First, let me take a moment to thank all those folks who’ve stopped me in town to say how much they liked my seven-part series, “The Anatomy of Home.” Thank you. To both of you.

Now, on to more serious subjects, to wit: Driving on Vashon.

I drive a very fast sports car, a fire-engine red Volkswagen Golf GTI, the original “pocket rocket.” Her name is “Gigi,” because those letters were once part of her license plate. OK, so I’ll admit she’s old enough to buy a beer legally anywhere in town. So what? She’s meant to be driven fast on the straightaways and hard on the curves. And she’s miserable here. When I turn her engine over in the morning, you can almost hear her sigh, “Why bother?”

Her driver is miserable, too. I come from a family of driving enthusiasts. My father never drove for the simple reason that he had my mother to do it for him. My mother drives like Mario Andretti. Only better. She’s 88 years old now, and it was only two years ago that my sister pried her out of her supercharged two-seater sports car because it was so low to the ground Mom was having trouble climbing out of it.

Mom’s never been the same. She lives in a rural area full of lakes and narrow roads that twist along their shorelines. Her idea of a good day is screaming through all these curves without ever once touching the brake pedal, and woe betide any “old lady” who slows her down. One of the things she really loved about her car was that, at a certain (very high) rate of speed, a spoiler would flip up automatically in the rear. She loved watching that in her mirror. She’s never been the same since my sister took away her “baby.”

Not that my kid sister’s any slouch, either, mind you. She’s never seen a muscle car she didn’t have to own. She’s had Corvettes, Porsches and ludicrously overpowered Nissan Z-cars. She’s even part of an East Coast rally club called “Z-Chicks.” I am not making this up. If we had a family crest, it would be one of those yellow, diamond-shaped road signs with the twisty black arrow on it, and the motto on the ribbon fluttering across it would be the Latin version of: “Whoo-Hoo!”

But enough about them; let’s talk about us. By which I mean, of course, me and Gigi. She has five close-ratio gears with torque curves (for you gearheads out there) that are nearly vertical. (The plain English translation of the previous sentence is “Zoom.”) This means she never gets out of third gear on this speed-forsaken Island. Twenty-five miles per hour doesn’t even exist on her speedometer; it starts at 40.

And speaking of 25 miles per hour, let’s talk about the center of town where that’s the speed limit (along with various other seemingly random locations). Specifically, let’s talk about the blinking light at the main intersection of the highway and Bank Road. Is anyone but me struck by the fact that approaching that intersection is like entering the Twilight Zone? Call me crazy for suspecting this, but I think there is a ray gun on all four approaches that immediately turns driver’s brains to mush, such that no one has a clue who gets to go first after stopping. There are actually rules for such encounters (yield to your right, unless of course you’re English, like my partner, in which case you yield to the left).

Then there are those pedestrian stripes. Where I come from (for the record, New York), a pedestrian stepping off the curb is a provocation, an opportunity for vehicular mayhem. Who do they think they are?

OK, OK. I understand that moving to Vashon means accepting and embracing a slower, saner pace of life. I do. Really. But look, my birthday’s coming up in a couple of months. Is there any reason why someone couldn’t arrange to have, say, that viciously twisty north-end loop that encompasses Cedarhurst and Burma roads closed off for just one driver of a small red car for, say, 15 minutes? Or less: maybe just 10 minutes. I think I could pull that off. Is that so unreasonable?

Don’t think of me. Think of Gigi.

— Will North is a writer who lives on Vashon Island.