On my drive back home from Bloomington I had to pass through the mountains. Roughly 10 miles before entering the Rockies a blue R32 with darkly tinted windows pulls up next to me. For those you who don’t know what an R32 is, it’s basically a 240HP, all wheel drive version my GTI. It has the same body style and is nearly undistinguishable except to an enthusiast’s eye. The driver rolls down the window and as the window is half way down I can hear Tom Petty blasting even at 85mph. I glance over and there is a drop dead gorgeous brunette in her early 20’s driving this stick-shift R32 at 85mph in a 65mph zone. She flashes me thumbs up and mouths nice car. I yell back you too, she smiles, and rolls up her window.

We drive side by side for a while, and then as the mountains approach she falls back behind me and flashes her bright lights twice. I drop two gears from 6th to 4th as the mountains approach and start focusing on the driving. Driving through the Rockies isn’t exactly rally driving but it’s a great drive and can be dangerous at high speeds. I start off driving a little over the limit which is well within most peoples comfort zone.

About a mile or two into it the girl starts tailgating me to signal me to me to speed up. Slowly, I start driving more and more aggressively. A few minutes later I reach the point where I would have been driving normally if I didn’t have anyone following me and this girl is still right on my tail. I hit 30-40 mph over the limit in the straight-aways and 20-30 over on the curves and this girl is sticking to me like glue.

To say the least, I was impressed. Granted she was in an AWD car with 60 horses on me, but come on, I’m a guy who takes his car to tracks and this is a girl with perfumed hair.

We get through the mountains, she pulls up next to me, rolls down her window, smiles, waves, drops two gears, shoots out in front and takes the first exit. I thought about following her, but then rationality kicked in. Instead I rolled up the windows, turned down the music, turned on the AC, and activated the cruise control.

I’m not sure if I subscribe to the whole love at first sight philosophy, but I’m sure for that sliver of time I could have been a suitable poster-boy for it.

Because I can.

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Computer Specs:
P4 2.8ghz 800 mhz FSB
160 GB Hard Disk
512 MB DDR 400
Wireless LAN / OnBoard LAN
Size: 6″ x 7″ x 11″
Windows 2000

Monitor:
7″ Touchscreen
Custom Molding

Sound:
OnBoard audio (soon to be changed to Maya EX)
Clarion APA450 amp
No headunit.

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All the things my original post mentioned aren’t working yet. Verizon PCI for mobile wireless internet, I don’t want to pay for, however, I do have wireless LAN, meaning I can sign on from people’s houses who have wireless routers, as well as mine, major school campuses, and quite a few Starbucks,etc, etc. XM Radio I’m going to be signing up for as soon as I post this. But pretty much everything else is there.

Now that it works, and even works after a 906 mile roadtrip in 36 hours, I need to start utilizing it fully. As of now, I have 12 MP3′s on it. Movies, music, web cams, and navigation soon. Stay tuned..

Update: Couple people asked me about the keyboard/mouse. There is no mouse and I currently have a huge full-size keyboard. The mouse is not necessary as the screen is touchscreen but I’ll buy a smaller, thinner keyboard, that I can attach to the visor when I get $$ and time.

Another: No the PC doesn’t slide around. I haven’t driven aggressively yet, but in a few quick turns and hard brakes, it hasn’t slid. Regardless, I’m going to be creating a freestanding platform for it and attaching it to my sidewall and back of the seat, so I can utilize my trunk fully. Howerver, for the road race this weekend, I’ll just be screwing some metal L-brackets to the base of my trunk.

Another: No it isn’t for sale.

Another: Spent around 60 hours the past couple weeks and quite a few of them late at night. Mostly because this stuff was pretty knew to me. This stuff being, car audio and more importantly power. Learned a whole lot from the hours of trial/error, doing and redoing, but if I had to restart everything, I’m sure I could get it done in about 5-6 hours.

Another: Few people asked if the shuttle PC gets really warm. I’ve used it for about 6 hours straight and it ran fine. Granted it was only playing music, but I’m sure it should be fine. If not, there is plenty of room for some external fans that I could weld/screw onto the side of the case.

Another: Worst question yet: Why? My answer(s): Why not, and because I can.

By the end of this month I hope to have a computer hardwired into my car. Yes a full size computer, with a processor a gig of ram, Windows XP, and sporting a 180 GB HDD. 7″ LCD Touchscreen, Custom Mount, Wireless Network Card, Verizon PCI card, Wireless Keyboard, XM Satellite Radio, Custom AMP.

Why? Its cool. Being able to get online by pulling near any local Starbucks from my car, watching DVD’s while driving, massive music library, and a navigation system. Also IU has the best ranked wireless access of any other school so that’s another bonus. Not to mention virtually unlimited other possiblities.

Stay tuned.

It should be here Friday. I’ll post pictures when I get it mounted. Can’t wait : )

And those of you who don’t know what a V1 is, its not a gift for the girlfriend.

It’s arguably one of the best radar detectors on the market. Legal in both CA, and where I’m moving to—Indiana, so no problems there. Read more on http://www.valentine1.com. Quite pricy, but if it saves me from a ticket or two, it’ll pay for itself.

 

My car comes already hard wired for an extra input for a CD changer and has a 12 pin plug in the trunk but you can’t just make your own cable because VW uses a type of encryption that forces people to buy CD changers from them. The VWCDPIC emulates that same encryption and allows me to have my music patched to my head unit as if what I was playing was one huge long CD. From the two RCA’s I’m just running a standard RCA -> Stereo/Mini Plug cable and pulling it up into my iPod. I’m planning on running the cable thru the bottom of my doors so it doesn’t show but for now this will do.

The only problem is I can’t charge and play my iPod at the same time because for some reason there is some static interference. Not sure exactly what, but I have a feeling its something to do with the fact that my car is obviously a closed circuit.

If you own a VW with a single or double din headunit (typically 1998+) check it out. The sound quality is definitely worth the price. A guy in his garage makes it and is nearly 1/2 the price of other comparable items. $54 with shipping.

Chatted for a few minutes I found out her family has three GTIs in their household. Her dad’s has over 190,000 miles on the original engine which is definitely good news. If my engine holds out that long I’ll be a happy camper. I already have 2010 miles on the car and it hasn’t even been a month. Considering the fact that for my daily amount of travel, I only need to put 10-12 miles a day on it, 2010 is a lot.

Nevertheless she said she’ll introduce me to their “family mechanic”. I’ve heard of family barbers, family doctors, but a family mechanic is a new concept to me. What can I say? The family does have good taste in cars.

I’m driving up to Berkeley for the weekend to spend time with Shay, Neil, some of my other friends and also going there to talk to the counselors there and what not. That should add another 800 miles onto the car. Once I’m back then we’ll see what the car can really do. I haven’t even gotten the RPM over 3500 yet.

Nearly everyone I know thought the car was ugly except the person whose opinion I value the most. That’s why I decided to get this : )

Pictures — I didn’t take these pictures and they aren’t of my car. Pictures are Copyright Volkswagen 2003. My car is black.