Lithium : ep33
Three sips into my morning espresso and the text messages start buzzing in my pocket.
“Hey u home?”
It’s The Tech Titan.
“I’m home” I reply.
“Mind if I swing by?”
It’s Saturday morning, surprisingly, I’ve got nothing planned yet today.
“Come on by”
A few minutes pass, another text …
“I’m out front”
The Tech Titan is his usual self. Why would he knock on the door? That’s for mere mortals. I step outside to find a metallic, cherry-red Tesla in my driveway, the Tech Titan sitting inside. David Flood is sitting in the passenger seat. The Tech Titan is Swedish. His accent sounds like Boris the Blade from the movie “Snatch.”
The Tech Titan: Heyyy fool. I bought a new Tesla. It’s the Model S Plaid.
Me: Looks red to me mate, and I don’t see any plaid.
The Tech Titan: Yeah, it’s called Plaid, but it’s not plaid. It's red.
Flood: It should be called “the Ludacris edition.”
The Tech Titan: It’s got more than 1000 horsepower. We’re going for a first drive up the coast. Want to come?
Me: Two seconds … need shoes and a wallet.
Flood isn’t relinquishing his seat up front, so I hop in the back. This is my first time in a Tesla. The Tech Titan is spouting out specs and horsepower numbers. I’m listening - sort of - but to be honest I’m a little distracted by the fact that there are no gauges, dails or vents of any kind on the dashboard. Just a huge iPad looking screen in the middle. The interior of the car looks like it was designed by Dieter Rams. Pure minimalism.
The Tech Titan: One thousand horsepower man. One. Thousand. It’s faster than my Ferrari.
Me: Which one, the California?
The Tech Titan: Both bro. The Cali and the 458 Speciale.
Me: Shut the fuck up man. No way. This can't be faster than the Speciale.
I am about to be punished (severely) for my incredulity. The thrumming sound of the tessellated roadway on the Golden Gate Bridge is behind us now and we're making our way up the hill to the Robin Williams Tunnel.
I catch Floody bracing for impact but my brain doesn’t have time to compute the situation before The Tech Titan unleashes a torrent of acceleration.
JESUS TAP DANCING CHRIST
I thought my Ducati was fast. This Tesla is “warp the fabric of spacetime” fast. We accelerate through the tunnel like an artillery shell accelerating through the barrel of a howitzer. I’m slammed against the back of the seat, arms and legs in the air like a dead cockroach. The acceleration is so intense it triggers a biological response in me of intense tunnel vision, with a tiny spot of absolute clarity, while my peripheral vision has turned into a technicolor blur.
I whimper like a weening puppy before squeaking out a high pitched “HOLY FUCK!”
In the best of circumstances, riding in the back seat of any car sucks. With an unhinged Swedish lunatic at the wheel of a high voltage bullet train, riding in the back seat is absolutely terrifying.
We are well into triple digit speeds and stay that way until we pass the big yellow seaplane in Sausalito.
Me: You big Swedish prick!
The Tech Titan: You didn’t believe me! I told you. I told you! You didn’t believe me. Is FAST!
We’re decelerating below 100mph now and are heading toward the stop sign at the junction of Lucas Valley Road. What happens next will confirm that the Swedish Prick and David Fucking Flood have been conspiring against me all morning.
CHINESE FIRE DRILL!
I am scrambling frantically to find the door handle on this confounded vehicle, and before I can say “fuck me” David Flood is sitting in the drivers seat of this one thousand horsepower rolling casket. I glance up at the rear view mirror and see the soulless eyes of a shark staring back at me. David Flood is gone and in his place sits Dangerous Dave, a creature so dangerous that the state legislature once considered a resolution to tattoo the hazardous materials logo on his forehead.
“Oh no no no no no no”
The Tech Titan gives Dangerous Dave a quick military salute signaling that Maverick and Goose are ready for takeoff on catapult one and an instant later this F-14 Tomcat is leaving the carrier deck, full afterburners.
At this point dear reader you should realize that I am well and truly fucked. I’m a piss poor, fraidy cat passenger in the best of circumstances. Now I’m glued to the rear window under the strain of the unrelenting g-force and we’re heading into the twisty, narrow, wet, redwood lined Lucas Valley canyon in a vehicle that’s so fast that, by his own admission, The Tech Titan says it would outrun even his fastest Ferrari.
Flood: WHO’S THE CHEWBACCA NOW ASSHOLE!!
The Tech Titan is overwhelmed with schadenfreude and is laughing uncontrollably at my terror. Yesterday’s Chewbacca and Han Solo coffee shop joke is backfiring on me in the worst of ways. This road is really twisty. Twisty and wet! I can feel the torque vectoring to each wheel, the traction control keeping us alive by the slimmest of margins. I’m being thrown side to side like a Raggedy Andy doll being shaken to death in the jaws of a pitbull.
The pace of this vehicle is relentless. Dangerous Dave is crossing the double yellow line to pass cars like they’re stationary. Watching cars traveling in our direction fade into the distance behind us reminds me of traveling on the TGV in France, where cars on the highway traveling in the same direction as the train recede into the background at 100+ miles per hour, giving the illusion that they’re actually traveling in the other direction.
I try desperately to hang onto the thought of the TGV, in a sort of zen buddhist quasi meditation, to trick my brain into believing that we are on rails and that I’m in a safe and controlled environment.
The Swedish fuckwad in the passenger seat is egging on Dangerous Dave … “Push, it’ll go faster!”
Faster? FASTER??
To his credit, Flood is a really good driver and the tires are clinging to the asphalt like a kitten’s claws on carpet. But the Swede is futzing with the gigantic touchscreen from the passenger seat. Flood glances over at the screen just as the Swede touches the activate button on drift mode.
Oh no! DRIFT MODE!
When your life flashes before your eyes, time slows down. Seconds feel like minutes. Minutes feel like hours. This nanosecond feels like an eternity. Flood has the steering wheel cranked fully to the right (we’re in a right hand turn) and then in an instant fully to the left. We’re still in that right hand turn, but the Swede activated drift mode and we’re no longer going forward.
I’m looking through the windshield and there is a stand of redwood trees directly in front of us. If we were going forward, pointing a vehicle directly at a grove of redwoods would mean certain death. But we’re not going forward anymore.
We’re going sideways.
I’m frozen solid in a catatonic state. I have fully accepted that these are the last few moments of my life. I slowly rotate my head to look out the side window. The car is swinging violently from left to right, traveling sideways all the time. My sight picture out the side window is alternating between a receding strip of tarmac filled with tire smoke, to a wall of trees coming directly toward me, again and again.
I am deep in a state of slow motion and I wonder what the end will feel like, or if I’ll feel anything at all when that time comes. I lament that there are more things I would have liked to accomplish in my lifetime.
Sometime in the next 5 minutes God is going to ask me about my life's biggest regret.
“Riding in the back seat”
