I had a ride a few years back - manual, of course, 5 speed. At 3AM, doing my 240-something mile paper route, I stopped in a dip in the road out in the middle of nowhere and shut down to watch the perseid meteor shower. Great view, the little dip hid even the closest lights (probably 10 miles away, give or take, but still enough to bother night-vision) and I got to see lotsa shooting stars. All great, but I've sat here long enough - time to get rolling again. Climbed in, turned key. Grrrr-rrrr-rrrr-UNT-clickety-clickety-click-chatter. Aw, hell... This aint' good... Try again. Same result. Try again. No grunt, just clicks. Play with the battery cables. No change. Lights will come on, but dim. Horn sounds like an asthma victim in full attack. At least a little in the battery - enough to get a spark even if it can't crank? Aw, hell.... why did I think stopping in the dip would be a good thing?!?! Oh well, nothing else to be done, let's see how far and fast I can get this beast rolling. Push it back and try to pop it rolling forward? No, reverse will be better - more spin at the clutch from the same wheel speed than even first gear would give. Find a big rock in the ditch and place it for use as a chock. Get behind and start heaving. Got it started up the slope a few feet. Kick rock under the tire and take a breather. Heave some more, getting maybe a couple inches at a time, kicking the rock along as I go to keep from losing ground. Got it probably 8 feet up the little slope. Set the parking brake, kick the rock loose. Mash the clutch. Make certain it's *IN* reverse. Throttle to the floor and release once. Turn the key on. Send up a little prayer to whatever there might be "up there". Pop the parking brake and hope. Roll back toward the bottom of the dip, dump the clutch just as it feels like it's starting to go up the slope behind - MIGHT be making 5MPH, maybe not even that much. CHUG-LURCH-CHUG-JOLT-sputter-fire-sputter-fire mash the clutch and knock it out of gear to be sure while playing with the throttle - coughing and chugging a bit, but turning over. Coughing and sputtering evens out till it's running good, YES!!!!! Finished the route at 6, rolled it into autozone, and waited for them to open. When they did, put their battery test gadget on it. Showed at least one, possibly two dead cells in the battery. No wonder it didn't have enough oomph to get a start out of it. New battery fixed that problem.
Try *THAT* in an automatic - ANY automatic! <heheheheheheh>
Gimme a stick any day of the week!
Reading this in bed, and you made me laugh so hard that I woke up my dogs! This post doesn't have nearly enough likes imo