North of town, where the road opens up in a series of wide valleys, I got an itch to open up. A mile of mild downgrade and a mile of mild upgrade held no other vehicles. Hadn't seen any animals, no cross streets or pullouts, great spot to play chicken with myself. I promised myself not to get scared.
I lost.
After about a dozen heartbeats, the turbo had wound up, fifth gear started rocketing, and I was accelerating increasingly rapidly past an even multiple of the speed limit. And it felt GREAT--rock solid grip on the road with psychically-light response to my white-knuckled death grip on the wheel.
Funny how slow 70 feels as you're decelerating back toward legal speeds.
But I have to wonder: what the heck was Subaru thinking by trapping a rocket as a gaddabout and making it available to people with potentially as little law-enforcement luck, and certainly as little judgment, as me?
People like me should be in little old rattle-trap jalopies; the early MGs come to mind, or any other British car in which the driver experiences the elements without moderation, falls at the mercy of Lucas Electronics, and feels legitimate terror when racing up to 40 or 50 MPH. And while an accident at that speed has great fatality potential (the metal edge of the dash, the wooden frame, the absence of seatbelts &c), there's more hope of surviving a top-speed accident than one has in a vehicle capable of speeds approaching two hundred.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment