GRN JKT is license plate speak for “green jacket.”
The GTI is a Volkswagen Golf.
The Masters is a big deal Golf tournament.
When you win the Masters, you get a green-colored sport coat.
The black GTI has been jacketed with a green-colored vinyl.
I was shooting for clever.
Or is it too obtuse?
| I really tried to go for a walk today. I got my usual hot Salted Caramel Latte and went over to walk around the Salish Ponds, which I haven’t done in a couple months. It was a sunny day, but the temps felt like the low 30s because of the 10 MPH winds (gusting to 15), and now that the leaves are off the trees, there was no respite from the winds. I lasted a whole 1/2 mile before getting back in the car and coming home.
The highlight of the day is PDX Wraps posted a yearlong recap of some of the stuff they have done in 2025, and I’m proud to have made the cut. Go watch it on Insta; they do a wide variety of stuff besides my humble GTI. |
Friday was supposed to go a little something like this:
1) ride exercise bike
2) eat breakfast
3) grocery shop
4) get a latte
5) go to the coffee klatch
6) start a jigsaw puzzle
I missed #1, did two, three & four, didn’t do five and never made it #6. Instead of the last two I did number seven instead. Not too long after lunch PDX Wraps called and said the car would be done by 2:30ish. So I ordered up an Uber who picked me up a little after 1:30. What would, if traffic free, takes 45 minutes took close to an hour twenty minutes. It took about a half hour until the car was done then I set off home. The weather was dreary and I hoped to find a not so dreary spot to pull over and take a picture of the GTI, but I had no luck with that. By the time I got home an hour and a half after leaving Sherwood it was almost full on dark. So I snapped this one teaser image for now with hopes that a bit of sun materializes in the next couple days.
Today I did two of the things I did yesterday: Stomping Grounds for a latte and a visit to Harbor Freight. The Harbor Freight trip was to get a set of 3/8″ drive metric deep sockets. I needed just one size, 13mm, but they only sell sets, so now I’ve got a set of 10 that range from 10mm to 21mm.
I bought a Hatch Pop Kit from ECS Tuning so I could open the hatch with a press of a button on the fob, and today was install day. First you remove the old struts, one at a time, but before you do that you have to prop up the hatch because even with just one strut removed the hatch will sag to close. It was a straight forward job and took all of 20 minutes to swap the struts. Closing the hatch now takes a heavier hand to shut it, but the magic will be in the free lift up.
Here is where it would have paid to read the whole page before ordering. Down in the notes section was “Coding may be required— To determine if coding is needed, hold your hatch pop button on your key fob and if you hear the hatch latch operating you DO NOT NEED CODING. Please reference our installation PDF for coding instructions as needed.” I thought I heard the latch, but the hatch did not raise under the power of the new struts. So to code this, I need to buy a Volkswagen Auto Group-specific OBDII scanner and some software too.
To get the functionality I wanted from the $100 original purchase, I have to spend another $40 +shipping and $25 for a month of the software… I’m almost leaning toward returning the Hatch Pop Kit; I’m not really liking the force required to close the hatch. I’ll give it a week.