It was 10 o’clock in the morning when I pulled up to my friend Chris’s house to tackle the adventures of the day. Along with rock climbing and competition rifle shooting, Chris is also a woodworker who literally builds boats in his spare time. He’s a good person to know when you’re tackling adventures.
I was yawning and still finishing my morning coffee when I got to the house, expecting to spend the next hour or so learning how to make cool things out of wood.
Chris greeted me at the door in running clothes.
“I thought we could start with our run up Mount Adams,” he cheerfully said.
“Oh. We’re doing that?”
I started to blurt out incredibly lame excuses like, “I haven’t eaten breakfast,” and “I don’t really exercise in the morning,” and, “I’m not sure I brought the right clothes.”
Chris got me a protein bar from the kitchen and reassured me we would start slow. Clearly, he was not going to be talked down so easily.
Plus, he handed me the keys to his Porsche.
“Want to drive us?” he said.
“OK,” I replied. “Let’s do this.”
Each gear shift seemed to bring a whoosh of power. The 718 Model not only has six speeds but a turbo, and when we were on the interstate, I hit 85 mph in about three seconds.
Initially when Chris had suggested driving a manual transmission sports car on a short road trip as an adventure, I had told him I wasn’t sure it counted. I already drive a 5-speed, and as my six speeding tickets attest, I guess I drive it like a racecar.
But when he’d opened the garage door and showed me the specimen, I’d changed my mind.
Chris pushed the button for sport mode and said, “Try to keep it under 120, OK?” And we were off.
Early on at a traffic light, I let up on the clutch too soon and killed the engine. I laughed because it brought back memories of my Dad teaching me to drive my little 5-speed Sentra in 2012. To my great relief, we were stalled in the intersection for a mere second before the engine restarted on its own and we were going again. (My Sentra never did that. I had to stomp the clutch and turn the key while a chorus of honks flew at me from every side.)
Each gear shift seemed to bring a whoosh of power. The 718 Model not only has six speeds but a turbo, and when we were on the interstate, I hit 85 mph in about three seconds.
When we hit traffic, we re-routed and took 71 downtown. I’d come close to side-swiping about three cars because I wasn’t used to the blind spot, but otherwise I was having a blast.
“You’re handling it like a pro,” Chris said. “This car is you.”
I had to admit that Chris was handling it like a pro. I killed the engine a few more times, had several near-misses and, in the parking garage, whipped into a space so small that alarms were going off on every side.
I did notice Chris was subtly reaching for a handle on the ceiling of the passenger side that unfortunately didn’t exist. But otherwise he didn’t make a sound.
“You’re amazingly calm,” I laughed.
“It’s just a car,” he said.
That’s true. But it was an experience, too.