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I woke up quite early that Sunday as was normal for me. I considered quietly creeping around my sister’s house until she got up around 11, which was normal for her. The drive from Palo Alto to Santa Rosa would change from mundane to ugly by mid-day were I to delay my departure. Instead I unzipped and opened the driver’s side of my tonneau cover, tossed my bag into The Speedster and headed out before the traffic woke up. As I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge on this glorious summer morning I decided to enjoy Highway 1 instead of plodding along the northbound freeway. With the crack-of-dawn absence of traffic, the windy coastal road would add no time, but tremendous […]
I grew up in idyllic Sonoma County that nature graced with beauty and interest in every direction from border to border. Lightly traveled mountain roads, river roads and Highway 1 skirting the rugged coastline were perfect for 20-something sports car and bike aficionados. Running solo more often than not, I gloried in the capabilities of my series of old-school Porsches and a sweet-handling BSA 650. Rarely did the destination have any significance; the journey was everything. I was leading a sports car tour to the Big Sur campground for a weekend of watching premium sports car racing at Laguna Seca. This group of young couples had shoehorned our gear into 50s and 60s topless cars with similar luggage capacity to […]
The background on this car … I was an enthusiastic, radical, seriously competitive Sports Car Guy for most of my life… okay, still am. For 20 years THAT CAR was a 1956 Porsche Speedster barn find – a very rare car that was lightweight and lent itself for high performance driving … Just what the doctor ordered. It also became highly valued in the collector market and its sale in 1999 financed my escape from The People’s Republic of California. After about 16 years sports-car-less, I picked up a very-well-prepared autocross car that was vintage, collectable, lightweight and ticked all the boxes for this enthusiastic, radical, seriously competitive Sports Car Guy. I spent a lot of time and money […]
During the formative years of my driving career the guys piloting the cars with flashing lights on top were called “Peace Officers”. You could have rational conversations with them. I, in fact, had a large number of those conversations, resulting in very little paperwork. I got out of my car carrying registration and DRAWING my license out of my hip pocket to met them between our cars to calmly, politely discuss “why they pulled me over”. Their line of work did not seem to attract or tolerate fearful people hiding behind badges, guns and mobs of similar dangerous people. That is not to say all cops are dangerous, but calling themselves “Law Enforcement” is a really bad start when […]
Freshly out of the US Air Force, still full of vim, vigor and barely-bridled enthusiasm, I went to a randomly selected used car lot to spice up an otherwise uneventful day with a bit of joy-riding. I had never driven anything but Detroit Iron. This little yellow car called to me. A couple hundred feet down the road, it owned me. I am still, and have always been A CAR GUY. The fit, feel and mechanical precision of this car was light years away from anything I had experienced. I did not figure a part-time clerk/shelf-stocker attending college on the GI Bill would qualify for a loan on it, but the very next day, I traded my ’67 Plymouth for […]
While wearing my baby teeth I was racing toy cars over road-race courses of my own making on the carpet. Smallest of the bunch, I was beating all other home-made coasters on our downhill courses, making maneuvers others did not dare. In bicycle boonie-crashing I had no peers, not from muscle mass, of which I had none, but, well, I am and have always been a driver. Graduating to internal combustion engines, and automobiles didn’t change much in relative skill levels, just put me into a new league. Autocrossing had my Porsche 912, then Porsche 356B, the Porsche 356A Speedster winning consistently. At the time I thought my cars were magical. My 650 single-carb BSA was the lowest horsepower in […]
I spent over 20 years with a ’56 Porsche Speedster as my main ride. I wouldn’t give up a minute of it. But I sold that to finance my escape from The People’s Republic of California. About 16 years later I got a little runabout that scratches the same itch. Today I gave it a bath. It is very un-pretty. The Speedster highly rewarded washing and waxing. The CRX does not. I probably have not washed it in a year. It may be subtle, but I did notice and appreciate the cleaner look. It would be a treat to drive them one after another at Sears Point, Laguna Seca or over the Lost Trail Pass. That, of course, is […]
Shortly after I switched from a ’63 Porsche hardtop to a topless ’56 Porsche Speedster, I tripped over a street merchant in San Francisco who was hawking his hand-made caps. It was a bit more than I could justify spending, but an elk-hide Greek fisherman’s cap fit my head, needs and desires so well that it went home with me. It became “The Speedster Hat”. It lived in The Speedster and rode on my head summer, winter, rain and shine. That was 20 years of fitting my head, and everything else I could want in a hat. I sold the Speedster to finance my escape from California to Idaho. I had no intention of including The Hat in the transaction, […]
Last night we enjoyed a 2013 movie, most of which was made by Roman Polanski during three days he spent with Jackie Stewart in 1971, leading up to and including Jackie’s drive in the Monaco Grand Prix. Ya’all ought to know I am A CAR GUY. I have been a dedicated car guy, and in particular, road-racing car guy since I was five years old, or so. Anything that involves high-performance driving turning right as well as left has my interest. I subscribed to Road & Track and Car & Driver in the 70’s, watching Jackie via those pages during his peak. I also found autocross and began legitimate sports car performance competition about that time. I differentiate that from […]
An online friend posed a couple of questions that got me thinking. Their intent was to inspire finding and focusing personal passion in a income-generating, or work-related setting. I am in the fortunate position of being able to take one step further back from that view. While I am not sharing my personal excursion through this exercise, I am publishing the process. You can apply it to me from your view if you wish, but I am offering it to you for your own purposes that you may be inspired to do the exercise for yourself or others near and dear to you. Find a quiet space and ask yourself: What do I love doing? Just write them in […]
A set of synapses that were hyper-developed in my brain from a very early age have been clamoring for exercise of late. Sorry gear-shifter, heel-and-toe-er, steering-finesser, 4-wheel-drift-er, g-force-junkie and other parts, it simply isn’t your turn. I promise I’ll get you another if at all possible, but have to admit the best parts might just have to be memories. I would be hard-pressed to come up with something more fun than being helmeted, nomex-clad, 5-point-harness-secured in the above transporter turning laps at Sears Point or Laguna Seca in the course records we set for Class A at 2:10.32 or 1:57.94 respectively … though a few hours spent in that same conveyance on some dotted-lined curvy roads along the California coast […]
I was making good time as was my wont on windy roads, perhaps making up for a late start too. I am a very focused driver regularly and at full-chat even more so, but as I braked for the sharp turn something off to the left through the bushes and trees didn’t look right. Powering out of the turn, I knew what it was, turned off and slid to a stop in the wide gravel driveway. I jumped out of The Speedster, bounded through the gate and up to the tinderbox porch attached to the old mobile home. Mom and 3 or 4 little kids were huddled, staring at the approaching grass fire like deer in the headlights. I got […]
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