Easy to learn Manual Transmission?

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I was wondering if any other Autie's found learning a stick-shift to be easy? I learned on an Automatic but did not get my license til I was 21. Four years later, I learned on a manual and I absolutely love it. Learning a stick-shift was really easy for me to understand too. I learn by seeing/ doing things. Did anyone else fall in love with stick-shift after driving it?

It's a lot easier to learn how to use a manual transmission today, than when I started driving about 45 years ago. Nowadays, all of them are fully synchronised in all forward gears, which means that you can shift into the lowest gear while the car is still moving. In the old days, with 3 speed column shifting (we called it "3 on the tree") you had to be completely stopped to shift into the lowest (first) gear. If there was any forward motion at all, you'd hear the gears grind. Most cars today also have hydraulic assisted clutches that seem to be a wee bit smoother to use.

Stopping on an uphill is still the hardest thing to learn, though.

When I was in high school, one girl wanted me to teach her how to drive a standard transmission. Normally I would have been fine with that, but I was driving a grain truck that required that you double clutch for every gear change up or down.

I drive a 6spd every day. Couldn't afford anything else; manuals are safer & more efficient, plus, my car is my ersatz I.T. cubicle...

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I learned on a manual. It was very difficult to learn and took me 1.5 years before I even took the test. Coordinating the shifting with the driving was exceedingly difficult for me. I think that if I had learned and gotten comfortable on an automatic, adding in the shifting later would have been much easier. Either way I drived automatic now, I prefer it for the start and stop driving one encounters in suburbia and more urban places. I grew up int he boondocks where manual made more sense.

Learning to use the clutch smoothly is the hardest part...and it's not that hard.

When I was in high school and college, a pretty good percentage of the local late teens and early twenties would spend Friday and Saturday nights "dragging Main". Our Main Street will typically have up to about 7 or 8 cars its entire length, but back then there might have been 20 or 30 cars on Main on Friday or Saturday night, all driving around. There was also the street that crossed Main at the blinking light as well. It would keep up until midnight or later.

I spent a lot of time in another town where it was similar, but more people. Also a bit more hostile. On Sunday afternoon, I was driving down the main highway through town and found that the state troopers had set up a roadblock where they were checking the cars that came through for driver's licenses, registration, valid inspection stickers and checking the easy to check items (exhaust, tires, lights, horn, windshield wipers). My car passed inspection and so I proceeded through. About every ten minutes the rest of the afternoon, I drove through the checkpoint again. After three or four inspections, they started just waving me through. That was "playing around".

These days that has changed a great deal. Friday and Saturday nights in town are pretty much dead. I have no idea what the kids do these days.

Would I want to drive on city traffic everyday with one, I don't think so however I did pick it up fairly quickly considering I don't have to do it much more then a few minutes a week and had no road vehicle to practice on. Loading cars on trailers tends to weed out the bad habits I think. I learned because the demolition derby car I had was standard, practiced in the driveway.

Manual gear shifts are the norm in Europe and the multitasking involved overwhelmed me.

Manual transmissions are great. My pickup truck before the one I have now was manual and so was the pickup before that. You have so much better control over the vehicle and the driving experience is so much more fun as a result.

I learned to drive manual on a tractor. Three gearshifts (hi-lo, 1-2-3, forward-reverse) with no sycros and you had to double clutch everything (clutch out of gear - release - then clutch into gear). All I did was stomp my left foot all day. Was cool once I got used to it though.