously thought about since I first learned to drive. So in a way, I was re-learning how to drive.

The autobahn isn’t the free-for-all that it is made out to be in terms of racing speeds that cars top out at. There are tons of posted speed limits ranging from 80km/hr to 130km/hr because of all the construction going on throughout the country. There is roadwork EVERYWHERE in Germany. You wanna jump out of an economic recession like Germany? Easy, just create jobs by doing roadwork construction every 10 miles of every national highway. So because of all the construction, only a small minority of the time are cars able to go above 130km/hr. Go figure, driving to Berlin yesterday we hit an inappropriate amount of traffic. For those that drive stick you might understand that for a new learner a real tough part is driving in first gear thru stop-and-go traffic. High speed driving is fine because you just leave it in 5^th gear the whole time. But it’s a tricky art to gently balance the gas and clutch when taking off from a complete stop. I have no shame in admitting that I stalled the car about 20 times in the crawling traffic. My heart rate raced up each time I did, paranoid of hitting another car and causing an even bigger pile up. Then when we finally did get going my worry switched to making sure I shifted to the right gear and what I needed to do in case I didn’t. The “easy” part, like I said was cruising in fifth gear. But therein also lies a difficulty because when you’re overtaking a car, I’m not used to seeing another car charge up the left lane at the equivalent of 110 miles per hour. The heavy rain didn’t make things and more relaxing either. I drove for a good 3 hours and then handed the wheel over to my co-worker Jeroen who finished the rest of the trip to Berlin.

You can compare the experience to learning a new language and forcing yourself to rethink any word or phrase you want to say. That analogy works. But I compare the learning curve to another example. It’s like someone using Excel for the first time. In both cases you can expect to make mistakes, but are paranoid about avoiding one thing at all costs. For an Excel beginner (and I’m talking pre-pre-pre basic knowledge), their main paranoia is to not screw up the spreadsheet – not hit the wrong button and lose all the information. They could panic if a column width adjusts or a row is accidentally hidden or some text overlaps into another cell. None of make the spreadsheet particularly attractive or professional, but everything is still there. For me driving stick for the first time on the autobahn, my main paranoia that I wanted to avoid at all costs was to not stall the car or have a fast deceleration at the wrong gears that ultimately resulted in the car coming to a complete dead stop. Anything other than that – as long as the car keeps moving and doesn’t hit another car – hey, chalk it up as a learning day at the office.