live, laugh, porsche
a love letter to cars, bikes, and the winter season
“Go to Heaven for the climate, and Hell for the company.”
- Mark Twain
PDCC fault.
Hydraulic system fault.
Check engine light.
Not even 24 hours after trading in my 2016 VW GTI on Black Friday, and these three ominous warning lights on my new-to-me car’s dashboard pops up with a deceivingly delightful charm, one after the other. I can feel my heart sinking. I’m trying to hold it up, but it’s falling through my fingers like water.
Happy Thanksgiving, I think this might be expensive.
I can feel the Catholic guilt that I grew up with weigh heavier on my back. The angel on my right shoulder is whispering into my ear, its caring voice reminding me that a car is the worst investment that you can make.
My parents would also say, “You should spend your money on experiences, not things.”
And they’re all right — the smart thing to do is to not buy a used, 4 owner, 100k miles, 2012 Porsche Cayenne Turbo.
I continue driving. Snowflakes are sprinkling the roads like powdered sugar. It’s the first snow of the season, I have nothing planned today except to be with loved ones, and I just bought a fucking Porsche.
This fully loaded top trim model was $150k when it was new. The 500hp, 516lb torque, 4.8L V8 twin turbo releases a confident roar as I accelerate out of my driveway. No strange knocking sounds. No abrasive vibrations.
I don’t feel anything that warrants my feeling of, “Do I deserve this?”
Which makes me think, maybe these warning lights are wrong, and I’m choosing to believe what they’re telling me…because I actually have no idea what any of these symbols mean. They just sit there. More passive than aggressive. In a deeply unsettling way.
I’m staring at the dashboard like if I give it enough time, it might explain my internalized feeling of panic for why I can’t continue with this objectively beautiful day and enjoy. Because I can’t help but visualize the engine under the hood coming loose from its bolts and the transmission under car cracking and leaking fluid.
What I do know is my urge to prepare excuses with the thoughts that defend my decisions. My practical reasons for the irrational question, “Why?”
It holds the Guinness World Record for pulling 285 tons.
The Edmunds score is a 4.6/5.
The price is comparable to a used 2012 Toyota Tacoma.
I spent less money on this than my gravel bike.
I can’t drive my GTI in the snow.
It’s a reliable engine. (supposedly)
But none of this feels enough to fully satisfy that question. As if the more I grip the wheel, the harder it is to steer in the direction I want to go. If only I could fast-forward straight to the part where I don’t have to answer and just start having fun.
Because on my right shoulder, I’m barraged with that question, lovingly asked with anxious repetition, triple checking if this decision is best for future me. Do you need this? Is it responsible? Does it compound? Is this growth?
But on my left shoulder, I feel warmth from the wrong that I’ve been fighting against for so long, with the shame I’ve been taught to resist it with. Sinless perfection, I’ve forgotten, is impossible. And forgiveness, I’ve also forgotten, is possible.
I accept the gift from the temptation, “You don’t need to have an answer.”
And with that forgotten grace, I allow myself to take a breath. I loosen my grip. And I let the universe take the wheel.
set the car on fire
This year, I’ve written ~160,000 words in over 210 days. Essays. Notes. Poems that may or may not want to be poems. Drafts based on conversations I’ve had with those closest to me. Posts on questions that sound more impressive in my head than when I list them:
Ego is the elephant in the race, why are we pretending?
Is authenticity just perfection with a different name?
When should an identity die to give birth to a new one?
If numbers are universally understood, can words be too?
What is love worth, if it’s conditional?
Are you loving others how they want to be loved, or are you loving them how you want to be loved?
What surprised me wasn’t how much I wrote, it was how little I wanted to share it.
The closer I got to finishing any of these essays, the more willing I am to be misunderstood by others. Because this work doesn’t need to be understood to matter, it only needs to be felt. I’d rather leave space for others to recognize something of their own.
So I’m more drawn now to writing poems and conversations with my cat — pieces that feel closer to fiction than fact. Like a warm flame you’re invited to sit near and enjoy, rather than a fire seen from the heavens that demands you to walk through it to understand.
Endurance has been that bright fire in my life. A large one and easy to spot in the night. But I’m realizing now that I wasn’t really tending it — I was just keeping it lit.
Staying busy. Feeding it whatever was nearby. Pine needles. Leaves. I’ve been giving it fast fuel that flares and disappears just as quickly.
These are the new-to-me feelings of not wanting to bike lately. Or even run. Not as something I need to justify, but because I’m learning that the question “Why?” is often a rhetorical one — I could let it be true without an answer.
The flames are dimmer now, and that’s uncomfortable to admit. But in this new light, I can finally see the embers I’ve been neglecting.
Still warm. Still alive. It just needs slow fuel that creates gentle coals with the strength to burn deep into that dark night.
It’s the kind that asks me to step away from the fire and trust it won’t disappear while I’m gone. The kindness that asks me to expand my radius and gather the logs and branches that actually build lasting heat, not just burn.
It asks for my presence, and not my productivity.
It’s why I want simple things right now. Why I want to see friends across the state and drive there, instead of biking there to fit my long endurance ride in for the week. Why I want to go to the farmers markets with Jenna, without scheduling it to be my recovery day. Why I want to show up at my parents’ house and never take my running shoes out of the trunk.
These wants are the slow fuel that keeps the fire from dying.
drive a slow car fast
I’m objectively slow on the bike right now. I have no goals for 2026. I’m still getting on the bike trainer though, but those nights are now filled with engine sounds and squealing tires from racing Gran Turismo 7 and F1 2025. Not the familiar, gamified sounds of chasing a Zwift segment.
No training plan. No suffering. Just play that I didn’t earn with my sweat count. The voice on my right shoulder whispers, “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.”
But I’m more focused on what my hands are doing with my PS5 controller than the watts my legs are pushing on the pedals beneath me. It’s the same bike I rode up Mt. Washington, and I’m spinning out in one gear because I haven’t charged the electronic shifter batteries in months. Even my relationship with the internet has shifted.
I’m watching tutorials on how to retrofit CarPlay for the Porsche and how Carhartt has changed the way we dress on YouTube. I’m scrolling Facebook Marketplace for car parts and tractors, listings mixed with bikes and group sets for sale. I’m reading philosophical essays on Substack and reading physical books again.
As I’ve started having real life social connections, the more I’ve lost interest in digital life social media. Instagram has gotten a total of 6 minutes of screen time in the past week. Strava hasn’t been opened in so long it was automatically uninstalled from my phone. My Garmin watch mostly rests on the charger, and I often forget about the Oura ring on the same hand as my wedding ring.
But I still love the performance. I still love being fast.
I still love testing the limits of what my body can achieve. It’s just that winter season is here now, and like the animals that outnumber us in Vermont, it’s time to slow down and rest. Trusting that life will move in cycles whether we want them to or not.
I keep thinking about Albert Schweitzer’s words: “If you love something, let it go. If it comes back, it was meant to be; if it doesn’t, it never was.”
I don’t believe in forever as I used to understand it — in those goodbyes, retirements, and farewell tours. I trust I’ll come back to it differently. But for now, I’m tending those coals so I may want it again. I’m letting myself be slow and discovering I can still feel fast.
speed ain’t shit without feeling
I drive away lighter than when I arrived at the dealership with the problems I believed existed. The warning lights are gone from the dashboard, and with them the quiet dread that something was seriously wrong after spending hours on Rennlist about how to replace the Bank 2 engine VVT solenoid.
Turns out, nothing was broken. The battery just needed to be charged.
These performance cars rely heavily on electronics, and when winter arrives, they have a habit of lighting up the dashboard like a Christmas tree. There are Porsche battery maintainers made specifically for this — a reminder that cold doesn’t mean failure, just a little extra care.
Pulling out of the lot, I pass my old VW GTI with a For Sale sign in the window. Snow dusts the hood, already starting to look like a blanket, like it’s getting ready for bed. It looks the same way it did back home in Vermont, parked quietly at the top of the driveway all winter.
I think about how long I spent forcing things I cared about to work. Forcing a front-wheel-drive hot hatch up a snowy, unplowed driveway. Forcing motivation. Forcing meaning. Forcing myself to care about things simply because I used to. But I still love that car.
It just belongs to a life that struggles to find traction on unmaintained gravel roads. It belongs in California, where good gas mileage, easy parking, and easy maintenance matter in an expensive state. It took me to bike races, runs, meetings, and grocery stores with equal enthusiasm.
It represents a version of me optimized for somewhere else — a city life built around motion.
It reminds me of 25 year old Alec who drove his parent’s 2003 BMW 330xi across the country to move to California with his bike on the roof. He loved that car, and 34 year old Alec also wants an M3 bimmer. But he currently wants to mount the Thule bike rack on the Porsche, and is debating which matching crossbars would look best on the roof.
It surprises me how bikes and cars keep circling each other in my life.
Here, the Porsche makes a different kind of sense. An all-wheel-drive SUV that works as a daily driver, not just for display in a heated garage and taken out on the weekends when the weather is ideal. It’s unbelievably quick on the highway, yet capable enough to crawl along Class IV roads with adjustable ride height and locking differential.
Performance and practicality sharing the same body.
This car would have made absolutely no sense in San Francisco. Too big. Too thirsty. Too much for traffic. Too much for parking. Premium 93 gas prices that punish joy. A past version of me would’ve sent a long text, citing a Reddit thread and a Wirecutter list, and reminded me that wanting something isn’t the same as needing it.
The voice on my right shoulder asks again, “Why?”
The engine lovingly purrs. The door is heavier and closes with that satisfying thump. The seat warms up faster than I expect, and there’s a feature to cool your back too. The steering wheel feels thicker in my hands, like it’s actually meant to be wrestled with on a race track.
The voice on my left shoulder answers, “Because it’s sick.”
I take a right onto the highway on-ramp.
I switch to manual shifting and I press the button that says Sport.
The suspension firms up, the chassis lowers, and the steering tightens just enough to feel awake. My body leans forward without asking permission.
I smile — not because I’m going fast, though I still love that feeling — but because I can feel everything. A celebration of death and birth into the new year.
The road. The grip. The weight settling instead of fighting.
I step on the gas.
-Pips
:)