Try Something Ambitious by Andy Scheer

Outside our comfort zone, we may find success.

This past weekend, I tried something new.

I felt uncertain. While I knew the theory, I had to put those skills into practice. At first, things didn’t flow smoothly. I had to think about every move. But with time, I grew more confident. I began to enjoy the ride.

And what I ride it was! My father-in-law had invited me to drive his 1930 Ford Model A on his club’s fall color tour ... up twisting mountain roads—some unpaved. Not quite in my comfort zone.

The past few years I’ve driven the car extensively ... including co-driving a cross-country trip from Colorado to Michigan. But driving across Kansas doesn’t call for continual double-clutching and downshifting to negotiate steep hairpin turns. Much of the time my knuckles were white.

By the end of the 60-mile trip, my uphill downshifting still wasn’t perfect, but I was doing better. Given another opportunity, I’ll gladly say yes.

I’ll think about my Model A mountain adventure this week as I begin a 14-hour solo drive to a conference. My goal of speaking to the group about fiction editing means another journey across the fringe of my comfort zone.

But I’ll be building on what I’ve done before. Like when I launched my website. I’d never been my own webmaster. But I combined what I already knew with some easily available instruction and gave it a shot. My site’s still not perfect, but it’s way better than nothing. And there’s a satisfaction in looking back and saying yes, I can do that.

Learning New Tricks by Andy Scheer

Good thing I'm not an old dog.

This weekend I found myself trying to learn two new tricks – on opposite ends of the technology spectrum.

On one end of the spectrum there's a 1930 Ford Model A Town Sedan. My father-in-law has recruited me to serve as co-driver for a cross-country trip next month. This means I not only have to reacquaint myself with a three-speed, manual transmission, I also have to master the art of double-clutching, especially when downshifting from third to second.

I look forward to the trip, so I've been motivated to learn that largely lost art. Yesterday I found myself behind the wheel for nearly an hour, driving the 83-year-old car in traffic on country roads at fifty miles an hour.

At least we think we were going fifty. The Model A's speedometer isn't reliable.

That's the reason I'm having to learn some new technology. To keep accurate track of the Model A's speed, my father-in-law just bought a GPS receiver. He's never used one. Neither have I – preferring maps from the Motor Club or online printouts.

As the designated navigator, it's my job to figure out how to use the GPS, then show my father-in-law. I don't expect it will be hard to learn.

There's nothing like a little motivation – and a little bit of patience – if you're no longer a pup.

Great American Travel Books by Andy Scheer

I've had a soft spot for nonfiction travel books since I received a hardcover of Kon-Tiki the Christmas I was 10.

I've read and re-read most of Paul Theroux's curmudgeonly accounts of  travels by train. But except for early chapters of The Old Patagonia Express, most of his journeys take place overseas.

I prefer books about domestic journeys--especially this summer as I plan a trip as my father-in-law's co-driver in his 1930 Ford Model A Town Sedan from suburban Denver to Hickory Corners, Michigan.

As I plotted our route across Kansas and Missouri via Highway 36, I've considered the US travel books I've read—and which I might take with me in the Model A. Not owning an e-reader, I want to limit myself to a single volume.

I recently re-read John Steinbeck's Travels With Charley. And not that long ago I read The Home Front, Alistair Cooke's account of driving across America in a Lincoln Zephyr during the early years of the second world war.

Considering our projected route, I'm leaning toward a re-read of William Least Heat-Moon's Blue Highways. Or perhaps River-Horse, his 1999 account of an Atlantic to Pacific trip by small boat. Still, that book's an unknown. Can I trust it to match the quality of Blue Highways or PrairieErth??

I could take a mass paperback of Stephen Coonts's The Cannibal Queen, a highly re-readable account of flying through the lower 48 in a 1942 Stearman open cockpit biplane.

Do you have a suggestion?