Night Vision
Never say never.
Minivan?
From that angle it looks a little like a minivan, and parking it in the same driveway as a Miata does nothing to dissuade that…
Because the GTI will reside here in the Portland Metro area, it needed to be run through a DEQ inspection. If the car were 4 years old or newer (which we just missed), it would be exempt from testing. The test consists of plugging in a cable to the OBDII socket and reading the fuel mixture. So yesterday I drove to the closest testing station in Gresham. I was in line behind an old Chevy Suburban, and they had to run a sniffer up its tailpipe. And from what I could see, they didn’t pass. The Golf did pass as expected.
Afterwards I stopped into PDX Wraps to set up a day to have the car wrapped in green. I’ve decided to go different from the Avery Dark Green; it looks good, but I wanted something a bit…more. I picked out something from 3M, a Gloss Green Envy. If you google images of that, you’ll get some photos that seem way too light and bright, but I took their sample outside to hold it up to the car in shade and sunlight, and I loved the results. Maybe it just photographs overbright in direct sunlight. Here is a good look at the color, both inside and outside, on a Porsche Cayman GT4:
Their first opening wasn’t until November 10th, which was fine, except I’ll be gone. I won’t be back until early December, so right now I’m scheduled in on December 15th.
Now That’s A Proper Introduction
Discovered a MODE button, and as you can probably guess, I found the Sport Mode. It might just be the placebo effect, but the exhaust note got a touch louder, and the throttle pedal mapping changed so that the car felt quicker, win-win.
Golf – Golf GTI Owners Manual
The next step was to search for it, hoping that a VW Golf enthusiast site might have a copy. I found a Reddit thread that led me to www.carmans.net/. Bingo. A PDF of the manual. I asked for 2020, and this is what I got. I went back and asked for the 2019 version; I got the same 2021 version. Probably only store the ones that apply to model years that are the same.
The first thing I had to figure out was how do you open the hatch. I didn’t see a button on the dash anywhere, so I hit the button of the remote that had the standard icon on it. Nothing happened. I unlocked all the doors and hit the button again; still nothing. Found the section about the hatch in the manual and discovered that that button just unlocked it, and to open the hatch, you push on the VW logo, and it swivels out so you can grab and pull. I was expecting the key button to pop it up (or out) so you could grab an edge and lift.
I found out how to change the “Driver 1” welcome when you start up the car; it now says “Brian.” Hitting the Unlock button on the fob now opens all four doors. Also in the settings was the ability to adjust the rain-sensing range of the automatic wipers. I didn’t know I had them because the stalk icons were decidedly not the Japanese standard I’m used to.
Two Black Cars
On a post 2 weeks ago I asked people to talk me out of wrapping the NB Miata in green. I said I was going to get a sample of the green vinyl, and boy was my mock-up nowhere near the color I got. I said it looked chrome in my rendition, and that was correct. I got one comment on Instagram, a no. I got one text, and it was also a no. And me laying that sample on the car and my own comment to myself was no.
So, I think the Miata will stay black. I mean, I do like it black; it just goes against my philosophy that small cars should be brightly colored so they catch attention despite their size. So maybe I should wrap the black Golf GTI in that green or maybe another color. Here are a set of my wicked ugly mock-ups:
Some internet sleuthing helped me find this image of a GTI wrapped in that Avery color, click on it and you’ll be taken to the Instagram post with more angles.
Gloss Dark Green GTI
I think I’m liking this.
Back when I was stationed in Meridian, MS, in the early 80s, I was the 2nd shift supervisor for the Avionics Shop. I befriended the supervisor that was in charge of all of AIMD (Aircraft Intermediate Maintenance Department), and one day he asked if I golfed. I, of course, replied, “Does miniature golf count?”
He was an avid golfer, and the fellow who he used to play with, the Hydraulics Shop supervisor, had rotated out, and he needed someone to replace him. I said, “That sounds like fun, but I don’t have any clubs.” This was not a problem; he still had his first starter set of clubs gathering dust in his garage, and he offered to sell them to me for $25. I went out and bought a golf glove and a dozen balls.
The base had its own 9-hole course that was free for those of us stationed there. The two of us would play a quick round on Wednesdays after lunch and finish up in time to get to work at 3:30. We played for the spring and summer, and then he got promoted and moved to 1st shift. By the end of it I got so I only lost one ball per 9 holes, and it really was fun, but after that the clubs just sat in the closet. When I shipped out the following year, I donated them to Goodwill.
And if you think this post is about me taking up golf, you are sorely mistaken. Look at the photo at the top. It’s not of golf clubs…
I’ve had nine previous posts here on LoB on this subject and pretty much everyone of them starts out with me saying that we don’t play golf1 and really only watch one golf tournament a year and the Masters is that one.
This is because we have actually trod the hallowed grounds of Augusta National. We moved to Aiken, SC in May of 1989 and when we found out that you could pay a measly $5 and get in to see a practice round2 in the first full week in April of 1990 we took that Monday off and went over. We got there early, walked the whole course, ate a $1.00 palmetto cheese sandwich and drove home. That weekend we watched, just to see where we had been and it has become a tradition like no other ever since.
We did go back over a few times over few years until they instituted a lottery and we stopped getting picked. One year my brother (who does golf) came down to visit and he was fun to walk around with. He could tell us the names of the pros (and some of their history at the course) we would see as we wondered about. Another year my sister came down with her husband (who also golfs) and wanted to camp at at certain locations to watch as the players golfed through. That was in 1995 and I know that because that is when the photo above was taken.
And the only reason I still have that photo is because it is in one of five directories that are remnants of the Seattle FilmWorks era when you would get prints back and for a small fee, a copy in that new fangled digit format, in a staggering 640 x 480 pixel size. As you can see, the images leave a lot to be desired, but it was whiz-bang back in the day.
Here is another one to gaze at in wonder,
me in front of the famous scoreboard: