[Wgesnerjr]

One of my best VW stories is that I got a Baja bug when I was 15. In Alabama you got your permit at 15 and your license at 16. So TECHNICALLY, I was not supposed to drive by myself.

Well, parents went out for the day and my best friend/next door neighbor (Paul) and I decided that it would be fun to take the Baja to a new neighborhood they were starting and do some donuts in the fresh cleared dirt.

It was maybe a mile from our houses so we thought, "what could go wrong?" We arrived at the scene and commenced doing donuts for about 10 mins when the throttle cable broke. Panic set in as I did not want to tell my father what I was doing with the car out of the yard, without a licensed driver, especially after being told not to.

Paul and I hatched a plan where he would sit on the bumper cage and work the throttle by hand and I would drive it home. Well; all went well until the engine started to rev up. Paul did not know how to drive a stick and to let up on the throttle to shift. He just kept giving it more gas! I tried waving him down and he smiling thinking I wanted more gas! The revs kept climbing and I didn't know what do so I kept upshifting.

Well, by the time I hit our street, I was in 3rd gear and we were doing about 35mph. Luckily, My driveway was a steep uphill run of about 50 yards. Paul fell off at the bottom of the driveway but I got it all the way up to the top before it rolled to a stop. I found Paul had rolled into his yard before stopping. We were laughing our @$$es off for what must have been 10 mins.

I narrowly escaped my father's wrath and Paul only suffered minor scrapes.

This was not the first time or the last that Paul and I would so something like this!!