can you drive stick shift?

i really only drive from el paso airport to the observatory at top of a mountain.

the first 3 hours are city and freeway so automatic works.

the last 30 mins is like 25% grade and the automatic is awful.

on balance, i would have to say: don't go to grad school.

It snows in El Paso?

Driving automatic still feels like operating a dodgem car to me.

Although two US ILX0rs offered to let me use their cars last year and I demurred out of wrong-side-of-the-road concerns, and it's only just occurred to me how easy it would be bcz automatic

I don't know how you UK/AUS drivers do it left-handed.

Used to borrow a friend's left hand drive car at uni, then drive my parents' right hand drive when I went back home. Whenever I switched I would fumble around a few times for the gear lever with the wrong hand by the door, but settled back in to the right mindset pretty quickly.

On a trip to Boston once the rental place was like "we have a manual, if you can drive that?" I was all smug-Britishes and like "Yeah, I think I can handle a manual, buddy". Got in and had the immediate panic of realising the gear stick was on the 'wrong' side of me, and curse my smugness, etc.

I like automatics, but I don't miss the unexpected downshift of an overzealous auto transmission while going round a corner. I had some dicey moments in my last (automatic) car where the back end kicked out a little because I went just too hard on the accelerator coming out of a bend. It was a ~1994 car, though, and I'm sure auto boxes have come a long way in 20 years.