Rob
03-10-07, 10:35 AM
Learning gears helps nurture memories
By Gary Richards
Mercury News
Article Launched: 03/10/2007 01:38:46 AM PST
Greg Wageman worked the stick shift effortlessly on the new sea-blue Corvette, his wife, Susan, next to him, plotting their 5 1/2-week trip across Route 66 from Santa Monica to Chicago.
He always drove, she navigated. Through the canyons of Arizona's Painted Desert, thunderstorms in Amarillo and the deep heat of a St. Louis summer, they cruised along in that summer of 2005, in love, doing what they loved.
Ahead of them, it seemed, was nothing but open road.
"You know," Greg casually said one day, "you should learn how to drive this car, just in case something happens."
A week before last Christmas, it did. Greg died suddenly at age 48 of a pulmonary embolism in their Fremont home.
But death won't end this love story.
The first few days were a blur for Susan Wageman, 47. As weeks stretched out, she drew up a list to bring some sense of order to a life so painfully disrupted.On it: find someone to help her learn to drive a manual transmission. She wanted to keep alive some of her fondest memories of Greg, the man she had fallen in love with nearly 30 years earlier when they were students at Boston College. "I know that it will be different on my own," Susan wrote in an e-mail to Roadshow that ran on Valentine's Day. "But I don't want to give up road trips in the Corvette."
Dozens of readers responded, some with tips for driving a stick, others with offers to provide lessons. Many also drove Corvettes; some had lost husbands or gone through a divorce.
One reader recommended that she call Gary Rost, the president of a local Corvette club. He lives in Newark and had taught his younger daughter to drive a stick. If he can teach a teenager, Susan figured, he could teach her.
"We are always willing to help each other out," Rost said of people in the Corvette club. "That is basically it. People have helped me, so I help someone else. It just goes around."
The lesson
The day before their lesson last weekend, Susan pulled out the driver's manual and, for the first time since Greg's death, sat in the soft black leather seat that was always reserved for him.
The back was reclined so steeply; she remembered how Greg, at 6-foot-2, had to duck into the car to avoid hitting his head on the low roof. She adjusted the seat and steering wheel to fit her 5-foot-4 frame, then felt the pedals and stick shift.
Tears came. She steadied herself.
"OK," she said. "I can do this. I have to."
Susan, a senior research director at the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, told herself she could master the mechanical task. She had always been good at managing things: when she and Greg met in 1978, helping put on a play, she was a petite blond stage manager; he was a tall, handsome piano player. Before their 1982 wedding, Susan's sister called them "Prince Charming and Snow White."
When she and Rost met at her condo on Sunday, she wore a charcoal Corvette shirt, the same kind she had given Greg when their car arrived.
The lesson almost didn't start: the battery was dead. The Corvette had not been driven since her husband died. But after a jumper-cable start, Rost inched out of the cramped garage, driving to a vacant parking lot off Warm Springs Boulevard.
Now it was Susan's turn. With Rost in the passenger seat and Mr. Roadshow peering in through an open window on the driver's side, she took the wheel of the two-seater and, as Rost instructed, placed one foot on the clutch.
"Push the clutch in and out a few times," Rost said. "Relax. ... Don't burn the clutch. A car like this, that's a $1,000 to $1,500 problem. We don't want to do that."
She turned on the ignition, looked out the window and gave a nervous smile. The clutch popped. The Corvette jumped. And stalled.
"Oops," she said.
The next timewas no problem. Down the lot they rolled, at maybe 10 mph. A U-turn back. Again and again. After 10 minutes and a couple of more stalls, Rost pointed to the street.
Ten to 20 more minutes of driving. "Good, good," Rost said. "We'll have you road racing in no time."
"Not road racing," Wageman replied. "But I do want to cruise."
The lesson finished after about an hour, and she pulled into her driveway, grappling with the clutch and brake as she inched into the confines of the tight garage. She and Rost gave each other a hug goodbye like old friends before Rost drove off in his 1994 Torch Red Coupe Corvette.
`Joy and sadness'
The lesson left her emotionally exhausted. "The joy and sadness get all wrapped up together," she said. "Whatever I do, (Greg) is there, especially with this car. I don't want to lose that."
Susan is planning a trip to Monterey soon to visit a friend. Then, maybe a longer trip from Oakland to the East Coast along the Lincoln Highway. It's the northern version of Route 66 that she and Greg had so enjoyed.
As she drives Greg's blue Corvette, she knows her memories will be her constant companion. And the roads ahead will be, once again, wide open.
<HR class=tagline color=#cccccc SIZE=1>Contact Gary Richards at mrroadshow@ mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5335.
By Gary Richards
Mercury News
Article Launched: 03/10/2007 01:38:46 AM PST
Greg Wageman worked the stick shift effortlessly on the new sea-blue Corvette, his wife, Susan, next to him, plotting their 5 1/2-week trip across Route 66 from Santa Monica to Chicago.
He always drove, she navigated. Through the canyons of Arizona's Painted Desert, thunderstorms in Amarillo and the deep heat of a St. Louis summer, they cruised along in that summer of 2005, in love, doing what they loved.
Ahead of them, it seemed, was nothing but open road.
"You know," Greg casually said one day, "you should learn how to drive this car, just in case something happens."
A week before last Christmas, it did. Greg died suddenly at age 48 of a pulmonary embolism in their Fremont home.
But death won't end this love story.
The first few days were a blur for Susan Wageman, 47. As weeks stretched out, she drew up a list to bring some sense of order to a life so painfully disrupted.On it: find someone to help her learn to drive a manual transmission. She wanted to keep alive some of her fondest memories of Greg, the man she had fallen in love with nearly 30 years earlier when they were students at Boston College. "I know that it will be different on my own," Susan wrote in an e-mail to Roadshow that ran on Valentine's Day. "But I don't want to give up road trips in the Corvette."
Dozens of readers responded, some with tips for driving a stick, others with offers to provide lessons. Many also drove Corvettes; some had lost husbands or gone through a divorce.
One reader recommended that she call Gary Rost, the president of a local Corvette club. He lives in Newark and had taught his younger daughter to drive a stick. If he can teach a teenager, Susan figured, he could teach her.
"We are always willing to help each other out," Rost said of people in the Corvette club. "That is basically it. People have helped me, so I help someone else. It just goes around."
The lesson
The day before their lesson last weekend, Susan pulled out the driver's manual and, for the first time since Greg's death, sat in the soft black leather seat that was always reserved for him.
The back was reclined so steeply; she remembered how Greg, at 6-foot-2, had to duck into the car to avoid hitting his head on the low roof. She adjusted the seat and steering wheel to fit her 5-foot-4 frame, then felt the pedals and stick shift.
Tears came. She steadied herself.
"OK," she said. "I can do this. I have to."
Susan, a senior research director at the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, told herself she could master the mechanical task. She had always been good at managing things: when she and Greg met in 1978, helping put on a play, she was a petite blond stage manager; he was a tall, handsome piano player. Before their 1982 wedding, Susan's sister called them "Prince Charming and Snow White."
When she and Rost met at her condo on Sunday, she wore a charcoal Corvette shirt, the same kind she had given Greg when their car arrived.
The lesson almost didn't start: the battery was dead. The Corvette had not been driven since her husband died. But after a jumper-cable start, Rost inched out of the cramped garage, driving to a vacant parking lot off Warm Springs Boulevard.
Now it was Susan's turn. With Rost in the passenger seat and Mr. Roadshow peering in through an open window on the driver's side, she took the wheel of the two-seater and, as Rost instructed, placed one foot on the clutch.
"Push the clutch in and out a few times," Rost said. "Relax. ... Don't burn the clutch. A car like this, that's a $1,000 to $1,500 problem. We don't want to do that."
She turned on the ignition, looked out the window and gave a nervous smile. The clutch popped. The Corvette jumped. And stalled.
"Oops," she said.
The next timewas no problem. Down the lot they rolled, at maybe 10 mph. A U-turn back. Again and again. After 10 minutes and a couple of more stalls, Rost pointed to the street.
Ten to 20 more minutes of driving. "Good, good," Rost said. "We'll have you road racing in no time."
"Not road racing," Wageman replied. "But I do want to cruise."
The lesson finished after about an hour, and she pulled into her driveway, grappling with the clutch and brake as she inched into the confines of the tight garage. She and Rost gave each other a hug goodbye like old friends before Rost drove off in his 1994 Torch Red Coupe Corvette.
`Joy and sadness'
The lesson left her emotionally exhausted. "The joy and sadness get all wrapped up together," she said. "Whatever I do, (Greg) is there, especially with this car. I don't want to lose that."
Susan is planning a trip to Monterey soon to visit a friend. Then, maybe a longer trip from Oakland to the East Coast along the Lincoln Highway. It's the northern version of Route 66 that she and Greg had so enjoyed.
As she drives Greg's blue Corvette, she knows her memories will be her constant companion. And the roads ahead will be, once again, wide open.
<HR class=tagline color=#cccccc SIZE=1>Contact Gary Richards at mrroadshow@ mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5335.