UPDATE: Now with pic­tures, read to the end though first

Con­trol and power have always gone hand in hand for me. There is no merit in all the power of the world when you are unable to con­trol it. Just as man­kind has learned to har­ness the power of the atom and then con­trol it, I have to teach myself every­day how to exert my control.

Recently I have been think­ing a little more about this very topic and that has been brought on by a new “toy” that we acquired. It is actu­ally a car, but given the fact that it is a per­form­ance car with abso­lutely no legit­im­ate reason to still exist in our glob­ally warmed up world, I will refer to it as a the “boy toy”.

Apart from every tech­nical gad­gets con­ceiv­able by the Audi engin­eers this bot toy comes with an engine that tries to con­vince the driver that he is actu­ally part time pilot in a rocket ship rather than nor­mal diver of a car. The good old com­bus­tion engine has been the embod­i­ment of raw energy for so many years and Audi seems to have taken it to a whole new level with this one. Good reli­able “Vor­sprung durch Tech­nik”. There is only one prob­lem with this whole pic­ture of the gas guzz­ling, V8 roar­ing power plant and that comes in the form of speed limits.

Speed lim­its can be found every­where in life and as much as they apply to my right foot when it gets temp­ted to press the accel­er­ator paddle just a little fur­ther down, they also apply to a Mas­ter and slave relationship.

My slave has given me total con­trol over her a long time ago, pro­ver­bi­ally she has put me in con­trol of her engine. I can rev it as highly as I want, I can turn it on and off and I can con­trol every aspect of it.

A far too simplistic view. It would be nice if life was that simple and mod­ern engines are like life. Much like the ECU in my car which does not allow me to con­trol all aspects of the engine, there is an ECU that drives my slave. That ECU does not like to play ball now and then and that is when power meets con­trol and vice versa.

I know that my slave is incred­ibly power­ful in her own right that “her engine” some­times screams to be unleashed ask­ing me to put the pedal to the metal. So there I am, ready to grip her (steer­ing wheel) a little harder, pre­par­ing for the kick­back, only to notice that noth­ing hap­pens. When it comes to cer­tain top­ics in our rela­tion­ship, such as anim­als, puppy play, bimbo play and some oth­ers I can press the pedal as much as I want, her internal ECU seems to say quite decis­ively:
“Not today, buster!”.

Why would that be a prob­lem though?

When you are stopped by flash­ing blue lights, it is too late you already broke the speed limit. When the rev lim­iter kicks in, it is already too late you pushed the engine too hard. When my slave’s internal “man­age­ment” kicks in it is too late as well, the dam­age has already been done.

Hav­ing all the power of the world and not know­ing how to con­trol it can only cause more harm than good. Which is very poignantly so proven by the occur­rence of Naga­saki and Hiroshima.

I know that I need to restrain myself and apply more pres­sure (to her gas pedal) only when I can be sure that the speed limit and the road con­di­tions allow for it.

Every-time I am about to hit 70 KMH in third gear and want to push on I am reminded of that. It is phys­ic­ally hard for me to ease off the accel­er­ator. I want to push on, go faster, abuse the power I have. Just as a part of my slave seems to be talk­ing to me, claw­ing at walls, a mon­ster that wants to be unleashed, the boy toy does the same. A rum­bling of 420, V8 enabled, horses try­ing to break out of the corral.

Which brings me to another point:
Know­ing your lim­its applies to everything and some­times you need to limit your­self until you are ready.

This car has an “S” But­ton, which puts the car into sports mode. Appar­ently that changes throttle beha­viour and gen­er­ally changes the boy toy from a purring big tiger into a really pissed off Kodiak bear. I have had the boy toy for about a week now and I have not used that but­ton yet.

I know that I am not ready for it yet. As the boy toy is a manual I have to get used to the clutch, the res­ist­ance point and driv­ing a car with an elec­tronic accel­er­ator pedal. Shift­ing out of first into second is not as smooth as I would like it to be just yet and quicker throttle response will not help with the learn­ing pro­cess.
I have been driv­ing a manual all my life, just like I believe that deep inside I have been a dom­in­ant all my life, but that does not mean I am ready to be a rig­ger or toss my whip at my slave’s back nor does own­ing a boy toy auto­mat­ic­ally make me a second Mikka Häkkinnen.

I guess what it all boils down to is that true con­trol is with those who have ulti­mate power but rarely if ever make use of it.

The know­ledge that I can go from 0 KMH to 100 KMH (that is 0 MPH to 60 MPH for you US read­ers) in 4.8 seconds is enough. I do not need to prove it to myself every­day by drag racing down Egling­ton Avenue. I am safe in my under­stand­ing and belief that when I need the power it is there. Just like I know that when I need to unleash the beast in my slave it will hap­pily come out and play.

Am I ready for that? I do not know, we shall find out soon enough now that the cage is no longer 8000 kilo­metres away from me.

…and on a side note, if you want pic­tures of the boy toy, leave me a com­ment.
…and here they are, over on flickr