About a week ago, while I was still at home, I decided to take my car out for a spin. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, but because I recently purchased a vehicle with a five speed manual transmission, and I'm still in the learning process, at least in terms of clutch control. In any case, the drive was going smoothly until I managed to stall a few times at a stop sign on the corner of my street. Disheartened, I took it home and parked it in my driveway and angrily stormed into my house. For some reason I was in an advice-seeking mood, and I googled something about finding the 'friction point,' which is the point where the clutch begins to engage the engine as you slowly release it and step on the gas. What I ended up finding was a blog called 'Home of the Owl.' The post I read was about the author teaching her son to drive a five-speed, and the way he struggled through it, starting and stopping in a parking lot for hours until he had it down. And although the article didn't really give me any technical advice, I found that it calmed me down a lot, and it served to reinforce what I had heard from a lot of people, which was that you can really only learn it by doing it. As I continued to peruse this blog, I read entries that told of the adversity faced by the author and her lesbian partner in raising their son, who is called only 'the giant' on this blog. By the time I got off the computer, I was in a great mood, and the blog has remained in my memory since.
When I read the criteria for this assignment, I knew I had to mention this blog. So I looked up some other blogs with posts about driving a stick, and I found that none of them really did for me what the owl had done. Many of them, such as 'Nathan's driving school' had good tips on how to become technically proficient at driving a stick, but nothing they had to offer was anything I didn't already know. I found that the owl had a very sincere and engaging writing style (perhaps not surprisingly-she's a teacher). Not only did her article help me and amuse me, it made me interested in reading anything and everything else that this person might possibly have to say. I didn't really find much else on the subject that came from such a personal angle. As far as the set-up and appearance of the blog, I liked it for the warm colors and occasional inclusion of pictures, but it could have looked terrible and I would have liked it just as much. The owl tackles a wide variety of subject matter and always tries to tie in some kind of personal insight, which I think is cool. For me, this blog was head and shoulders above the rest, and I think you guys should check it out.
http://open.salon.com/blog/owl_says_who/2009/05/31/finding_the_friction_point
and here are some others I looked at:
http://nathansdrivingschool.net/blog/tag/how-to-drive-a-five-speed/
http://www.cartalk.com/content/learn-drive-stick-3
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