The other day, I posted an article titled “Finally able to drive the manual Boxster GTS a little bit,” and I received congratulatory comments (?), like “You’ve finally made it this far!” and “Just a little more to master it!” from various directions, which made me laugh.
It’s been about three and a half years since I took off my automatic-only license restriction and the Boxster GTS came home to us. Finally, finally, I’ve come this far. That said, I still have a long way to go to truly master it, so I hope to drive on many different roads and fully savor the wonderfulness of the Boxster even more.
This spring, I made up my mind and bought a BMW 320i (MT) at the end of May, and thanks to practicing every day, I can now drive the 320i quite normally without feeling tense. However,
“Even if I can drive the BMW, the Boxster is a different beast. It’ll probably take another six months from here to be able to drive the Boxster well.”
That’s what I thought.
But the other day, when I drove the Boxster for the first time in six months, I was surprised to find I could drive it quite normally. The clutch, which I used to think was “super heavy!”, felt very light, and the shift lever, which I thought “would never go in!”, clicked smoothly into place.
There was no need to be intimidated just because it’s a Porsche. It was simply a matter of getting used to it.
Now I wonder, “Why did I struggle so much with driving a manual? Why did it take me three and a half years?” (laughs)
Blog readers have often advised me,
“If you want to learn to drive a manual, it’s best to buy a manual car you can practice with casually.”
I always understood that but thought it was impossible for me. Now I wish I had bought a manual car sooner (laughs).
But the reason I seriously wanted to learn manual driving was because of blogging, so if I hadn’t been blogging, I probably wouldn’t have gotten this far. Life is full of surprises.
I wrote an article about my YouTube debut the other day, mentioning that it took 50 hours to make a 7-minute video, so I probably can’t post videos frequently. But actually, the second video took only about 5 hours to make.
I think it’s because I got used to the editing software, got a better sense of editing points, and my husband filmed the video carefully so that no faces or license plates are visible.
With this pace, I might be able to post once a week. But if I set a strict schedule, I can imagine myself pushing too hard and getting sick, so I decided not to set a pace and just post when I can (laughs).
By the way, the second video is a touring video my husband made recently in his GT3.
The third video is from the first time I was able to drive the Boxster myself. I wanted to shoot the Boxster GTS looking cool and capture that coolness on video, but when we included our conversation while driving, it turned into a full-on comedy skit…
So this time, we’re calling it the “Boxster Couple Comedy Version,” and I’ll shoot a cool Boxster video properly another day.
Please take a look if you like. If you want to see more videos like this, please subscribe to the channel—it really, really motivates me (laughs). Thank you very much.