I drove it. Just like last weekend. Because it's my only vehicle right now.
I bought my 80 to be an alternate to my daily driver. I've been a 1 car guy my whole driving life until my 80. And all of those vehicles have been small, most of them european, half of them german.
Until last thursday, my daily driver for the last 5 years and 90,000+ miles was a 2003 VW GTI 1.8T. Little, nimble, turbocharged. The 80 is it's antithesis. It completes my driving world. Combined with a utility trailer, it's everything the GTI isn't.
That morning, well, I should explain, there's a lady at the brewery that i have a crush on. I homebrew, I can have any kinda beer i want, I've got gallons and gallons of beer waiting to be quaffed, but there's this chick at the brewery. So i try to show up there once a week to have a growler filled, for five minutes of friendly banter.
Due to circumstances, I had a growler with a quart and a bit of ESB that had been in the fridge getting flat for a month. I kept meaning to cook something in it. Big hunk of pork or something. I never got around to it.
But i needed an empty growler to carry into the brewery so i could go talk to my favorite redhead.
As i poured a quart and a half of flat beer down the drain, I knew i was committing a grievous sin, and that there would be consequences.
On the way up I15 that morning in my zippy little fuel-efficient GTI, there was some accident getting cleared. One of those weird traffic situations where some lanes are accelerating and some have hard to discern causes of slowness.
There were cars stopped in my lane, so i applied the brakes moderately and started to try to merge right.
Some white vehicle coming up fast behind me just swerved right around me without signalling, so i slammed on the brakes to keep from hitting both the white car and the blue passat in front of me.
And i came to a complete stop. The GTI has enormous brakes for a vehicle that small, so it STOPS when you want it to. I breathed a sigh of relief and felt love for my teutonic-by-way-of-brazil daily driver, secretly named Hilde, for saving my life.
And then some dude in a subaru forester slammed right into the back of it.
Both rear windows shattered and the seat bracket under me failed. Not the seat rails - the bracket welded to the floor.
I fell back onto a lot of broken glass and slashed the hell of out my left arm near the elbow. Somehow i slashed my right pinky finger pretty good too.
I'm ok. 10 stitches in my left arm and 5 in my right pinky. I think i beat whiplash by spending the next day asleep with large doses of advil in my veins. I basically just took 5 ibuprofen and went back to sleep every time i woke up.
I hate not having my beloved old vee-dub to squeal around the wasatch front in. But I love having my 80 to tool around in now that the VW is gone.
I bought my 80 to be an alternate to my daily driver. I've been a 1 car guy my whole driving life until my 80. And all of those vehicles have been small, most of them european, half of them german.
Until last thursday, my daily driver for the last 5 years and 90,000+ miles was a 2003 VW GTI 1.8T. Little, nimble, turbocharged. The 80 is it's antithesis. It completes my driving world. Combined with a utility trailer, it's everything the GTI isn't.
That morning, well, I should explain, there's a lady at the brewery that i have a crush on. I homebrew, I can have any kinda beer i want, I've got gallons and gallons of beer waiting to be quaffed, but there's this chick at the brewery. So i try to show up there once a week to have a growler filled, for five minutes of friendly banter.
Due to circumstances, I had a growler with a quart and a bit of ESB that had been in the fridge getting flat for a month. I kept meaning to cook something in it. Big hunk of pork or something. I never got around to it.
But i needed an empty growler to carry into the brewery so i could go talk to my favorite redhead.
As i poured a quart and a half of flat beer down the drain, I knew i was committing a grievous sin, and that there would be consequences.
On the way up I15 that morning in my zippy little fuel-efficient GTI, there was some accident getting cleared. One of those weird traffic situations where some lanes are accelerating and some have hard to discern causes of slowness.
There were cars stopped in my lane, so i applied the brakes moderately and started to try to merge right.
Some white vehicle coming up fast behind me just swerved right around me without signalling, so i slammed on the brakes to keep from hitting both the white car and the blue passat in front of me.
And i came to a complete stop. The GTI has enormous brakes for a vehicle that small, so it STOPS when you want it to. I breathed a sigh of relief and felt love for my teutonic-by-way-of-brazil daily driver, secretly named Hilde, for saving my life.
And then some dude in a subaru forester slammed right into the back of it.
Both rear windows shattered and the seat bracket under me failed. Not the seat rails - the bracket welded to the floor.
I fell back onto a lot of broken glass and slashed the hell of out my left arm near the elbow. Somehow i slashed my right pinky finger pretty good too.
I'm ok. 10 stitches in my left arm and 5 in my right pinky. I think i beat whiplash by spending the next day asleep with large doses of advil in my veins. I basically just took 5 ibuprofen and went back to sleep every time i woke up.
I hate not having my beloved old vee-dub to squeal around the wasatch front in. But I love having my 80 to tool around in now that the VW is gone.
