Total Recall

So this may be a bit revelatory to you, but I have been involved in what law enforcement officers refer to as a "display of speed" or "street racing."

No Fast and Furious race for pinks shit.

Just the occasional haul ass because it needs to be done stuff.

I recall this one night...

There was one particularly enthusiastic Porsche enthusiast, with whom I lined up against more than once, while living in Seattle.

He seemed to have something against my Impala and a need to prove it.

Sure, I could have shrugged it off...

Often times I did.

But there was this one evening, when we ended up beside one another at a stop light, facing a long bit of straight pavement.

We both knew it, the shit was on...

We waited for green, finding our particular preferred RPM.

The light changed, and I jumped, dumped and hit the one-two-D...

After feeling as though I had shown enough fender to Captain Krautwagon, I lifted...

And waited...

But the Impala was of it's own mind.

She just kept going.

Hard.

Now, I was not making deals on a Bluetooth headset or anything...

But let me tell you, in a 60's car, windows down and with near four hundred cubic inches of Detroit iron taching at full song under a starry sky...

There are plenty of fucking distractions.

Was I over ninety, shit, I don't know...

Probably.

I was worried about breaking things.

It only took a half a second for me to find neutral and shut down.

After coasting to a stop, I considered the bits I had read about big block Chevy's turning enough torque that they leaned over on to their throttle rods.

I realized I had just lived it...

I got out, had a smoke and made sure I didn't squirt anything past a gasket.

I bent up the throttle rod with some pliers, in a few minutes...

And made a hard run, to make sure that sticking thing wouldn't happen again.

The point of this story?

If you own a machine that might fucking kill you...

(Even if it is shaped like a jelly bean.)

You should probably know how to shut it down.