Everyone,
Were to start?
Once again thanks to ALL!
The volunteers were my personal saviors.
Without you parking, directing, working the registration booth we would have never been able to have it run so smooth…
THANKS to ALL of the VOLUNTEERS!!!
You were simply amazing…
I apologize in advance if I forgot or left you out of the following story from this past weekend…
Day 1 – Friday 3/24/06
Am – still in prison (work)…
Getting phone calls from “
DanRealtor”…
“So how’s the convoy Dan”…
Uh, fun…
There are a couple who will run with us…
cool more potential "SRT Flight" graduates...
“
ffimo” rings around lunch and we coordinate car wash, wax at Shell station…
We spent the next two hours doing the finite detail on the cars at my house in the garage waiting for the westbound AZ, NM "train" to arrive in San Diego…
Dan finally rings me around 3:30pm – we are stuck in traffic and guys need gas…
30 minutes later as “
ffimo” (Mo) and I are standing in the front of my development…
Dan and 10 others go blowing by north on the separated 4-lane road… (Dan forgetting where I live obviously)…
So as not to make the whole group turn around…
Mo and I take off and catch them…
Problem is they are already turned around and coming southbound now… (Well 4 cars so far as I approach the light and slid into the group…)
When I cut my way into the u-turners only to have “
1bad4dr” completely bust out the rear end and point his nose at 8 o’clock blocking both lanes of traffic with me making my u-turn coming at him…
Needless to say, the whites of his eyes were visible beyond his sunglasses… hehehehe
Not to mention his dad’s…
Good thing for my brembo’s huh
1bad4dr?
So we rally very briefly in my development…
And have all the people in the small little business complexes come out, neighbors…
My wife drives up and is blown away from “how cool” some of the cars were…
And my 2 girls were like Dad – “this rocks!”
So we get on the road…
I learn the finer things of organized traffic control by the "AZ Train" and keeping the group together…
Nice job everyone on that!
And I take them through the “Ranch” (Rancho Santa Fe) for an abbreviated version of spirited driving…
And proceeded to let them experience the "Roller Coaster"... (hey
Meister remember? the one we went on that one night? and
bbsrt8 knows it as well…
Needless to say the "AZ Train" wanted to do that over and over again…
Rolling through north county coastal San Diego on El Camino Real and staying off of the freeway as long as possible (as traffic was moving at 10-14mph)
We finally got everyone together after being subjected to metered on-ramps… (See picture somewhere in the 300+ I have seen from the show about freeway traffic)
And we hit Camp Pendleton…
Now for those that know me…
As soon as I hit this area…
My brain goes to attack mode and my thought process is speed limit is 100 if traffic allows just for cruising speed…
Well something told me to hang and work our way into it…
Good thing…
As a couple of CHP motors appeared out of nowhere…
Which is very rare for them to be on this stretch…
THANK GOD FOR THE RADIO COMMUNICATIONS WE ALL HAD!!!
Well they were providing cover for a blacked out Suburban, blacked out Tahoe and Crown Vic and here comes two more motors…
Only thing I could think of was the Governor or Lt. Gov. or some senator visiting camp Pendleton…
We did the rest stop thing as one of the boys had a fan issue – sounded like a bearing…
And “
bobb” got some video of us rolling out of there…
And well, we then had some open road a couple of times…
Thanks to those that got to experience about one of the only places you can run in So. Cal when traffic allows…
It was a very limited version of "spirited driving"…
as we only touched the bottom of a buck and a 2 quarters...
We roll into the OC around 5:30pm and started meeting and greeting!
Met the entire Canadian contingent – both left and right coasts and in between with Rambit heading all the way down from Ontario, Canada...
Bernie I am still in disbelief you did that...
you deserved the present you got from Ralph... (see story for that later)
It was good to see old friends and meet the new faces with their sigs. That have been around and who I have not had the pleasure of meeting yet.
vvv90-Matt, DanRealtor-Dan, Cory and I proceeded to have a
couple of drinks…
We did the dinner thing at D&B and had Dan stripe the entry into the parking space…
Avoided the $3.00 cover to have dinner due to
DanRealtor smooth talking abilities…
Thanks Dan…
So we had a little fun in the NASCAR race…
Then more drinking till 2:45am…
Thanks Cory – my new drinking equal…
Day 2 – 3/25/06 – THE DAY
6am wake up call…
Are you kidding me???
Not to mention going and getting
vvv90 from the Homestead…
Well I was the one that suggested and told everyone that I would lead them down to Crystal Cove to see the automotive spectacle…
So off to Hemstead to get vvv90 at 6:15am...
Most of us were there at 6:30am…
Heck even Ralph, Adam and Scott were there at o’ my goodness it’s early…
The good thing about
NR, Resumespeed and Goddardzilla taking forever was that we could wipe the cars down from the evening dew…
especially after spending so much time on them on Friday...
Ah, the luxuries of garages… (Yeah I saw it, after the event though
Bruno… striped that too…hehehe)
So once we got the Canadians with their manana' time… (That’s whenever I feel like getting around to it - found on either bordering country)…
We were off and rearing to go…
Some more than others…
As we were still on good behavior mode…
We turn into the parking area for Crystal Cove…
And the first several words out of Drew-
rps232 and
vvv90’s mouth were are you kidding me!
You weren’t kidding!
Well, we park and it took us 15 minutes to just get to the roped off area of cars…
Sometimes the stuff outside in the general area doesn’t make it in time and has to park with the rest of the folks and there is stuff that is sometimes better than what is inside the ropes…
Well needless to say – they were a lot of pictures taken…
And I have even seen one of the 2 - $725,000 Ferrari F40’s that were there –outside the main area in the photos…
vvv90 ran out of memory in his card from the one parking lot and 4 out of the 5 rows inside the ropes…
Ralph, Adam and Scott cruised and mingled and talked to us about cars several times…
All of us holding off and not wanting to ruin face time with them later and honestly to let them enjoy the cars like we were…
Rallied the troops to get back to the hotel to get ready…
And some silver Charger being rented by some Canadian kept trying to fill my rear window with his windshield…
Not the best thing to do as I told him later the cops just love to write tickets in and around this event… Sorry
NR, I really would have loved to have done some “spirited” driving with you sir…
Heck we didn’t even do the Crystal Cove burn out now that I think about it…
9am – the crowd gathers at the DTree…
I look across at the DCX building and see cars already there…
I got to get over there is all I’m thinking at this point –
fats blessing to get the guys to Crystal Cove or not was way cool…
Tmagnum, Sweeper6, fats and hemeee have it handled already though once I get there 20 minutes later…
We got everything done and handled by 10am…
And we started staging cars…
This is about the only time I saw most of you if you attended…
Sorry if I missed you or didn’t have time to chat…
Really wild rides!!!
(I haven’t heard one person say anything about not seeing enough pics since the first batch hit on Saturday night… Thanks to everyone for taking pics!!!)
John W, Dupie24, mighty noid, vvv90, whoever was working with
johnw parking the 300’s and magnums on the north side out in the main drive in area – THANKS!!!!
And to all the volunteers that worked the registration desk and everywhere else during the event -THANKS!!!
I’m beat!!!
This car weekend is sucking the life out of me…
I want to make sure though that you all get a flavor for the weekend…
The Sat. afternoon edition is coming up over the next couple of days…
Stay tuned…
The one-liners really start then…
and the butter really starts to churn...