Tag: Porsche

Vroom….?

Well, I might end up with a car of my own tomorrow. Kind of a really weird thought, actually. However, I’ve checked it out a bit, and found that I could potentially pay off the entire lease up-front, and then I only would be required to pay my grandmother back each month for her borrowed money, as opposed to doing that and paying the car company leasing organization each month. That idea has really lifted something from my stomach. It hasn’t happened yet, of course, so I’m still in that space of a bit of stress and discomfort about it all. However, I can see how doing that would relieve an immense pressure for me. So, I would like to make that happen. This is a car that I had wanted back in and after college (before I met the VW, of course). I have read much about its handling etc.. so I am hoping that is just in comparison to, say, the Porsche 911 I was driving today, with its four-wheel drive and all the rest of its engineering. If they are comparing to the best, we’ll, I know it isn’t the best. However, this car gets an average of 30+ miles per gallon. That lovely Porsche has an engine that eats gasoline at absurd rates for such a small vehicle size. Anyway…, I hope this all works out easily and beautifully tomorrow.

Fingers crossed and intentions real 😉

Post-a-day 2020

Scars and cars

Two things:

1) These scans are at the point that they have dried out so much, they now keep cracking when I move, ripping themselves open anew, sending immediate and searing pain through my hands or knee, when it does happen. I finally managed to drive okay, but it was an old stick shift today, and putting it into third gear was quite difficult with my right hand situation. It ended up busting open my scabs more than once, and drawing blood from them… yippee… haha

2) Speaking of driving that car, it is a ’97(?) Porsche 911. That means the speedometer only shows numbers in increments of 25 (up to a very high number), the engine feels very comfortable at around 80mph, and driving it is like a party for the senses in a way they always seem to forget that they adore. Driving such a car makes driving fun. A long drive into town, while mentally seems miserable, ends up being no big deal at all, and, in fact, a kind of total meditative experience as I am one with the wind and the glorious German engineering and power of an engine. I don’t even have the need for speed, myself – it really is the car. But, since I’m driving it, I tend to take it easy for the most part, and chill with traffic at safer and much slower speeds than one likely would expect from a driver of such a car. Nonetheless, that car makes driving fun. Really.

Now, I’m curious how this idea could affect my search for a reliable, responsible – both for me and for the planet – vehicle this weekend. The plan is to lease a Nissan Sentra, after verifying that I still like the vehicle, years and years later…, but that will be a hard comparison after driving this car again… oops. 😛

Wishful thinking, y’all. 😉

Post-a-day 2020

Vroom Vroom

Today, I went to my mom’s house to bring some salmon for dinner for my grandparents (who are still there due to hurricane damage at their home in farther-east Texas), and to hang out with them and with my mom. Where I am house-sitting is about an hour away from my mom’s house. I have express permission to drive the Vespa (which was, essentially, a copy of mine only a few weeks after I bought mine) and the Porsche, because, “It’s the cheapest car we own.”

Take that in for a second, will you?

…

Anyway, it’s a 1999 Porsche 911, a little car made for speed and spectacular performance. I drove it (with the owner in the passenger seat) once years ago when he first bought this particular one, and he had me go up in the highway and experience the sheer speed the engine can produce. I remember noticing that we were going 96 miles per hour despite my having had no idea we were much above even 60mph – I had told him at the time that the car just felt comfortable there, like it was made to go that speed more so than any other speed. He agreed with me, and then gave me a breakdown on why that felt to be the case. It was a really cool experience for me.

Today, I own a 2002 Hyundai Accent GL with crank windows and a 2013 Vespa 300GTS (that’s 300cc). The Hyundai is mostly a rainy day and grocery store car, as the engine can really only handle light use and short distances. The Vespa is, well, a Vespa. It can go 88mph with me driving it, but it isn’t made to do that very often or on the regular – it is really made to go 50-ish on the regular, possibly a bit more. Neither of these vehicles is anything like a Porsche. Nor was the 2011 Toyota Prius I recently drove for a while while a friend was out of the country – that one even less so, really.

And so, fast-forward back to today, when I fired up – and I use those words on purpose, because, boy, does it sound like someone just lit a massive fire when that engine roars to life! – this Porsche 911. It kind of made me nervous just to get the thing out of the one-car garage door (of a four-car garage, of course), I felt like I might blast a hole in something every time I even touched the gas. (Plus, with the age, the gear shifter was a little wonky to figure out at first, having to pull it way to the side for first gear, and even more way to the side for reverse, I was nervous of going the wrong direction straight into the concrete in front of me!) I had to run a quick errand first, and so experienced the world of growling beasts that are the low speeds of such a vehicle… I felt like I was going to break down just about everything that I passed, that engine was so strong and rough with its constant dull roar and slight explosion at every press of the gas pedal.

But I got over it after that short errand, and I took the dog for a quick little neighborhood ride before I headed out. I was told she absolutely loves it, and she even snuck out the gate while I was checking things over before leaving, and she climbed halfway in the driver door, despite my telling her to come back inside the yard. It was actually quite comical, so I couldn’t resist. I had considered doing it, anyway, but didn’t want to be running any later in my plans than I already was. When she so pathetically tried to crawl into the car, I had to go ahead with the original plan to take her for a ride.

Thus, the following… and no, I have no real explanation but that I imagine she might have been escaping the sunlight… the top and the windows were all down, and she knew it…

So, there’s that…

…

After I dropped her back off at the house, and gave her a treat as my departing gift, I headed out to my mom’s house. To start the trip, there is a quick stint of about six or so exits on the highway, before exiting for a ground-level Highway with a million stoplights and a surprisingly low speed limit for something called a state highway… anyway…

As I turned onto the feeder and headed the long road to the ramp onto the highway, I began really to feel the car’s power. I used to drive a new Volkswagen Jetta, manual, and was in love with the German engineering and the smoothness and classic-ness of the engine and steering and everything-to-do-with-driving of it. When I rented a new Volkswagen Beetle a few years ago, I was reminded of that fabulous engineering. Today, climbing up onto that highway ramp and overpass, my whole body reacted with memory and nostalgia at this experience of yet another classic case of stellar engineering. When the car felt like it was in its ‘chill space’, as I call the average vehicle’s 45mph feeling, we were going 85.

I might have gone a bit faster than that for a while, but I wasn’t paying attention to the speed anymore. I was feeling throughout my whole body the tingling sensation of memory combined with satisfaction and fulfillment. This is how a car should feel, I found myself thinking. This is a car.

And I meant it.

The top was down, the wind was blowing in just that way around, and I couldn’t stop smiling and giggling and laughing aloud, hard. I actually thought for a second, Wouldn’t it be silly if I cried right now? And then I noticed how my thoughts spoke without analyzing fully the situation… within seconds of having the thought, I noticed tears in my eyes. And not from the wind. I agreed with my thought, that it was silly, but I allowed the expression to be true and easy, and dove into my experience.

Driving this little car just felt right for me. It surprised me, but I could see that, now that I was trying on the idea, I truly want to make having one of these in my life happen – I want to have one of these 911s one day, to drive on the regular, wherever I may want to go in it. She is calling me, and I can finally hear it…

Vroom Vroom…

Post-a-day 2020

Achy Faith

My body has been sore the past several days, and I am extremely grateful for it.

I have finally begun to do exercises again, thanks to my having reached out to a friend for help with accountability and support, and her acceptance of the request… It seems only fitting, because we used to go to the gym together in the first place, before everything closed, and then she moved.

Now, for the time being, anyway, neither of us is in Houston.

But we work out st the same time together, she at 5:30pm after work, and I at 4:30pm, the time I used to attend in-person classes…, and it works, because she is on the East coast now, so we actually exercise at the exact same time.

It still sucks to be paying for a gym membership to a gym that medicine and society tell me not to attend, but I would rather be safe than yelled at or blamed or sorry (or, even, sick)…, so, I stay away from the one place I ever really feel called to be on a daily basis, the one place I miss most…

But I am, at last, doing workouts at home again, using the workouts the owner originally made for us back when the gym closed for a while, and everyone had to work out at home together.

So, I could technically just cancel my membership, and do these workouts on repeat for the rest of my life, if I wanted… but I don’t want to do that.

I am using this gym’s workouts, even if they are old, and so I will maintain my membership.

It feels absurd, but right – I have thought on it many times, and I feel incredibly uncomfortable at the idea of canceling my membership…, so, I have let it go – I’ll stay a member and just suck it up… something about this will balance out, and it all will be beautiful and perfect.

I have faith in this.

P.S. A family friend – he’s our personal car and motorcycle expert – wants me to buy this great quality vehicle off of him, since they never use it anymore… it’s a Porsche Cayenne… what on Earth???… So, I might be upgrading from an old, crank window, semi-falling-apart Hyundai Accent, that was ranked as being worth $245 two and a half years ago on Kelley Blue Book, and that is not very reliable beyond an easy ten- or fifteen-minute drive… to a Porsche… Woah…

Post-a-day 2020