These are hardly worth mentioning, but it's early in the season and the car's only been on the road a week or so, so what the hey. The only reason I even mention these is that my I'm still fiddling with my new setup and thus the car is BADLY tuned, can't run anywhere near full boost, etc, etc. and yet the car is STILL capable of being the theme of a kill story.

Anyway, on to the details . . .

First encounter was with a (I assume) fairly new Beamer 323ci. For those of you familiar with the Hamilton area, it took place on the 403 eastbound just down from the mountain. (For those of you who aren't familiar, you'll have to use your imagination). Apparently the Beamer took my entrance to the highway (from the Linc ramp) as a bit of an invitation to be put in my place. I recognized his intentions and quickly moved into the right lane to allow him to "school" me. He accelerated hard in the left lane. I jumped in behind him and did likewise. Was all over his bumper. He passed a couple of slower cars, found some open road in the left lane and tried to out "autobahn" me. Didn't work. Was all over his rear bumper. I even pulled beside him and slowed down to match his speed. He got the message. I wasn't the underpowered rice-boy he thought. I should mention that everytime I boosted past about 15psi, knock came on hard and accel died a horrible death on anything above. Point being, even my severely crippled Talon could easily keep up with (this particular) ultimate German driving machine.

Second encounter was with an early 90's? Integra. Looked pretty much stock except for an aftermarket muffler (or maybe catback?). Not distasteful, maybe a 3" tip. Not going to get into too many details here, but, safe to say, he made his presence known to me to get into the ramp ahead of me to take the QEW Toronto-bound (from Fruitland Rd entrance). He accelerated hard on the straightaway (which is quite long at that particular ramp). As it happens, this ramp is merged from another ramp from the opposite side of Fruitland. So for a little stretch (maybe 50m) it's effectively a two-lane ramp. Do you see the possibilities here?

When I reached the straightaway, sucked up real estate, used the "other" lane to fly by (don't worry, gentle readers, there weren't any cars using that particular "lane" as a ramp at that time) and proceeded to merge onto the QE. Immediately slowed right down to allow the 'Teg to catch up. Wouldn't take the bait. I even slowed down to about 80km/h. Still refused to pass. Alright, I don't like kicking people when they're down. Unless they deserve it, of course.