[imcarthur]

My Tale:

I saw a post on Rennlist: “Anyone need a Steve Wong chip?”

A Rennlister had sold his ‘89 & had a SW chip left over. He was selling it for the bargain price of $200. It was tuned for a cat bypass & stock muffler. That just so happened to be the intended route for my ’87. I have thought about a chip. I have read the threads. All 500 of them. And I always thought that I some point I would pull the trigger. But it has always been . . . next year. This summer was a stereo & turbo tierods & surprise CV boots. The previous summer was surprise front tires & brake lines & a gaggle of other stuff. There’s always something. But $200 . . .

So I saw the post & I jumped. The cash was in a FedEx envelope heading south the next day. I studied the dyno charts on 911chips. I dreamed about the extra horsepower that would hurtle my car . . . well, hurtle might be a bit strong, but I was in Power Lust. I even waited 2 days to break it to my wife. I had to tell her that two weeks before Christmas – and we both had agreed to not buy anything for each other (or ourselves) – I had just spent $200 for a chip for the 911. To make the already “terrifying” (her exaggerated words) Porsche go even faster. Undaunted & being a professional salesman, I waited until just the right time & slipped it into the conversation during a commercial break in Brothers & Sisters or something. “Oh, by the way . . . “ And, I sold it! No resistance. I had hit the jackpot!

Then . . .

T’was the day before Christmas
When all through the house,
We were cleaning like banshees because 16 people are coming to Christmas dinner.

On the menu: A 4 rib beef roast & a big ass hunk of cheap ham that we cook “Hungarian” style. Boil & then bake. Succulent. And the rib roast . . . well, I’m a master. And I’m the cook, btw. I did Nanaimo bar (aka NY Special) yesterday & my stunning (all of my sister-in-laws are jealous) shortbread today. But I digress . . .

We returned home from our Christmas Eve errands: pick up 18 loaves of bread, drop off video rentals, buy cat litter. And lo & behold . . . wedged into the screen door . . . a bubble envelope! Could it be . . .

With the eager anticipation of a kid on Christmas morning, I dumped the crap I was carrying (the cat litter – no, it’s in a bucket so I didn’t really dump it, I just put the d*mn bucket down) on the kitchen table & reached for scissors to slice & dice the envelope. But it was feelin’ kind of thin . . .

Yes. The angels went silent. The elves were all dead. Christmas was on strike. The reindeer were all hamburger on some Laplander’s plate. The envelope contained nothing but the instructions for the installation of the chip. The envelope had been torn & taped somewhere along the way from Austin to Toronto. The chip was gone. Some Grinch had stolen Christmas from a 53 year old boy . . .

Ian