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f4f3Yes, yes, I know that I'm using CO2 that could be fed to wales, (or Whales, for that matter) and that it's dangerous and irresponsible, and not compatible with my status as a sensitive new man, but in the early hours of Sunday morning I drove from Oban to Kilmartin like a crazy son of a bitch with his hair on fire.
There are mitigating factors. It was late, the roads were quiet, I had a live CD of Steve Earle and the Dukes playing far too loudly and I'd just listened to Scotland tackling the Auld Enemy into baffled impotence... yes, this is all true. But the fact of the matter is that I was on one of what Ian Banks describes as the Great Wee Roads. I was driving a Subaru Imprezza WRX (which develops 225 bhp and will touch 60 in a smidgen over 5 seconds, and is set up as a road-legal rally car) that I know said GWR like the back of my hand, and that I drove the 30 odd miles at an average speed of around 150% of the speed limit. I'll leave it at that, since if anyone knows the road they'll know that much of it must be covered in second gear, espescially the long, lovely sweep of bends up from Bananananaoil, and that, therefore, 100 m.p.h. may have been breached occasionally. I will admit that at one point a car pulled over into a lay by to let me overtake. And that the layby was on the other side of the road.
Silly, childish, and irresponsible, but boy did I enjoy myself. I drove around 350 miles on Saturday, from Glasgow to Alness and back to Kintyre, with 18 holes of golf and plate of soup in the middle. i went up the A9, which is dull and covered with speed traps, and I loved every bit of it. Stirling Castle looks like Edoras in the early moring, and the Cairngorms had a nice dusting of snow. I came back in the dark through the Great Glen on the A82, listening to the Rugby and whooshing through Drumnadrochit like Ichabod's cranially challenged horseman, skirted Fort William like a turbocharged bobsleigh and stopped in Oban for a fish suppper, which I ate on the North Pier watching the ferries across the bay get ready to haul out to the Western Isles. And then that less than 30 minute dash down into Kintyre with, as Steve Earle sings it, the radio blastin' and the bird dog on. I almost stopped again to stargaze in Kilmartin Glen, but I could have sworn that Orion was waving me on to the finsh.
Some nights you get a feel for what Springsteen was on about, and yes, Paddy, there may be more to life than cars and girls, but some night, some nights they'll do...
There are mitigating factors. It was late, the roads were quiet, I had a live CD of Steve Earle and the Dukes playing far too loudly and I'd just listened to Scotland tackling the Auld Enemy into baffled impotence... yes, this is all true. But the fact of the matter is that I was on one of what Ian Banks describes as the Great Wee Roads. I was driving a Subaru Imprezza WRX (which develops 225 bhp and will touch 60 in a smidgen over 5 seconds, and is set up as a road-legal rally car) that I know said GWR like the back of my hand, and that I drove the 30 odd miles at an average speed of around 150% of the speed limit. I'll leave it at that, since if anyone knows the road they'll know that much of it must be covered in second gear, espescially the long, lovely sweep of bends up from Bananananaoil, and that, therefore, 100 m.p.h. may have been breached occasionally. I will admit that at one point a car pulled over into a lay by to let me overtake. And that the layby was on the other side of the road.
Silly, childish, and irresponsible, but boy did I enjoy myself. I drove around 350 miles on Saturday, from Glasgow to Alness and back to Kintyre, with 18 holes of golf and plate of soup in the middle. i went up the A9, which is dull and covered with speed traps, and I loved every bit of it. Stirling Castle looks like Edoras in the early moring, and the Cairngorms had a nice dusting of snow. I came back in the dark through the Great Glen on the A82, listening to the Rugby and whooshing through Drumnadrochit like Ichabod's cranially challenged horseman, skirted Fort William like a turbocharged bobsleigh and stopped in Oban for a fish suppper, which I ate on the North Pier watching the ferries across the bay get ready to haul out to the Western Isles. And then that less than 30 minute dash down into Kintyre with, as Steve Earle sings it, the radio blastin' and the bird dog on. I almost stopped again to stargaze in Kilmartin Glen, but I could have sworn that Orion was waving me on to the finsh.
Some nights you get a feel for what Springsteen was on about, and yes, Paddy, there may be more to life than cars and girls, but some night, some nights they'll do...
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no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 12:36 am (UTC)Looks like the cars'n'girls are far less trouble than the rugby...
Paddy's Reply
Date: 2006-02-27 08:58 am (UTC)Funny, I was driving from Skipness back to Edinburgh yesterday afternoon, and it was a glorious day. The mountains looked supperb.
But I barely touched 70...
no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 09:15 am (UTC)Re: Paddy's Reply
Date: 2006-02-27 09:16 am (UTC)Almost went to Skipness yeterday, but settled for a hike around a lochan on the Tayvallich road instead.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 11:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 11:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 12:06 pm (UTC)Re: Paddy's Reply
Date: 2006-02-28 11:36 am (UTC)speedingpootering along beside the water.Re: Paddy's Reply
Date: 2006-02-28 11:47 am (UTC)