Staying Fit
 

Today I just discovered a way to stay in shape, off season. My 17 year old bought a 1982 Diesel VW Rabbit 5 speed with no power anything. I had to take it to the shop to get worked on, and now I have to use it for the rest of the day. I could very well lose 10 pounds just driving the 5 or 10 miles I will do. If it wasn't for the noise, I might be tempted to trade him...

Since it is a 5-speed, don't go soft and take the highway. Stay on the regular streets, and use that clutch often.

Don't forget - on the warm days don't use the air conditioner, and keep the windows mostly up. You'll break out in a sweat in no time.

Well, yea, the air conditioning doesn't work. But rolling the windows up and down is part of the work-out. They are impossible!!

Then don't do the obvious and go through all the fast-food drive-thru's. I'm not sure all the window-rolling and clutch-pushing in line will make up for the Big Mac's calories.

I once owned an old chevette that had not only no AC, the temperature controls didn't work - the linkage from the control to the heater mechanism was broken.

So around halloween I would raise the hood and manually get the heater going (switch to circulate water coolant past a fan that blew into the cabin) and around opening day I would raise the hood and turn it off again. One spring there was an early warm spell before I had a chance to turn the heater off. I was stuck in traffic and had the windows rolled down when there was a huge rainstorm.

So there I was, sitting in traffic, windows rolled up, 85 deg outside and the heater blasting. Of course it was blowing humid air in, so I couldn't see out the fogged up windows.

But it had an automatic transmission! :)

HA! <iiii>

I still remember my senior year of high school when I traded cars for the weekend with my grandmother.

A few minutes after picking up my car, she called my stepfather (a mechanic) and told him that the power steering in my car had failed. His response? There was no power steering.