Out for a Sunday drive

If it's true what they say, that patience is a virtue, then, Internets, I am a virtueless woman.

I come by it honestly; my dad is renowned among dozens (especially his sisters) for his severe lack of patience. Case in point, Little 15-year-old Ms. Notetaker is learning to drive and she's learning on manual transmission vehicles. Boy howdy did I struggle to find that sweet spot between idling in gear and stalling. My father, God bless and love him, really tried his hardest to let me get the feeling right. Well, it took me a long time to get that feeling and one time I was driving the family out to dinner or something like that, and I sat through a series of lights at a stoplight because I couldn't stop stalling. So there I am sobbing because I'm not perfect and I can't do this and I can't handle the "advice" I'm being given from my dad over the honking of the cars behind me, and there's my dad in the passenger seat, clenching his teeth with a death grip on my leg to hold it in place trying to prevent me from releasing the clutch too fast and stalling out again. He was, in fact doing everything he could short of yanking me out of the driver's seat and doing it himself (which, I know I asked him to do multiple times between sobs throughout this entire ordeal).

That "just-let-me-do-it" impatience is something I have certainly inherited and it played itself out in my very own car this morning.

While visiting my oh-so-wonderful hair stylist this morning, the heavens opened up and poured buckets and buckets of rain down on the city. I had to park in the back lot of the salon, which backs up onto a gravel road and railroad tracks, a somewhat industrial part of the neighborhood. I brave the sheets of rain, hop in my car and begin to drive down the one-wayish gravel road. I'm following an older couple and attempting to avoid the large pot-holes turned wading pools throughout the road. We get near the end of the road where we are almost on pavement and the car in front of me stops. Turns out the last ten yards of the road are under 2 feet of water from this surprise shower. Grandpa flips his car in reverse, and I start to get really annoyed, mostly because I'm not sure what he's doing and also because I'm not going reverse all the way back down this road. Although that may have been the smartest thing to do at the time, I didn't like that idea and I wasn't going to do what this old man had decided was prudent for me to do, so Little Ms. Just-Let-Me-Do-It took the wheel.

It seemed to me the most logical thing to do, would be to just cross the tracks, as not five feet on the other side of them was a puddle-free paved way to freedom. So in a move that certainly surprised the car in front of me--maybe because I don't drive an SUV, but a little VW Jetta--I attempt to hop the tracks. This all starts out great, I get over the first track no problem as I had found a place where the gravel raised up just enough that it wasn't such a big ledge to climb, and with minimal scrapeage to the undercarriage of my car, my driver side wheels had cleared the second track. It was here, however, that my ingenious plan went awry. I had not maintained enough speed and had also moved forward just enough to where my other two wheels couldn't get up and over the other track. I made several attempts, but the more I kept trying the worse I was making it.

All the while, the car in front of me stayed put. Sitting there with his reverse lights still on, not moving. As if he and his companion were just watching me and my little show. And this aggravated me even more. All I could think was, "listen, buddy, I'm out of your way now, so just reverse and get out of here." It took him awhile to do that. He just stayed sitting there. At least three times he rolled his window up and down, I think to make an effort to talk to me. But stubborn pride kept me from rolling mine down to engage him. I mean, if it weren't for the way his driving was annoying me, I wouldn't be stranded in the middle of train tracks in the first place. So no, I'm not going to talk to you. He finally decides to save himself and backs out of there.

And so there I am. All attempts of getting unstuck are futile, so I call Mr. McMichael.

Mr. McMichael: Hello!

LMNT: Hola.

MM: What's going on?

LMNT: Um, it turns out I made an extremely bad decision.

At this point, if Mr. McMichael is anything like me, he starts playing out worst-case scenarios in his brain.

LMNT: I'm stuck. In my car. In the middle of a railroad track.

And it is at this point that I think, oh dear God, do trains actually use this track? And, isn't there some public service announcement about not doing exactly what I just did?

I do my best to describe for him the situation, and the possible ways I see of getting out of it, most of which involve the phrase, "if I can just build up enough speed and momentum...". He very valiantly says that he will drive out with rope to try and save me, and I tell him I'm going to try a couple of other options before that will be necessary, and that I'll call him back if none of them work. I am, by the way, very doubtful that any of them will work.

So there I sit, in the middle of a railroad track hoping that a train is not heading for me, when a Jeep drives beside me on the gravel road and turns right in front of me and crosses the track without any difficulty whatsoever. Oh, yeah. Well eff you, Jeep, for rubbing it in. What I wouldn't give for your clearance and suspension.

Deflated I start to back up. Remember when I was defiant against the old man who wanted me to back all the way up down the gravel road? Yes? Well my current plan was to back up all the way down the distance of that gravel road, only with two of my wheels running down the middle of a train track. In the process of backing up a couple of yards, I realized I actually could probably get enough speed and momentum to coax my car up and over the tracks where the Jeep had crossed. It was worth a shot. So I got the little Jetta moving (at least 5 miles an hour), and it somehow worked. I was free.

And in thinking about how the heck I close this post, I've realized that I've stumbled upon my own twisted version of the age-old melodrama: poor helpless damsel is stuck on the railroad tracks and the virtuous hero in the white hat could come and save her, but she'll have to wait, and really, who has the time for that, so she'll just do it herself (and keep her fingers crossed that she didn't jack up her car too much). Yep, patience is definitely no virtue of mine.