Volunteering Is Rewarding

"Seat Safety Switch" (seat-safety-switch)
08/17/2015 at 12:51 • Filed to: subaru, subaru justy, driving seniors, moralizing, launch control

The Justy screams at me as its tiny boosted three-cylinder spins its rotating assembly to the kind of speeds that in its birth era were only seen in F1 cars. I click the sequential Olsbergs transmission to the next gear, returning grip to the front end, and the rear end goes wide by comparison, putting it into an ass shimmy so violent I swear I can hear the clutches in the centre differential smacking together in a valiant effort to return the available grip to equilibrium.

An apex, a tight hairpin, rough logging roads: all fall before the Justy and I, our confidence in each other matched only by our inherent but hidden strength. I am filtering through the forest like white lightning now, imagining the appreciative cheers of rally spectators as they stand in the middle of the road to snap a selfie before jumping out of the way of my oncoming fender flares at a million kilometers per hour.

My homebrewed anti-lag system burbles and pops an angry tenor staccato through the minuscule exhaust as the street stage begins. Four more shifts and I’m there, so much heat pumped into the small rotors by the trip that the water-cooling system hisses, threatening to evacuate its liquid bounty onto the parking lot.

“Uh hello?” I hear a soft voice from the curb. I have to crane my neck to look over, the peripheral vision blocked by my Bell rally helmet.

“Are you my Driving Seniors driver?” the voice asks.

I pre-stage launch control in the affirmative.