In 1999, I was working as a contract attorney for a firm here in Houston. I'd been there about three months, and the main health care person had just announced he was leaving. The partners had mentioned that they'd liked my work, and hinted that I'd get a permanent gig at the firm. I was finally making some real money, and I thought that this was a good opportunity to finally go ahead and buy a car. I'd been driving my parents' suburban upto that point. I started car shopping, and I ended up finding this cute little two door Ford Explorer (gas was less than a dollar a gallon at that point in time, and compared to the Suburban, the Explorer was downright green). Ford had two transmission options: standard and automatic. The automatic was $6,000 more than the standard. The problem was that I had absolutely no idea how to drive a standard transmission.

My father, you see, was a Porsche driver in our formative driving years, and at some point before I got my license, we made the huge, huge mistake of showing him Risky Business. As a result, he made sure that none of us, while we were teenagers at least, had a clue as to how to drive a standard transmission, lest his beloved 928 end up at the bottom of a pond.*

Anyhow, my big dilemma was whether or not to buy a car I didn't know how to drive. In the end, it was a no brainer. $6,000 was (and is) a lot of money, and I was a smart person. I could figure out how to learn to drive my car. And it wasn't like I lived anywhere with hills. To say the terrian in Houston is flat implies there is actually a terrain to describe.

So I went ahead and bought the car, and my father ended up driving it home. It took me about a week to figure out how to drive it without embarrassing myself every time I hit a stop sign.

Two weeks later, the health care attorney's wife announced she wan't going to move to whatever state it was that they were supposed to move to, and he asked for his job back. A week later, my contract expired and I was out of a job.

Five months later, I found a job in Berkeley, California, and I put everything I owned in the Ford Explorer (and a moving truck), paused for a bit to contemplate my life while overlooking the Grand Canyon (something I recommend everyone do at some point or another) and arrived in Berkeley to an apartment I'd use as a base until I could find a place that would accept dogs.

My temporary digs in Berkeley were on a street called Euclid. I'd stayed there for a week before I moved to Berkeley while I took the California Bar exam. The apartment was pretty awesome. It belonged to a really cool woman who probably bought it for nothing back in the 60s and was pleasantly surprised to find herself not only doing well, but also prosperous in 2000. Beth, the owner of the house, was somewhat irritated with all the requirements of Berkeley rent control, so she never allowed for full term leases. Her bread and butter were visiting professors and students who were in town only for a semester. Someone like me, who was just camping for a few months until I could find a permanent place, was perfect. It was a large house, and my apartment was in the attic. There was a living room/dining room, a kitchen and a bedroom, and every morning, I'd wake up to look out for an amazing view of the Golden Gate Bridge across the Bay. There was a nice porch off the back, and the owner's dog helped me get through missing Relampago, who was staying in Houston until I could find a place that would take us both.**

Oh, yeah, the house sat halfway up this amazing hill, and the driveway was a good 400 yard steep thing that went straight down off of a very sharp turn from the street.

It didn't even occur to me that it'd be a problem until I rolled into Berkeley. Previously, my only real experience with inclines and my standard transmission involved parking garages, and they'd been pretty touch and go. This thing was daunting in my automatic transmission rental car when I'd been taking the bar exam.

I somehow or another managed to get from the flats of Berkeley upto a street called Marin, which went straight up the hill. Fortunately, the first stop sign on the way up Marin was also the stop sign I had to turn right on. Still, there was a bit of back and forthing on the clutch, and I was terrified of letting my right foot get too far from the brake, lest I roll.

Euclid is a very long, very curvy street that goes across the hill. It's acutally not that bad to drive, except for the curves. The main problem is that it's very pretty, and I'm one that likes to take in the view as well as drive, so I imagine it's not particularly fun for any of my passengers.

Euclid, that first time, wasn't that much of a problem. But the driveway... The driveway***. First of all, it was a pretty hard, pretty tight right that I had to take. And I was in fear of hitting either the house at the top of the driveway (a neighbor) or the redwood tree that was on the other side of the driveway. That first time I went down the driveway, I remember just sitting there for a little while and scrounging up the courage take off. It was sort of like pausing before taking a particularly steep ski run. My foot didn't leave my brake, and it probably took a good five minutes, when it usually took less than 45 seconds.

A day later, I had to go back up. Frankly, I'm not quite sure how I did it. I think I had a bit of a running start, as the driveway at the bottom flattened out a bit. But the thing was so narrow that I couldn't really get up enough speed to justify getting out of first gear, and I was in constant fear that I'd somehow stall out. I wasn't sure at all how I'd restart the car if that happened in the middle of the hill. Fortunately, though, I didn't have to face that particular demon. But at the top, I had to a) stop, and b) turn hard. Again, I stood there at the top, terrified of what was next. Take my foot off the brake, and I'd roll down hill. Keep my foot on the brake I'd never get to the accelerator to actually move. I did the roll, go up thing a few times, and finally, I shot out onto Euclid and did one of the ugliest left turns you've ever seen.

Eventually, I figured that whole thing out too. Eventually, I got so good at driving on hills, even Fell Street in San Francisco didn't bug me all that much. Eventually, I could parallel park on a hill.

The night before he left, Graham and I were flipping through channels, and on some obscure cable channel whose name I can't remember, we stumbled upon the last 30 minutes of Bill Cosby: Himself. It's the standup routine that a lot of the Cosby Show was based off of. We only caught the last half-hour or so, but it was enough.

I explained to Graham how for years and years, I didn't think my own father was particularly unusual, because he was, in my youth, almost EXACTLY like Bill Cosby on the Cosby show. They shared a lot of the same eccentricities. He was the type of father that'd get in trouble for giving the kids chocolate cake for breakfast. He was the type of father who'd defer to my mom on nearly everything. And he was always trying to get rid of us so he could seduce my mom.

Anyhow, watching the standup routine, reminded me of another routine. One that I'd only heard once, but thanks to the magic of the internet, it exists on YouTube. I could relate.

I give you "driving in San Francisco":



*Liv was the last to learn to drive stick. My dad decided to try and teach her while she and the car were at the bottom of a hill while they were in Taos. I wasn't there, but reports indicated that it was a frustrating experience for all involved. Liv ended up teaching herself how to drive a stick with no involvement from him whatsoever a few years later.

**For being "dog friendly" Berkeley didn't have all that many places that took dogs. It took FOREVER to find our house.

***I'm pretty sure that this same driveway killed timur_i_lang's car the first time I ever met him.

Tags: bay area, cars, memories