Category: Drives and Events (Page 5 of 5)

6/17/16

My wife is a saint.  Yeah, I know most people would think that was obvious because she has been married to me for 36 years.  And while there is truth to that,  they would not have a clue as to the real reason.  She is a saint because she knows how to buy me stuff.  Stuff I may think about once and then forget.  But not Pam.  She stuffs these tidbits away and saves them for occasions, like Father’s Day or birthdays.  Then she acts.  In this case it was a bottle of Extra Anejo Tequila.

I am by no means a serious drinker, but I like to sip the hard stuff once in a while.  Wine does not hold much fascination for me, as I can rarely discern the nuances in taste and smell that make a great wine worth drinking.  But Scotch, Bourbon and, more recently, Tequila?  Well that’s an entirely different story.

My friend Steve started me down the Tequila path a year or so ago.  Until then the only way I could drink the stuff was in other stuff.  Steve, on the other hand, had spent countless hours sipping Tequila, and he emphatically suggested I do the same.  He started my education by explaining that Tequila came in three grades, depending on how long it had been aged.  The first grade, Silver Tequila, is distilled and really not aged.  It is raw.  The next grade, Reposado, is used to classify Tequilas that have been rested or aged for two to eleven months.  The third grade, Anejo Tequila, is aged at least one year.

It turns out that Steve was being kind to me because he omitted telling me about the fourth grade, Extra Anejo.  Extra Anejo Tequila is aged at least three years, and Extra Anejo Tequilas possess taste profiles that are very smooth and complex.

As you go from grade to grade, the cost of these Tequilas rises dramatically.  I am not a fan of Silver Tequila, unless it is in a Margarita, and from a sipping perspective that does not count.  I do like some Reposado Tequilas, such as the Casa Noble Single Barrel.  And for quite some time, I was very content to sip Anejo Tequilas, such as Don Julio 1942.

Then my friend Jeff stuck a very sharp pin in my Anejo balloon when he twisted my arm to try his bottle of Asom Broso Extra Anejo, a true super Tequila.  Oh my, it was good.  Of course, it’s ridiculously expensive, well past any price point I could rationalize.

A month or so after Jeff obliterated my Anejo balloon, the LA Times ran an article about Extra Anejos.  Pam and I discussed the ones mentioned in the article and noted that they were not priced too ridiculously.  So we tried to buy one, but it was out of stock.  After which I just forgot about it, most likely because I was too busy dealing with the purchase and burial of the 1977 Targa.  Pam didn’t because a bottle of Tapatio Excelencia Extra Anejo showed up just in time to kick off my Father’s Day weekend, and it was really good.

So like I said earlier, my wife is a saint.

6/11/16

I knew before I met my other friend Mark that our drive was in jeopardy.  I could feel little wisps of water coming down in my backyard, which is 8 miles inland from the beach, while I was throwing tennis balls to Jake, our Golden Retriever.  I briefly contemplated calling Mark and seeing if we could push our start time back a couple of hours, but didn’t.  So at 7:30 we met, fully gassed, and off we went.  Our goal was to head up PCH and then up the mythical and mystical Encinal Canyon.  On the way the little wisps of water turned into actual drops and I had to use my wipers.  Even for June in LA, this was an extreme marine layer.  We turned onto Encinal and after about a mile stopped, as the fog and mist was so thick and the road was so wet that it was not safe, let alone fun, to drive.

This was the second time in a row I had designs on driving up Encinal Canyon but did not do it.  The last time I couldn’t take the traffic on PCH.  This time I couldn’t take the conditions.  Funnily enough, I was not upset.  I am sure that this will make me sound trite and shallow, but I love driving my GTS.  I like the way it feels.  I like the way it sounds.  Of course, I like it better with the sun out.  After a brief cell phone conversation with Mark, one of about 30 we had during the drive, we decided to just head up the coast and have breakfast in Oxnard.  Along the way north on PCH I began to notice that there were boatloads of bicycles heading south on PCH.  At first I thought it was a few brave souls braving the elements.  Then I realized that I was seeing the lead riders on the last stage of the AIDS ride down from San Francisco.  As we drove, we saw more and more bicycles.  It was an amazing sight.

We made it to Oxnard, whereupon Mark discovered that the restaurant we were heading to had moved.  After a reset of his nav system, we set off again.  Soon we were at Mrs. Olson’s Coffee Hut, a great local’s place that now overlooks the harbor.  After a day of Mexican food yesterday, including a carnitas burrito for lunch and super spicy shredded beef in sauce for dinner, I had no choice but to get a chile verde omelette for breakfast.

We decided to head back on the freeway.  On the way we were on a back road having another phone conversation.  I had the car in manual mode and was letting the engine wind up to 6,000 RPM before shifting.  I said good bye to Mark and after a minute or so, I realized he had not hung up so I asked him what he was doing.  His answer cracked me up and resonated with me.  He said, “Listending to that amazing 6 cylinder boxer engine of yours!”

On the way down the 101 the weather looked like it was drying out, so we exited the 101 at the 23 South and headed into the hills.  As soon as we hit the first few feet of the twistie portion of the drive, the wisps of water reappeared on the windshield, but at least the fog had lifted,  So we had a spirited drive up the hill and over Mulholland Highway to Kanan Dume where we turned right and headed back down to PCH and then home.  139 reasonably aimless miles in total.  Great day.  Great to give the GTS a workout.  Great to just focus on driving.  To quote Zac Brown, “Life is Good Today.”

6/3/16

I drove 40 miles each way for a breakfast buffet that had three culinarily challenged items, but that was not really why I went.  I have been a Porsche Club (PCA) member for a couple of years now, and since I attended my first breakfast meeting, I have been hooked on them.  We had some political upheaval in the LA Chapter of the PCA recently.  Politics and Porsches go hand in hand.  So after many of us resigned from the LA Chapter board, I thought going to a different region’s breakfast would be fun.  Too bad the region is in Long Beach.  Too bad the breakfast is in Seal Beach.  Our normal LA breakfast is in Santa Monica, which is a lot closer and easier to get to.  The 912 is not ready to go that distance.  Or at least I am not ready to drive it that distance just yet, as the oil leak needs to be addressed.  So I took my Cayman GTS to the event.  Along the way, the Cayman passed 10,000 miles.  I would say they have been the best 10,000 miles I have ever driven, except that when I purchased the car, it already had 2,500 miles on it.  So I can say they have been the best 7.500 miles I have ever driven.  The 40 miles each way to the breakfast were no exception.

I didn’t expect to know anyone at the event, but that is not an issue.  Driving up to a Porsche Club event in a Porsche makes breaking the ice incredibly easy.  So I went.  This region does a nice thing.  Every month it puts the same type of cars near each other in the lot and takes lots of pictures of them and their owners.  This month was Boxster month.  They looked great all lined up in front of the restaurant.

I had a great time and met several new and interesting people.  I am looking forward to going to more, though I may eat a bit before I go next time.

5/7/16

Yes, I have been fixated on the acquisition of and then on mourning the loss of the 1977 Targa, but life goes on.  It has been over two months since I last had a head clearing, stomach churning, wind howling drive in my Cayman GTS, the car I drive daily and the one I love dearly.  It is also the one for which this blog is named.  To put my feelings in perspective, I quote Maren Morris’ lyrics from her song, My Church:

I’ve cussed on a Sunday
I’ve cheated and I’ve lied
I’ve fallen down from grace
A few too many times
But I find holy redemption
When I put this car in drive……

I like to get out about once a month, so I was seriously feeling the need to take on some twisties.  Earlier in the week I cast about looking for Porsche comrades to go with me.  Turns out it was going to be a solo run.  It was almost a when Harry met Stu run, but Stu got stewed in traffic, so solo it was to be.

I headed north on PCH and was immediately frustrated.  Traffic was really heavy.  It’s not even tourist season yet, and the highway was packed.  I had planned to go up PCH to Encinal and then head up to Mulholland Highway, but I got frustrated and made a last second right onto Topanga Canyon.  Big mistake.  As I accelerated up Topanga, I immediately came upon an extremely slow sedan.  I pulled over and waited for a few minutes, then a Boxster went by, and I thought I would drive with it.  Of course, I caught it pretty quickly, as it was being held up by the slow sedan.  After a few miles of this torture, the slow sedan put on its blinker and turned left.  Hallelujah!  Or so I thought.  Just as the Boxster passed the slow sedan, a car turned on to Topanga and cut off the Boxster.  Needless to say, this car was almost as slow as the one that just turned left.  The rest of the ride up and down Topanga was pretty slow.

Eventually I got to Mulholland, turned left and then left again onto Mulholland Highway.  I began to smile in earnest, as I was headed for wide open spaces and lots of twisties with very few cars.  It was exhilarating and fun.  The window was down, and I had the car in Sport Plus mode with manual shifting and Porsche Sport Exhaust (PSE) on.  That meant the wind and car were howling, as I kept the revs up between 4,000 and 6,000.  With the enhanced throttle response of Sport Plus mode and the high torque the engine produces in this rev range, the car leapt from turn to turn.  The miles flew by.

Soon I had passed Stunt Road, Las Virgenes (Malibu Canyon) and was at the Rock Store at the base of the Snake, a 20+ turn uphill portion of Mulholland Highway known for fast cars and motorcycles.   Apparently, too well known.  I stopped across from the Rock Store and snapped a picture.  In the high res version, you can see the front parking lot of the Rock Store in the side view mirror.  Then I took on the snake.  It used to be that to stay out of trouble, and not get into a wreck, all you had to do was stay on the right side of the double yellow line.  That seems to have changed.  I noticed an absence of cars on the snake,  I noticed an absence of motorcycles on the snake,  I noticed an absence of bicycles on the snake, which is not a bad thing, as it is bad news to cone up on them in the tight turns.  I ran the snake in a fairly controlled manner.  The GTS was not stressed, which was a good thing because about two thirds of the way up, I noticed a police suv in my rear view mirror.  The police suv was hiding on the left side of the road, facing the way I was going, and just waiting to pounce.  This might have explained the lack of activity.  I passed by unscathed.  I have not seen it yet, but a photographer got a picture of me on the last turn of the snake, a left hand sweeper.  I’ll have to check that out.

All too soon I was at Kanan Dume and it was time to go back to PCH and home.    I turned left onto Kanan, and before I knew it, I was at PCH and heading home amidst the beach traffic, which was not as irritating this time.

It is about 4:30 in the afternoon on the second day of my Performance Driving class at the Porsche Sport Driving School.  We are back in the classroom, wrapping up the program.  I am feeling great because as the song lyric goes, I’ve Had The Time Of My Life.

I can hardly believe that it was just two days ago when I was driving down Highway 65 from Nashville to Birmingham, with a detour to the Jack Daniels Distillery.  My wife and I went to Nashville to celebrate our 35^th anniversary, listen to country music and eat barbeque.  I was settling into the 200 plus mile drive to Birmingham, brimming with excitement.  Not because I had just left my wife at the Nashville airport.  Not because I was done listening to live music and eating barbeque.  Not because I was driving a Hyundai Elantra rental car.  A car I had been in for four days and still could not locate in a parking lot.  A car I had trouble starting because it was built with the ignition on the wrong side of the steering column.  A car that had a piece of the dashboard that always came off in my hand when I reached out to release the emergency brake, which was not where it should be, an act I did unconsciously throughout the trip.  No, I was brimming with excitement because my destination was Barber Motorsports Park, home of the only Porsche Sport Driving School in North America.

I had enrolled in the Performance Driving course as a 60^th birthday present to myself.  It was sort of an indulgent present, but with the Nashville trip and some shopping for my wife as the quid pro quos, I was good to go.  At least, I thought I was.

To be honest, I was also a little nervous on the way to PSDS.  I am not a racer.  I never will be.  I had taken my Cayman out to the track for one day about a year ago, a day my Cayman proved that it was a far superior car than I was a driver.  I like to think of that day as its Carmitzvah.  The car manned up, and I was stuck in adolescence.  After doing some research on PSDS, I felt that it was a better program than the one day program I did a year earlier, and I developed several of goals for myself.  I wanted to improve my overall driving, better understand car handling, run laps in a competent manner on a major race track, and decide whether my next Porsche will be a Cayman GTS or a 911.  I also wanted to avoid making a fool of myself in the eyes of the other participants.

As it turned out, I should not have been nervous in the least.  The PSDS is a professional program with high quality instructors whose capabilities are amazing.  Porsche has put a lot of thought into the course and the teaching process.  Everything is geared to each participant’s level, and the instructors try to group students with similar skill levels together.  Most of the other students in the class were there for the same reasons as me, sans the decision about their next Porsche, and I felt really comfortable and easily made many new friends.

Barber Motorsports Park is an unbelievable place.  The grounds are extremely well maintained.  The track is about 2.4 miles around with 16 turns.  It is challenging and well laid out for Porsches.  The fact that the track has lots of elevation changes just makes it more interesting, and also amps up the need for Dramamine, which was readily available all over the facilities.  Finally, the Motorcycle and Lotus Racing Car museum is off the charts.

The course is a combination of short classroom lessons, simple exercises, including auto cross laps, wet skid pad driving, braking and accelerating laps and heel and toe downshifting, and lapping sessions on the track, where we drive behind an instructor.  The first day and a half is used to build skills for the final lapping sessions and hot lap on the afternoon of the second day.  The technique the instructors use is repetition.  Every chance they get, including when ferrying us to the exercises and lapping sessions in a van, they go around the track talking about each braking zone, corner entry point, apex and exit, and acceleration zone.  When the instructors lead the lapping sessions, they speak into one way radios, which broadcast in our cars, repeating the same information and pointing out what we are doing well or need to improve.  This approach makes learning the nuances of the track manageable.  It also makes it reasonably easy to increase your speed and capabilities.

During the first day, I progressed pretty well until the final lapping session of the day.  During that session, I got really frustrated because I kept losing time on the three corners setting up the front straightaway.  At that time I learned the hard way that a 911S cannot catch another 911S on a straightaway, leaving me with the problem of how to get my line right going into the straight.

The night after the first day, PSDS treats us to dinner with the instructors.  It is lots of fun.  The instructors are professional drivers, with engaging personalities and interesting backgrounds.  They were very open and easy to talk to.  I spent some time discussing my issues and getting more advice.

The second day is when we pick up the speed.  I was happy to discover that I knew the track much better the second day, and as I got my line right and got more comfortable in the cars, my speed picked up very naturally.  By the end of the final lapping session, I was really pleased with my progress.  I had most definitely accomplished all my driving goals.

The hot lap with the instructor driving was the icing on the cake.  Thankfully, it was the last thing we did.  If it had been first, I would have been terrified.  After miles and miles at increased speed and a greater understanding of just how good these cars are, the hot lap, at about 90% of the limit of the car, was a perfect way to end the course.  I was relaxed throughout the lap, even if the car got a little loose in some corners.  I loved it.

Speaking of the cars, we drove a Panamera Turbo, a Boxster GTS, and a 911S on the track.  They were all great.  If you have never really exercised your Porsche, or someone else’s Porsche, you should.  These machines are wonderful examples of high performance, handling and strength.  After attending this class, I cannot stress how happy I am that I have one.

So did I accomplish my goals?  Absolutely…Well almost.  I improved my driving.  I had a much better understanding of car handling.  And I had competently run laps on a major track.  When I left I had failed to accomplish my last goal, though.  I loved the time I spent in the Boxster GTS on the auto cross and the track.  The car, which reminded me of my Cayman, is awesome.  Unfortunately, the 911S was just as amazing in slightly different ways.  I loved my seat time in it.  At that time I was really confused.

After I got home, I continued to waffle between the Cayman and the 911.  Then on the way down from an Angeles Crest Highway PCA run I found myself at Downtown LA Porsche drooling over a 3 month old CPO Cayman GTS.  In that instant I knew with absolute clarity what the right choice was.  So while there is a 911 in my future, it is still a ways away.  This is good news because as the slightly modified lyric in one of my favorite Country Music songs goes, The Road Goes On Forever and The “Porsche” Party Never Ends………