Drive In, Drive Out

The other day a bunch of us were working on getting the course set up for Granogue this weekend. In the process of doing so, a low hanging branch needed to be removed to keep from decapitate people as the rode by. After cutting it down, it needed to be disposed of. Someone suggested to use the truck to take it down by the woods. This is where my story begins.
So James and Dan are cutting up the branch into smaller pieces when they ask who can drive stick, as the truck is stick. I reply "I can". Silly Silly me.
Though yes I can drive stick, and my car is a stick, I quickly found out there is a big difference in driving my little mini and driving a big huge industrial truck. For one, when I got in it was a bench seat. This was my first clue there may be a problem. I moved the seat as far forward as it would go and I still wasn't even close to reaching the pedals. So I grabbed someone's back pack that was in the truck and stuck it behind my back to make it so I could reach. No problem. So I start it up, find first, which was also a little funky, and then drive over to where James and Dan are waiting to load the branch. It wasn't bad, I had to ride the clutch a bit, but it went ok.
We all load the branches into the truck and then it's time to pull out. James gets in with me and Dan suggests riding on the back. I say no way, I don't want to throw him off or anything by accident. So he walked over. It was a little jumpy at first but we were ok, I pulled over to the treeline and stopped and we unloaded the branches. Then we had to go back up. Getting down the hill wasn't bad, going back up was another story.
James tried not to ride back with me and I told him I didn't want to drive by myself. So James reluctantly got back in the truck and immediately put on his seatbelt. I pull out and try to turn around in the grass, but there was a big ditch and I wasn't sure how a big heavy truck would take that and I didn't want to get it stuck. So we decided to go down to more level ground. On our way down the hill we spy a black cat crossing the road, so we decide we're not going all the way down, we'll try turning around midway. It was semi-flat on the sides, so I could get it turned around and we're now headed straight back up the hill. I try to take off a couple times to no avail. We just kept going backwards. I couldn't get the clutch to catch before we were rolling too much. We give up and decide to call for help. James pulls out the walkie talkie and tries calling Marc. No answer. Then he tries Tom. Still silence. Crap. We're on our own. James comments that if I had three legs I'd be ok. One for the clutch, one for the brake and then one for the gas. Since we were stuck, we decided to try it. James manages to get his leg over around the gear shift to reach the gas as I hold the clutch and the brake. Then I'm giving him instruction on how much gas to give it and to watch the RPM's so we can get it moving. He guns it, we lurch forward, too much gas, I had to stop. We try again, we start jumping again, I tell him I just need to get it to second and we'll be ok. He says "I have to get my leg out". I see him moving out of the corner of my eye, but I can't see what he's doing. I can't wait anymore. We're lurching too much, I slam it into 2nd. It smoothes out and we're driving back up the hill. By this time I'm laughing so hard tears are coming down my face. That's when I look down and notice James never got his leg moved. I had it pinned between the gear shift and the seat. He just sat there calmly not saying anything. He just said keep driving. We get back up and we decide we won't mention all the problems we had, we'll keep it to ourselves. As soon as I pull the truck to a stop and take it out of gear so James is free, he jumps out and runs over to Marc and tells him what happened. So much for not telling anyone of our difficulties. It was funny though. Luckily all worked out. However, I have no plans on driving any large utility vehicles anytime soon.