A
long time ago on an old Vermont road...or so the story begins...I was
stretching the legs of an Alpine White 1990 Jetta. Under the hood howled a
loved-up 8-valve; its joyous melody betraying the very pedestrian aesthetic of
the rest of the car. Now this engine was, for the time, a potent assemblage of
performance parts scratched together during late-night sessions in a dingy, fly-infested
shopbay at an all-night full-service gas station.
Those were the days – work for the man while the sun was up and spend the night turning wrenches under the light of the moon...well really, I was under flickering, bug-encrusted florescent shop lamps...but you get the point. I wish I still had that kinda spunk. Now I need a nap by midafternoon.
A nod to Ron’s Gulf – those
who remember know why.
Anyway,
about those parts. The water-cooled 8-valve four-cylinder 1.8 liter engine – of
which VW made millions - was by the early 2000s not known for its off-the-shelf
power. But, like today’s VW engines, it was known for its tunability. Bore it 80-over, install a shaved, big-valve head with a hydro g-grind cam and what
started life as an anemic 90-horse-power wonder transforms into a rev-happy,
high-compression four-pot thumper. Put that into an understated four-door Jetta
with its body-by-Frigidaire styling and you can surprise a lot of would-be boy-racers.
Remember, this was back in the day of gold rims, cloud-stroking erector-set spoilers
and gawdy Fast-and-Furious inspired vinal decaling.
Oh,
what malicious joy it brought me every time I spanked one of those scrawny,
zit-faced punks with a sleeper Jetta that cost less than the body-kit tarting
up their fourth-hand ’95 Civic.
Those
of you born too late to live this era – well – thank your lucky stars.
But,
back to the road. This stretch of windy blacktop weaved its way through the pleasant
valley of Underhill’s hinter land. I was hauling you know what – and it was a
thrill to bend those corners – testing the limits of those Bilstein HDs wrapped
in Shine Racing springs.
Behind
me, in a Ginster Yellow Mark III GTi, was a friend and fellow VW hooligan attempting
to prove that her 2-litter could stack up. Not so – as I was demonstrating.
And
then, as I was accelerating out of a beautiful apex, I got the uncanniest
feeling of dread. It was a split second of terrible lucidity – a flash of impending
doom wrapped in acute mortal awareness. In short – the hairs on the back of my
neck stood up and a shiver went down my spine.
Reflexively,
I took my foot off the gas and as the car slowed a moose stepped into the
road. I stood on that brake pedal so hard I though my foot
was going to go straight through the floor and into the pavement. The car skittered
to a crooked halt just a couple feet shy of the blundering monster. I checked
my rearview mirror just in time to see a second moose step out behind me, eclipsing
my view of the GTi.
I
was surrounded...yeah...I know...there was only two of them...but with moose that’s all it takes.
With
no place to go, I turned off the engine and resigned myself to wait them out. I’d
heard enough stories about what happens when you blow your horn at a moose.
Later,
the driver of the GTi would comment, I bet you puckered up so hard you don’t
know where your under-pants are.
To
which I responded with performative umbrage, “I almost died back there and that’s
all you can say to me.”
“Actually,”
She corrected, “I was just thinking, you only locked up three wheels, you might
want to check that left, rear brake cylinder.”
Some twenty years later, surely that moose has died, that old Jetta has rusted away and that friendship faded as we all grew up and went our seperate ways.
So it goes...
