Note: This episode below doesn’t have much to do with STS, but if you’d like a humorous escape you might enjoy reading it. I originally included it in “Our story,” but it wasn’t that relevant to why we started STS, so here it is.
…So, it was a good thing we didn’t have a car when we lived in Spain, because the one time I drove there, I couldn’t figure out how to get my friend’s Renault van into reverse. I had taken a wrong turn and ended up stuck at the bottom of a very steep hill in a little Catalan village named Cabrils. It was a particularly painful blow to my pride, because I grew up driving stick shifts, and I had assumed if I could operate my dad’s old ‘52 “three-in-an-H” Chevy pickup and my mom’s cantankerous “three-on-the-tree” ‘66 Chevy station wagon, I could drive any stick shift, anywhere. Umm, not so much.
We had those quaintly cobbled European streets in our town, you know, the ones that make for great pictures, but let me tell you they’re hell to drive on, especially if you’re driving someone else’s car. Right, Juan. Go pick up your daughter at ballet class and drive her home, then come back to where we’re doing some filming. No problem. I made it to the ballet studio without the side mirrors getting ripped off only by pleading with the parked cars lining both sides of the already constricted “carretera”. 
We made it up the windy roads to her house without a hitch, and I self-pronounced myself a successful European driver. I had a good sense of direction and I’d been to and from there several times. So down the mountain I went. And promptly made a wrong turn. No problem, I thought, this road probably goes through like it would back home…Umm, nope, it doesn’t. I’m now going the wrong way. I’ll just turn around. I stopped, in complete control of my faculties. I made sure no one was behind me so I could back up. Clutch in, pull stick shift left and up. That’s not a good sound. Push clutch harder, pull left and up. Nope. The little diagram on the stick says that’s where reverse is. Ok, push clutch, push down on stick, then left and up. Again. And again. Crap, how do you get this thing into reverse? I’ll call Juan. Wait, no, I don’t have my mobile with me…Ok, I’ve been trying for five minutes and this isn’t working. The streets seemed suddenly deserted. There was no one around to take pity on an American who didn’t know how to drive the car he was driving.
So I kept going down my lonely switchback, hoping with a fading hope that I would end up back on the main road. I ended up cornered, inches from a stone fence at the bottom of a steep cul-de-sac. I did not in fact completely destroy my friend’s transmission, but emergency break on to the max, I wrestled and cussed that stupid van until, one of the neighbors cautiously emerged from his villa. “Ayudame, por favor,” I said. I stumbled out a broken explanation of my plight in Spanish, and I swear the guy almost patted me on the head. His kids appeared, toys in hand, to watch the show. I got out, and their father proceeded to hop into the driver’s seat and pop the van into reverse as if he actually knew how to drive a Renault or something. “You have to pull up on this little thing attached to the base of the stick with your fingers, and then push the stick left and up, my friend,” demonstrated Señor I-Forgot-His-Name, my hero. Many things went through my head just then, but most of them I cannot record here. Still unsure of my capabilities, Señor I-Forgot-His-Name turned the van around for me. My thanks to him was the definition of sheepish. He and his kids sent me on my way, and I can only imagine what he said to them afterward. “Mis hijos, ayudad los americanos perdidos, pobrecitos.”
Why would you ever design a stick shift like that, Monseiur French Engineer? It’s safer, you say? Yeah, but still, I didn’t even know you could make a car work that way! Sigh. God bless you, Mr. French Engineer.
