A one minute google exercise didn’t turn up a definitive origin of the phrase ‘balls out’. But we all know what it means; full bore, full throttle, maximum speed, turned to 11.

So the origin isn’t particularly important.

What is important is that it’s how I generally do things. The usual quote goes “I have two speeds, all the way on, and all the way off.” I see speed limits as optional, and fundamentally think they’re a bad idea. I don’t like limits. I don’t like rules. I don’t do things a little bit.

I dive deep. I drink hard. I like to push it ’til it breaks, I like to go ’til it hurts.

Again though, that’s not the point. That’s background data. I don’t drive slow. Ever. Today though, I did something I’ve never done before.

I was late for work. We had the big WWDC announcement, and my project was on deck. I wanted to be in the room at work when the announcement played, wanted to hear the reaction of people around me. So even more than usual, I was in a rush to get out.

I took the doors off my jeep this weekend. The top came off a couple weeks back. I like it best with the doors off; I like the hairy-edge, imminent danger feeling. The road rushing by. Air swirling around me.

I’m wearing a kilt today. Camo UK. It’s pretty windy here today in northern california.

Until now, I’ve never done these two things together. Doors off, kilt on.

So I came roaring out of my driveway and blasted up my street to the main road, and I did it my usual way, balls out, knobby tires humming and screeching. Full blast up the street, with a wicked cross-wind.

And the phrase balls out became quite literally true. The kilt blow all the way up, all the way open.

It took a lot of careful tucking to get the kilt under control since of course, I didn’t slow down. Alas, no schoolgirls were flashed, I don’t pass a school on the way to work. But I tell you, it may be a sunny day, but christ on a crutch, my balls were cold when I got to work.

I’ll have to think about an alternate closure system. I don’t mind flashing, but indeed, I prefer to control it.