Category Archives: Road Trips

LUG 2026 – Day 6

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Tuesday, September 29

Chad and I shared a hotel room for LUG. Chad’s not a morning guy. My plan for the drive home was to stop at Hanging Lake for a quick hike. Hanging Lake requires a timed-entry permit, and before I left home, I bought one for 2 pm. Which meant I had to be on the road by 7. And the hotel room is in my name, so an early departure for me means Chad has to get in gear much earlier than he’d like. He seemed barely conscious when we walked out the door twenty minutes before sunrise.

By now, I’d had my share of plain bagels, and I let Chad know that I’d be stopping for food within a couple of hours. I wouldn’t be in his rearview mirror all day.

The rain made my lack of shades a moot point at the track yesterday, but I wasn’t looking forward to driving into the morning sunshine without my sunglasses. I need not have worried. It was overcast most of the time I was driving, except for about half an hour of bright sunshine near Vernal.

On the drive from home to Salt Lake City, I was shocked to see two reservoirs completely empty. Today, I passed by Strawberry Reservoir and Starvation Reservoir in Utah, and Kenney Reservoir in Colorado, all at or near full capacity. I wonder if this is because these reservoirs aren’t part of the system controlled by Denver Water. Due to the extreme drought, Denver Water has reduced flows in the Fraser River and its tributaries to keep enough water going through the Moffat Tunnel. The reduced flow of the Fraser River could very well have severe environmental impacts, because with less water, the river could freeze solid.

I stopped for fuel in Rifle, just before getting onto I-70. At the next pump, a guy got out of his pickup truck, looked at my car, looked at me, and said, “Ah, to be young and rich!” I replied, “Sorry, neither!”

I made it to the Hanging Lake parking lot a bit early. I thought I had the permit in my phone’s wallet, but it wasn’t there. I had a screenshot of it somewhere, but the ranger found my name on his list before I could find the photo. This might be the best time of the year to visit Hanging Lake. When I made the reservation, there were still quite a few permits left, and, judging by the number of spaces available in the parking lot, my Tuesday afternoon time slot wasn’t close to selling out. Bonus points for it still being good aspen viewing season.

I pulled into a parking spot next to a couple in an SUV. He was trying to get a photo of a blue jay while I was changing my shoes. (My driving shoes aren’t at all suitable for hiking.) Usually, I’m the one who wants to engage with strangers. He was drawn to the car, of course. He greeted me and asked if I tracked the car. No doubt he knew the answer before he asked it. They were visiting from Switzerland. He used to have a Radical that he drove often at Spa and at other Belgian, German, and Dutch race tracks. What are the chances that, in two days, I’d meet two people who often did track days at Spa? I met him again at the lake. He’s a trail runner. He ran it in half the time it took me.

It’s only a mile and a half from the parking lot to the lake, with about a third of that on the bike path along the Colorado River. Where the trail leaves the bike path, there are half a dozen informative signs telling the history and geology of Hanging Lake. With the highway right here, it’s noisy, but the sound of the river softens the traffic noise.

From here to the lake, the trail is fairly steep, climbing a thousand feet in a mile. After half a mile, the traffic noise is gone. The trail is very well maintained and features six bridges over Dead Horse Creek, the lake’s outlet stream. Strangely, there’s water flowing at the base of the trail and below the highest three bridges, but no water under the lower three.

I am often prone to exaggeration. I try to avoid it, or admit it when I do it. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that one out of three paces on the trail is on a stone stair. The trail climbs the floor of a narrow, steep-walled canyon. For much of the hike, there are no views, except for the nearly vertical canyon walls. The lake attracts folks who don’t normally hike, and there are many benches along the way for people to rest. The final climb to the lake is up a stone stairway narrow enough to require a railing.

Just before the lake comes into view, there’s a trail junction. To the left, up the trail a short distance, is Spouting Rock Waterfall. I’d like to return here in late May or early June. Today, the flow of water is only a small fraction of what it must be in late spring. It must be spectacular when the stream is running at full flow.

Hanging Lake is small. I’ve been to dozens of bodies of water of this size that are unnamed, unworthy of notice. The surface area is only a quarter of an acre, or the same size as the lot my house sits on. Size is overrated. This place is outstanding. It is key to the ecosystem of this canyon. Birds live in the canyon walls around the lake. The water is so clear, you can see the fish.

On the hike in, at a platform near the top of the final staircase, there’s a view of the canyon. You can see how close the Grizzly Creek Fire came in 2020. This lush little lake and the wonderful spouting rock above it saved this place from the inferno. It’s a special place.

I’ve said before that I don’t have a Top Ten list of lakes, but if I did, Hanging Lake would be on it. I can’t believe I’ve lived in Colorado for more than half a century and have never been here before.

I will definitely make a point of coming back in late spring. I also think I’d like to come here in winter. The ranger told me the trail can be quite treacherous in winter, getting packed into ice by people’s footsteps. I’m willing to give it a shot with microspikes and trekking poles. The only part that seems sketchy to me is the final climb, but there’s a handrail there, so it seems doable to me.

When I got back to the bike trail along the river, there was a small herd of bighorn sheep ewes. I don’t often see bighorn sheep on my hikes. When I do, it’s always ewes, never rams. And I’ve never been this close to them before.

I was back to the car by 3:30, so just under two hours for the pleasant little diversion to Hanging Lake.

I needed a comfort break by the time I reached Georgetown. I stopped at the visitor center, where I spotted a Lamborghini. The driver was standing outside the car, talking on his phone. When I took a couple of photos, he interrupted his conversation to say to me, “Don’t post the pictures.”

I felt he was being a bit of a jerk. Two things came to my mind right away. First, unseriously, why don’t you want a photo posted? Did you steal it? Second, and really, if you don’t want people taking pictures of your car, don’t take it out of your garage. You’re out in public, and everybody carries a camera. People take pictures of my car all the time, and mine is not so exotic (or expensive) as a Lamborghini. Only a small number of people ask before they take a photo. There’s no need to ask; by now it’s pretty much expected.

A moment later, he was done talking on the phone. I showed him pictures of the three wild cars I saw at the track yesterday. He asked if the Aston Martin was my car. I pointed to my car and said, “No, that’s mine.”

My initial thought that he was being a jerk was unwarranted. It turns out that this Lamborghini isn’t yet available in the US. This car had Michigan manufacturer plates. I often see “test mules” in these parts: camouflaged cars full of test equipment. This one was not at all camouflaged, and there didn’t appear to be any equipment on board. I did a quick web search and found a bunch of photos of this car (or one just like it) in the Denver area, so it’s no secret that it exists. So, yeah, I’m posting a photo of it. I never said I wouldn’t, and I don’t think showing it to my seven subscribers will cause any problems.

I do find it hilarious that a guy driving a car that screams to the world, “Look at me!” wants to keep its existence here a secret. My car is not inconspicuous, but this thing demands your attention. In the words of Elmer Fudd, “Shhh! Be qwiet!”

Thus ends my trip to LUG. I experienced despair and elation; I drove my car in the wet on the track, and I topped the week off with a short hike to a lake long on beauty. Sure, if I hadn’t had car problems, I’d have had a better time, but things could have been much worse.

The next LOG (Lotus Owners Gathering) will be in Dayton, Ohio. I think I might consider thinking about going.

LUG 2026 – Day 4

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Sunday, September 27

Yeah, I had another bagel at Starbucks. This time I charged it.

This morning’s activity was called a “Funkhana”. Yesterday, I chatted with a guy who has done a couple of them. You can’t do it alone; a co-driver is required. One time, he said they blindfolded the driver, and the co-driver had to navigate them through a short course that included parallel parking and backing into a parking spot. Another time, they had to throw Frisbees into baskets.

We did this in the parking lot of the University of Utah football stadium, a few blocks from the hotel. The opening ceremonies for the 2002 Winter Olympics were held here, and they still have the cauldron for the Olympic flame. This cauldron is lit wherever the Winter Olympics are being held, wherever that is. They put it out when the Olympics are done. Today, the cauldron is outside the stadium. It’ll go back in when the 2034 Olympics are held here.

Chad and I teamed up; he was my co-driver, and I was his. First, we had to put dinosaur masks on and drive to three stations. At each, we used grabbers to pick up a small plushy dinosaur. Next, we drove another short course with two stops where we had to toss our dinosaurs through the window and land them in little corrals. We could throw as few or as many as we wanted at each stop.

It was pretty easy to pick up the plushies. I expect everybody got maximum points. For the corralling, Chad said I should pull up as close as possible to the right for one stop and as close as possible to the left for the other. He’d toss his dinos at the first stop, and I’d toss mine at the second. That makes all the tosses as short as possible. So that’s what we did. On my run, I landed 2 in the smaller, higher-scoring corrals. On Chad’s run, I didn’t do so well.

After that, we had a zucchini race. Like Pinewood Derby in Cub Scouts, but with zucchini and squash instead of wood. There were bonus points for the most creatively decorated racer, and each car had to have a dinosaur in the driver’s seat. I’m not very creative, so I didn’t put much effort into it. Instead, I got the bright idea to strap a GoPro onto it. Folks got a kick out of it. On my test run, the camera came off, but another pipe cleaner did the trick.

Our last activity for the whole group was a farewell lunch. Here we thanked all the volunteers who made the event possible. They also gave prizes to the winners of the funkhana. Much to my surprise, I was tied for first. The prize was a larger plush dinosaur. I gave it to Chad. At the end, they gave away some extra T-shirts that were made for the volunteers. They’re a kind of fluorescent green. I snagged one and get more use out of it than I would a blue dinosaur.

For dinner, four of us went to a brewpub to watch the Broncos game. We had tasty wood-fired pizzas and beer. Fun Utah fact: if the beer is more than 5% alcohol, it comes in cans, never on tap. Pretty quickly after finishing, our server wanted us to pay. He wasn’t asking us to leave, but there was a fire a couple of buildings away. They evacuated an apartment complex, and it was possible the restaurant might need to be evacuated as well. That wasn’t necessary. The fire was on the news the next morning.

Somewhere between the restaurant and my hotel room, I managed to lose my sunglasses. I never drive without sunglasses.

LUG 2026 – Day 3

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Saturday, September 26

Because the deli I found yesterday isn’t open on the weekend, I’m back to the choice between the overpriced bagel at Starbucks and the one that’s a few cents cheaper down the street. Although I should probably take the walk and get a few steps in, I elected for the Starbucks bagel. Bagel (toasted) plus cream cheese plus tax works out to $4.60. I gave the cashier a $5 bill. She rummaged through her change drawer, closely inspected a coin or two, then gave me a nickel and smiled.

“You said it’s $4.60. I gave you a five, but you only gave me a nickel back!”

She fished around in her drawer some more, handed me three more nickels, and said, “We’re out of coins.” Really?

Yesterday, when I told Ryan the symptoms and that we’d done a recent engine swap came up with a few possibilities. One was that maybe we had a poor ground. That would explain why the misfire progressively got worse, and why replacing the plugs and coils didn’t fix it. If that is it, it’ll be an easy fix. Maybe I wouldn’t have to fly home after all.

In early afternoon, I was in the parking lot chatting with a couple who were wondering about all the cars when I spotted Ryan heading my way with Dave, his boss, and the other Lotus USA tech. These are the experts that the dealers go to when they have issues.

Dave is a funny guy. Every time somebody says they’ve modified their cars, Dave asks for their VIN. He takes one look at my car and says, “I see what the problem is. He has an aftermarket diffuser!”

It only took Ryan a few minutes to discover that one of the new ignition coils Michael and I installed a couple of weeks ago is messed up. It’s missing its boot, and it has some witness marks on it. Clearly not a new part. Three came in one kind of box, the fourth in a slightly different one. It must have been the one in the oddball box: a returned item that got shipped out as new. I’m surprised we didn’t spot it when we installed it. I don’t know how we both missed it; the missing boot is pretty obvious.

I called the nearest Advance Auto Parts. The gal I talked to said, “Sorry, but I only have one.” That’s great! I only need one! With a hotel full of Lotus peeps, it only took a few minutes to arrange a lift to the store. John kindly took me there, and after returning to the hotel, it was simple (even for me) to effect the repair.

She fired right up and idled nicely. I cleared the codes and drove a few miles. Music to my ears. I wouldn’t have to fly home, and I’d get to do the track day.

These Utah trips are emotional roller-coasters. Last year, the mysterious oil issue; this year, the misfire. They’re memorable trips, that’s for sure.

Dinner tonight was at the Natural History Museum of Utah. It’s just a couple of blocks up the hill from the hotel. I was a bit surprised that so many people drove. We filled the parking lot, but we could have filled it three times.

We had an hour to explore the exhibits before dinner. It’s not a large museum, maybe only a sixth the size of the Denver museum. It’s mostly dinosaurs. It’s packed with dinosaurs. You walk among them, under them, over them. They menace with open jaws, all pointy teeth and big claws.

I am such a child. There’s a little demonstration of a seismograph. On the floor is a painted box: “Jump!”. On the wall is a display. I jumped, and jumped harder a second time. I “pegged” the needle. A minute later, two people were trying it out, stomping one foot instead of jumping. “No, no, no. Here’s how you do it,” I said, and took a running leap. Pegged it again. I’m such a child.

This place is just a fraction of the size of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, but I really liked the way they did the exhibits. The dioramas in the Denver museum are stodgy – very last century.

Our speaker after dinner was Robin Shute, Tony’s son. Robin is a 4-time Pikes Peak Hill Climb winner. He’s a bit of a unicorn – he didn’t just drive the car; he designed it. Like his father, he’s soft-spoken, and I missed a little of what he said. Quite the accomplished guy.

LUG 2026 – Day 2

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Friday, September 25

The hotel we’re staying in doesn’t offer a Continental breakfast, but they do have a Starbucks in the lobby. The only thing they offer a non-coffee drinker and someone trying not to eat sugary foods is a couple of bagels: plain or everything. In search of better options, I walked a couple of blocks to the Corner Bakery Cafe. Sadly, the options were the same, unless I wanted a sit-down breakfast. So, yeah, I ended up with an overpriced plain bagel.

Today, the plan is to head to Helper, UT, to have our little car show and lunch. It’s a two-hour drive using the fastest route. That fastest route involves interstate highways, and I’m not alone in my dislike for these roads. Since we’re trying to get something like 160 cars from here to there, there was a choice between several groups taking different routes. I decided to travel with the Lotus Colorado group.

Unfortunately, when I pulled out of the hotel parking lot, my misfire got much worse. I drove down to the main drag and just missed the green light. This was good, as there was no way I’d drive it for the 5+ hour round trip with it running like this. When the light turned green, I made a U-turn and went back to the hotel parking lot. By the time I parked it, the check engine light was flashing. I’ve never seen that before. Not a good sign.

With an undrivable car, I won’t be able to partake in most of the activities that I came here to do. I missed our takeover of the town of Helping. I won’t be able to join any of the organized drives tomorrow, the funkhana on Sunday, or the track day on Monday. And, frankly, I’ll be looking for a way to get the car to the local dealer and book a flight back home.

Long-time readers may think this sounds familiar. I had a check engine light the night before my track day at Laguna Seca and an electrical problem on my first Atlanta trip that caused me to cancel my two-day event at Barber Motorsports Park.

The difference this time is that Lotus Cars USA has their three top experts on my car at the event. One of them is Ryan, who has done a lot of work on my car, including fixing the short that wrecked my Atlanta trip. I am confident that Ryan and his colleagues will be able to diagnose the issue and, if I’m lucky, get it resolved, too.

So, I texted Ryan to see if he went to Helper or if he’s somewhere around the hotel. The answer was neither. He responded a couple of hours later, saying that he and his family had just crossed the border into Utah and would arrive at the hotel a few hours later, but wouldn’t be able to look at the car until sometime tomorrow.

Normally, I’d have a book with me. After I lugged a book around France and didn’t even read it on the plane, I didn’t bother bringing one on this trip. When would I have time to read? Every time I have a problem on one of my trips, I end up adding something to the toolbox. I won’t put it in the toolbox, but I’ll be sure to always be prepared to have time to kill. Ahem.

The hotel is practically on the University of Utah’s campus. Two medical school buildings are next door. Surely there’s a bookstore within walking distance. My Navigator friend suggested the bookstore on campus, showing me a photo of a shelf of books. It’s a 29-minute walk. Part of the walk is along a six-lane road with no sidewalk. But enough people go this way that there’s a trail. When I get to a sidewalk, there’s a crossing button I need to press to light up the sign so drivers won’t kill me in the crosswalk. I push the button three times, but it doesn’t work.

To get to the bookstore, I walk past the library. It’s the J. Willard Marriott Library. I was surprised it was named for somebody I recognized and had no idea he had connections to this area. I have no idea who the Norlin was that the CU library is named for.

Anyway, I arrive at the store. It’s two stories, with the ground floor completely filled with UU merch. Shirts, hats, jerseys, jackets, hoodies. A sign by the stairs says that book packages can be collected upstairs. Naturally, I go upstairs. I’m guessing students order online whatever few books they need dead-tree versions of and pick them up here. So much for buying a book.

For lunch, I had the challenge of locating a deli Google said was nearby. As in, practically across the street in one of the medical office buildings. Google messed with me on this one. In pedestrian mode, mind you, it directed me through the parking lot of the office building and into an entrance. I did spot a sign for the Deli, but it just had an arrow. Google did say that it was on the second floor, so I went up the stairs. This led me into a warren of offices. I was clearly not in a public space. After several turns, I managed to exit from the back, as the building is built on a hill, and the second floor is the ground floor in the back. I’m about to give up when I spot it. Navigator led me on the worst possible path to get a sandwich. What’s it got against me?

I was excited to see they served breakfast, too. A nice breakfast burrito would be a nice step up from a plain bagel. Unfortunately, they’re only open on weekdays. They cater to the office workers in the area, and there’s nothing else to bring traffic here. Oh well. Bagels it is.

I counted six cars in the parking lot when I got back from lunch. The place was deserted. Or, nearly so. I helped a guy get a go-kart from his minivan to the lobby outside the banquet room for display. Across the parking lot, over the lawn, through the double doors, and next to the staircase. It’s a Lotus go-kart. Built in Italy, sold across Europe, but only a handful made it to America.

For dinner, the eternal question: the beef or the chicken? Our speaker was Tony Shute, who led the development of the Elise, Exige, and variants. At our table, we couldn’t see the slideshow, and there was a lot of noise behind us, making him difficult to hear. On top of that, he was a soft-spoken guy. I moved to another part of the room to see the slides, but had just as much noise. So it goes.

To top off the evening, we had the awards presentation from the day in Helper. Lotus Colorado outperformed. We won exactly a third of the awards, but we’re more like a fifth of the cars.

photo by Zachary Friss

LUG 2026 – Day 1

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Every year in September, Lotus Ltd., the national club for Lotus owners, holds the Lotus Owners Gathering, or LOG. Historically, Lotus Ltd. has been, shall we say, East Coast-centric. Since I’ve been in the club, I think only four LOGs have been west of the Mississippi. Meanwhile, the Golden Gate Lotus Club and other clubs hold a West Coast Lotus Meet (WCLM), generally every other year, also around this time. As long as I’ve had the Lotus, I’ve had the sense that the two organizations may have had issues other than geographic.

It may be that relations have thawed. The title of this post does not have a typo. This year’s get-together is the Lotus United Gathering, which is what you get when Lotus Ltd. and the Golden Gate Lotus Club work together. This does not mean we won’t have both a LOG and a WCLM in the same year. The United States is a big place, and it takes a special kind of maniac to want to drive these cars three or four thousand miles (or more) in a week.

For LUG 2026, the setting is the same as LOG 40: Salt Lake City. On tap for the trip are a drive to Helper, UT for our concours; a drive to a “ghost” town (which I saw last time, so I’ll replace with an alternate); a “funkhana” (a low-speed, light-hearted obstacle course); a track day; and, on the drive home, a hike to Hanging Lake near Glenwood Springs.

Thursday, September 24

My phone’s navigation app likes to mess with me. In Death Valley, it had me going down a dirt road in the dark. It wants me to take shortcuts to bypass towns, so I miss all the restaurants and gas stations. In Missouri, it flat-out lied to me. It said the nearest gas station was 19 miles away, but at the next stop sign, I spotted one a quarter of a mile down the crossroad. I hate interstates, so I often set it to avoid highways. It directed me to a ferry across the Ohio River that operated twice a day. Once, in Tennessee, when I was on the Interstate, in a Biblical rainstorm, it had me exit the Interstate and drive a seven-mile loop, only to get back on the Interstate at the same exit1. I don’t know what I did to piss it off.

Today I decided I’d put in the address of the hotel and hit Start, then ignore whatever it said for half the day. I know it’ll want me to take I-25 to I-80, and that’s the last route I want to take. My plan was I-70 to Silverthorne, then CO 9 to US 40. I wondered how long the app would keep telling me to turn around. It gave up around Colfax. In response, it sent me, and, seemingly, dozens of other cars, on a detour around congestion on the Interstate. It took me four cycles to get through one stoplight. I’d have rather stayed on I-70. Yeah, yeah, I should have ignored it like I said I would.

Colorado Highway 9 passes by Green Mountain Reservoir. There isn’t any water in it. I don’t mean it was low. The only water in it was a largish puddle at the dam. After the junction with US 40 in Kremmling, the road passes Wolford Mountain Reservoir. This is also dry. It’s not uncommon over the years to see reservoirs quite low; this was shocking.

By now, I had finally bent the navigation app to my will2. Almost. It tried to pull the “shortcut around the town” stunt in Vernal and cheat me out of lunch. This great time-saving manoeuvre was not a time-saver because two oversized loads blocked the intersection for three cycles of the light. When I could finally make a right turn on red to grab a sandwich at Jimmy John’s, I sent the navigator app into a paroxysm of rerouting beeps.

At Duchesne, the unexpected happened. Navigator sent me onto Utah routes to bypass Strawberry and Heber City; backroads to within a few miles of I-80. Utah Route 35 is a lovely road with sweeping turns, almost no traffic, and pleasant mountain scenery. At one point, I came across a herd of sheep on the road, directed by three dogs, but no human I could see. The dogs had their charges across the road in no time.

Back in civilization, in Kamas, I came within a hundred yards of joining a group of Lotus, but my low fuel light came on, and I stopped to refuel. I gassed up in Kremmling, 338 miles earlier. It was only another 38 miles to the hotel. I’d have made it with more than a gallon left in the tank – I got 41.3 miles to the gallon on that tank.

Good fuel economy despite the car not running quite right. In the wake of the engine swap, I was getting occasional check engine lights for misfire codes. Last week, Michael and I replaced the spark plugs and ignition coils. But now the misfires are no longer occasional. The idle is very rough, but it never stalled. And at low RPMs, the misfire was quite noticeable.

I pulled into the hotel parking lot a few minutes after 5, a bit over nine hours of travel time. I got checked in with the hotel and got checked in with LUG, just in time to have dinner and a couple of beers with other Lotus enthusiasts.

  1. In its defense, it was the most intense part of the storm, and I pulled into a parking lot for a few minutes when it started to hail. The Interstate would have been crazy, so the detour was a good thing. ↩︎
  2. Not really. By now, this was the only route option until close to SLC. ↩︎

LOG 43

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Lotus Ltd. is the national Lotus owners club. Each year, a local chapter hosts the Lotus Owners Gathering, or LOG. LOGs often include autocross or track days. There is a Concours d’Elegance, technical sessions, organized scenic drives in the area, and dinners with notable and interesting guest speakers. LOG 43 was held in Austin, TX.

We made a left turn off the main road and went up a narrow lane. This was the end of one map segment and the start of another. My phone, mounted at arm’s length, displayed a dialog box: end trip or continue? I can’t take my eyes off the road, and working from memory as much as sight, stabbed at what I thought was “Continue”. After a few seconds, the phone went dark. Dang.

I was second to last in the train. I hadn’t seen the front of the line in quite some time. The M100 Elan was behind me, and I was following two Esprits, one red, one black. The M100 had been tail-end Charlie all day, not always able to comfortably keep up with the crowd. The two Esprits are generally more interested in viewing the scenery than ripping through it. Still, they accelerated up and over a small hill. I lagged a bit, hoping to see the Elan make the turn. But I had to either keep up, or find a place to stop and reset navigation. So I caught the Esprits.

This is the second day of our drive, and yesterday we drove 550 miles. It was warm, and I have no A/C. I’d really like to relax. I never got the route book. On the first morning, I got the route for the phone, but I didn’t have time to preview it. I have been over many of the roads we’d be taking, but not all. I didn’t know we were taking a “spirited” detour. I would have skipped it and just gone to the hotel.

I followed the Esprits for quite a while. The road was narrow, bumpy, twisty, and had many driveways for the large properties. The road dropped precipitously for stream crossings, then rose abruptly, then repeated in the next little valley. These crossings are designed to allow water to flow over them in high water conditions. They’re concrete culverts, crenellated, and not high above the creekbeds. Crossing these carrying any speed compresses the suspension, and the surface changes from rough road to smoother concrete. You have to be careful.

I wasn’t comfortable running fast on this road and I was surprised the Esprits both kept it up. We weren’t going super fast – we caught a pickup truck, but he was moving pretty quickly himself. About when I decided to pull over and plot navigation directly to the hotel, we came to a T-intersection. The red Esprit went left, black went right, then pulled over. I followed black, who waved me by. Instead, I parked behind them and worked the phone.

When I looked up, black was gone. I caught up a couple of minutes later. We ran at a sensible speed for some minutes and came to another T-intersection. We parted ways there, them to the left, me to the right. I laughed when I saw them right behind me a couple of miles from the hotel.

We learned later that there were two incidents that we missed. One was our friend the red Esprit. Crossing one of these streams, they hit one of the crenellations and bent a wheel. The other was more serious, I am told. At the same place, a yellow Evora met with disaster. No injuries, but scuttlebutt suggests the car was totalled.

I’ve never organized a club drive, at least not for more than three cars. I have participated in dozens of club drives – one day drives, weekend drives. We’ve had our share of mechanical issues but never any accidents. I’d be mortified if anything like this happened on a drive I led. I think that back road was a poor route choice, given how long everybody had been driving.

I was at the back of the pack, going a bit faster than I wanted to go. I enjoy the back roads. I drive them all the time. I enjoy the scenery, I drive down the main streets of dozens of small towns. I see the sights. I’m fine going 5-7 mph over the posted limit. I don’t want to be that guy in the sports car. I like driving my car fast, but I know what “fast” is and I know I can’t do it on the highway.

They were washing cars in the hotel garage. I got in line. A couple of other LoCos were there too. I “brag” all the time that my car is always the dirtiest in the group, so I caught a little grief for getting it washed. Later, I went up to the restaurant on the top floor for drinks, hors d’oeuvres, and conversation. I generally try to meet folks who haven’t heard all my stories, but I was with other LoCos. This is when I heard about the day’s unfortunate incidents.

Saturday morning was the Concours d’Elegance and group photo. These are always an exercise in cat herding to some degree. Organizing the movements of over a hundred vehicles is never simple, but this one involved a 32 mile drive from the hotel to a park on the banks of the Colorado River in Marble Falls. There was some attempt at getting photographs from a Tesla mounted with robots and using a drone to shoot us crossing over a bridge. We were given lots of instructions about hand signals from the Tesla, but I’m guessing only the first few cars in the train were involved in that.

When we got to the park, they sorted us by model. I got a lot of questions about the damage to the clam. For quite a while, until some stragglers arrived, I was the only BRG Elise there. There are always other green Elises. In the end, there were three: two BRG and one metallic. They guy I was parked next to, David, has 178,000 miles on his. His was pristine compared to mine. There were several cars there with stickers for as many tracks as I’ve been to. Even without the giant tape-covered hole in my front clam, my car has the most “patina”. It is very much the beater of the show.

  • Two rows of sports cars
    Emiras and Elises
  • A row of sports cars
    All in a row
  • A man and a woman looking at a race car
    “We can put a passenger seat in it, but it won’t carry many groceries.”
  • Classic sports cars
    Elans

Afterwards, Kevin and I had lunch with a couple of the other guys at the River City Grill, a short walk from the park. While eating I watched the occasional jet-skier stooging around on the river. It was a warm day, and I was happy drinking an iced tea in the air conditioning.

Back at the hotel, I dealt with a couple of errors and omissions. Every trip, I play a game of “what did I forget?” This time it was my tech sheets for the track days. Michael scanned and emailed them to me. I got them printed out, then met Kevin upstairs for drinks.

For dinner, I had the $63 chicken. Tonight’s speaker was automotive journalist Sam Smith. He’s been writing about cars for twenty years, was executive editor at Road & Track for a while. He’s driven just about every interesting car over that time, has done some racing, some television, and so on. It’s not surprising that he owned a Lotus for a while, an Elan. His talk was pretty well-suited to the audience. Preaching to the choir, you might say.

Sunday was a day running laps at Circuit of the Americas. This was put on by Chin Track Days and was not the official LOG 43 track day. A number of us couldn’t resist the pull of driving on a Formula One track.

Sunday night’s dinner was pork. Both dinners included cheesecake for dessert. It’s strictly off the diet, but I enjoyed both of them anyway. Sunday’s speaker was Russell Carr, head of design for Lotus for the last decade or so. After he gave his talk, he took questions from the audience. He worked on the Emira, Evija, Eletre, and Emeya. I’d never heard of the last one. The Emira is out of my price range, the Evija is out of nearly everyone’s price range, and the Eletre is an SUV and so does not interest me. The Emeya is a 4-door. There are many design elements common across the line, and he went through the design decisions behind them. I found it quite interesting.

On Monday, we went to Harris Hill Raceway for the LOG 43 track day.

For the trip back home, I was concerned about time, so I let the phone pick my route. I knew I wouldn’t be spending a ton of time on Interstates, so didn’t select the “no highways” option. I needed to get as far down the road as possible to make Tuesday a reasonable day, so I knew I’d be driving at night, violating another of my rules. On top of that, I’m running with only one headlight now, so I wanted to be as close as possible to my overnight destination. Last time I drove home from Austin, I stayed in Snyder. This time I opted for Abilene, about an hour closer to Austin. Still, if I stayed for my last track session at 4:30, I’d be driving until after 10. So I did what I seldom do: skipped some track time.

I ended up driving in the dark for an hour and a quarter. In that time, my windshield collected more bugs than the entire drive to Austin. I don’t know why so many bugs, but by the time I got to the hotel, vision was a real problem.

There are a few trees around the entrance to the hotel. I don’t know anything about birds. Birds in my yard get quiet after dark, except for owls, which aren’t in my yard very often. The birds in these trees weren’t owls, and they weren’t quiet. I wasn’t getting the full Alfred Hitchcock The Birds vibe, but I thought it was strange. I asked the desk clerk what kind of birds they are. She didn’t know. When I park, I prefer end spots. I nearly made the big mistake of parking in the end spot under one of the trees. Somebody parked their pickup truck there. I don’t know how clean it was when they parked it, but it was covered with birdshit in the morning.

Much of the drive home was on four-lane divided highways, some Interstate, some US routes. I found the Interstate parts fairly miserable. Way too much traffic. On these four-lane stretches, I kept coming across what I call “left-laniacs”, people who can’t seem to see the signs that say, “Keep right except to pass” or the Texas version, “Left lane for passing only”. They cruise for mile after mile in the left lane. Half a dozen times, I’d slowly reel one of these in only to have them switch to the right lane just as I catch them, making me change lanes to go around them. They’ve been in the left lane all day, why move out just when I catch up to them?

Texas isn’t my favorite state to drive through. Parts of west Texas make Kansas and Nebraska downright scenic in comparison.

When I got to Dumas, I had the choice of going straight north on US 287 (through Oklahoma and eastern Colorado) or heading west on US 87 (into New Mexico and up I-25). I prefer the latter, even though it’s more Interstate. But it would have taken me about half an hour longer, and I was past ready to get home. US 287 gets quite a bit of truck traffic. More truck traffic, I think, than any non-Interstate highway I’ve been on. Luckily, the road is fundamentally straight and flat and has a fair number of passing lanes, so it’s easy to pass.

Before I left home on this trip, I was telling people that I expected to get as much as 42 miles per gallon at some point. The drive down wasn’t exactly an economy run. On the way back, I set my pace to be about 5 mph over the limit, and speed limits in Texas are higher, so my revs were up a bit. The closest I got was 39.7 mpg. I still think 42 mpg is possible.

Over the six days of this trip, I drove 2,080 miles on streets, roads, and highways and 234 on the track for a grand total of 2,314 miles.

Colorado Good 2024

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Last weekend was Lotus Colorado’s spring drive. Genae hasn’t been a fan of riding in the Elise since I “upgraded” to solid motor mounts a few years ago. Even though I downgraded half the mounts to stock, she hasn’t been in the car yet, so we drove the land barge Lexus. This allowed us to carry whatever creature comforts we desired, and the Lexus has A/C while the Lotus doesn’t, so there are some advantages. But it’s give-and-take. Having excess cargo and passenger capacity, we were told we’d be the “sweep” car. A few of the cars are quite old; one is older than I am. So if somebody has mechanical issues, we can make sure they’re not abandoned by the side of the road, left to their own devices.

I’m not likely to do this again. The entry list for the weekend had 17 cars on it. I didn’t bother to count how many actually appeared, but 17 was about right. Every time we hit the road, I’d wait until everybody else got going and join the end of the line. As it’s almost impossible to get 17 cars through the same green light, or get on a highway with all 17 cars together, it typically meant that the head of the line was a mile or two down the road before we even got rolling.

On most of our other club drives, whoever was leading the pack would pull over for the occasional scenic spot for a group photo, or even just pull over to get the group back together. That wasn’t how it went on this drive. The leading cars were all in a race to the destination. Even with us exceeding the speed limit by 20 or 25 mph we still lost ground. The worst case was the last day of the drive when we arrived at the restaurant for lunch about 20 minutes after everybody else. We very much felt like we weren’t part of the group. So it goes.

Another difference between this trip and most of the others is that this one was pretty much just driving and eating at restaurants. In the past, we’d stop at various points of interest. We’ve been to the Sand Dunes, the Black Canyon, the Colorado Monument, the Royal Gorge Bridge, and so on. There may have been other trips where we didn’t visit any attractions, but none come immediately to mind.

I’ve never put together one of these drives. I know that it’s not easy, and the organizers put quite a bit of effort into it. I appreciate it. I really do. But I will always retain the right to go our own way for a meal. Apparently, we gave great offense to some when we let them know we’d be skipping the second BBQ meal of the day for an alternative. I like BBQ, but having had it for lunch, I didn’t really want it for dinner, too. We were told that the restaurant had non-BBQ options, but we didn’t really want $40 steaks. Being tail-end Charlie all weekend, then getting grief over not wanting BBQ twice a day detracted a bit from our joy.

It was a beautiful drive. We went over a long list of mountain passes: Cottonwood, Slumgullion, Wolf Creek, Coal Bank/Molas/Red Mountain, McClure, and Independence with the group and Fremont Pass after we peeled off and headed home. The snow on Cottonwood and Independence (which just opened the day before) was eight or ten feet deep.

Sorry I don’t have many photos to include, but these things happen when you can’t stop and smell the roses. (We would have stopped at the top of Independence Pass, but what little of the parking lot got plowed was jam-packed when we got there and there was nowhere to park.)

  • At Wolf Creek Pass
  • Looking south at the west side of Wolf Creek

Barber Trip 6: A Short Break, Then Home

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I took advantage of Jayne and Dan’s gracious hospitality and spent three nights in Atlanta. I enjoyed a couple of nice dinners in the company of charming people, had a couple of much-needed long walks, and enjoyed not driving. I did laundry.

Over five days, I spent 28 hours driving on the highways and another four on the track. And the trip home will be another 27 hours. That’s a stupid amount of seat time.

Although I had no concrete plans for diversions on the trip home, I did have a couple of ideas. On last year’s abortive trip, a trip to Shiloh got scrubbed. But not being able to lock the car makes planning easier. I can’t count on finding another friendly groundskeeper, so diversions were off the menu.

I’m okay with that. My route would avoid interstates until I was a hundred miles from home, split nicely into three nine-hour days, and on two of the three days I gain an hour.

Thursday

I went from Georgia to Alabama, then Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, and, finally, Missouri. Outside of the towns, I could drive at a pace of my choosing, needing to pass only a handful of cars.

The rural South, by which I mean the backroads of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee, is pretty dense with Confederate flags and Trump flags. Today I drove through a lot of country that has been celebrating insurrectionists for generations and is supporting an insurrectionist today.

At the hotel, I thought I was able to lock the car. I had it in a well-lighted spot in the front, but since it locked, I’d rather park in the back, where I could see it from my room. There’s a nice spot, right next to the light pole, in a single spot (as opposed to a duplex spot). An hour after parking it, I drove to get dinner. When I unlocked the car, it started beeping and it beeped until I hit the button again. At the restaurant, I tried to lock it, but it failed again. Okay, it’s fickle.

After dinner, I noticed that I had left my glasses case in the car. So when I stepped outside for a deep breath of relaxation, I grabbed the case and it locked again. Two out of three now!

My room is on the fourth floor. I’m parked in my single spot and there’s a big pickup that’s in the hotel side of his duplex spot, taking both sides. Another pickup pulls into the spot next to the other light pole, but his tailgate is way over the line of his other spot.

About thirty seconds after the couple in the recently arrived truck enter the building, my alarm goes off. Nobody was anywhere near the car. I was just looking at it. I didn’t know how long the alarm would sound, but I hustled out to the parking lot. When I unlocked it, it beeped until I hit the button again. So I’m back to Plan A, leaving it unlocked.

I’m in a La Quinta this time, instead of the usual dives. But even here I can’t win: the light over the sink flashes about once a second. And it flashes once more after you turn it off. Very annoying. The ice machine works.

Today, about the last thirty miles of road were part of my route on the way to Atlanta last year, but in the other direction. This is the short stretch through Illinois between bridges across the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Cool bridges.

Friday

The most enjoyable part of the drive was the first few hours, highlighted by my miles on MO 34. It’s a very nice Lotus Road. Twisty, up and down, left and right, mile after mile. If you’re passing through southeast Missouri, it’s worth considering. I enjoyed a different part of southern Missouri last trip. Looks like Lotus Roads are in abundance here.

I don’t recall seeing either a Confederate flag or a Trump flag today. Lots of signs for lots of gun stores, and nearly as many gun stores as churches.

I’m averaging over 35 mpg.

I was expecting southern Kansas to be much like northern Kansas. Not true. I prefer northern Kansas to southern Kansas. There is more traffic down here. Not so much traffic I couldn’t pick my pace, but I had to make quite a few passes.

In the parking lot at tonight’s motel, I met a bunch of college kids who were on their way to a rocket competition. Their rocket is about seven feet tall. They ran a separation test in the field next to the motel parking lot. It was successful. They didn’t launch it, just tested that the stages separated properly. I asked them if it was their moonshot. They laughed. One guy said it would reach about 15,000 feet. Another corrected him: it’ll go 5,000.

Dinner at Luigi’s. I had the cheese ravioli, a Peroni, and a chocolate cheesecake. It’s downtown. I was going to park in the adjacent lot, but it was metered. It helpfully told me I only needed to pay during the hours listed, but no hours were listed. It’s across the street from the police station, and there are police vehicles parked here. Not having any coins, and noticing that the spot right in front of the restaurant entrance was empty, I parked there. I got to watch people look at the car. I’m sad that people see her damaged like this.

Saturday

I picked up a biscuit sandwich at the fast food joint next to the gas station. In the parking lot was a black pickup truck with a tinted back window. Written on the window in pink and pale blue in a woman’s handwriting, “Why do you support the rapist fraudster insurrectionist?” It might have been “we” instead of “you”. I was surprised to see it. On this trip, I’ve seen a lot of pro-Trump sentiment, nothing pro-Biden, and only this anti-Trump.

Kansas Route 96 isn’t quite arrow-straight and not quite billiard-table flat, but it’s not far off. It’s the antithesis of a Lotus Road. Kansas 96 turns into Colorado 96 at the border, then I pick up US 287 at Eads. 287 has a lot of truck traffic. Thankfully, there are a few passing lanes. I did pass a string of 4 rigs without a passing lane, but they were nose-to-tail.

Summary

I drove in eight states, covering 3,201 highway miles and 293 miles on track for a total of 3,494 miles. I now have 105,848 miles on the car. It had less than 17,000 when I bought it, so I’ve put about 89,000 miles on it. Roughly 20,000 of those miles are on these track-day road trips.

I enjoyed the trip despite the car getting backed into. I keep telling myself it could have happened at Safeway, but it didn’t.

Barber is a wonderful track on fantastic grounds with an impressive museum. I thoroughly enjoyed driving the back roads of America.

Barber Trip 5: Motorcycles

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Two days of hanging around the race track wasn’t enough for me. The Chin event was over, but I still needed to go to the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum.

The museum is best known for its motorcycles. They have over 1600 bikes in their collection, with over 900 on display. But that’s not why I wanted to wander through the place. You see, it also happens to have the world’s largest collection of Lotus race cars. Throw in die-cast cars, wooden toy cars and trucks, outboard boat motors, and a lawn mower and you have a pretty interesting way to spend a few hours.

Whereas the Presidential museums I visited on this trip both opened at 9:00 am, Barber doesn’t let you in until 10. Or so says the sign on the door and their website. I didn’t have anything better to do, so I got there a little early. I was hoping they’d let me drive around part of the perimeter road so I could look for more treasures. There wasn’t anybody at the gate to ask, and they had the road coned off. So I parked at the museum.

To the right of the main entrance, they have a very striking trio of sculptures that make up one piece. Is there a sculpture-oriented word equivalent to triptych? It’s called “The Chase”, and the plaque says it indicates “the super-human power and sense of achievement that one experiences on the track.” They have a smaller version of at least one of the figures on display inside.

After taking a few photos, I started walking back to my car. A guy came out the museum doors and called to me, “Come on in! We’re open!” It was 9:38. This was good news. After the museum, I’m driving to Atlanta. I had been going back and forth about whether I’d have enough time to take the back roads or I’d have to violate Rule #1. Extra time in hand is good.

When I paid for admission, the cashier told me that I was in luck – Indycar was here at the track doing some testing.

They tell everybody to start touring the museum from the top down. Take the elevator up to the fifth floor, then walk down the spiral ramp to each lower floor.

The number of motorcycles there is ridiculous. I’m not particularly interested in motorcycles, so I was a bit overwhelmed. Bikes from World War II, Italian Vespas, a bike with a wooden sidecar. I wandered randomly, perhaps working down to the cars a bit quicker than I should have.

  • The Chase
  • Lotsa Lotus
  • Model Lotus
  • Vincent Lawnmower. “Vincent” as in “Vincent Black Lightning”
  • Hanging Lady
  • Graham Rahal
  • Marcus Armstrong
  • Dragonflies
  • Fittipaldi fire

I’ve seen large numbers of Lotus before. At the two LOGs I attended, we had more than a hundred, almost all of them road cars. At the F1 race I attended, they had a bunch of classic Lotus F1 cars that ran in a vintage race. But the collection at Barber is impressive for its breadth. I don’t think any of it was post-Chapman, and a few of the very earliest models were reproductions, but they damn near had one of everything that raced. They even had the bicycle.

After checking out the Lotus collection, I wandered out toward the track. From the museum, you can go across the first bridge (the second when you’re on the track), down to a path through the woods in the infield, and then up to the second bridge (the bridge with the hanging lady). The bridges have clear sections in the walkway – you can look straight down onto the track.

Indycars do a lap here as fast as 1:06. That means, if I were to be on the track for a half-hour session with an Indycar, he’d pass me nine or ten times.

I chatted with a couple of guys who come to the Indycar race every year. They said, “You can’t see it from here, but over there,” they pointed vaguely to the woods, “some big ants are carrying off a motorcycle.” Then we got to see Pietro Fittipaldi’s car catch on fire. He was frantically waving his arms for somebody to come to extinguish the fire, but it took a couple of minutes for the trucks to start rolling. He’s the grandson of Lotus F1 champ Emerson Fittipaldi.

After stopping by the gift shop to buy the obligatory t-shirt, I hit the road. I had plenty of time to take the back roads for a pleasant drive through the Alabama and Georgia countryside. I didn’t have much traffic until the last forty minutes or so, as I got near Atlanta.

If you’re a motorcycle lover or a fan of Lotus, the museum is worth the visit.

Barber Trip 4: Raison d’être

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I figured that it would be my luck that it would rain the entire weekend. After all, the track day gods have been, for more than a year, testing my resolve to run laps at Barber. Last year’s broken windshield and electrical problems and this year’s trailer hitch into my front clam and now my inability to lock the car. It would be trivial for the track day gods to park a rain cloud over the track.

Saturday was overcast most of the day. I saw my shadow for about 15 minutes. Overcast, but not threatening rain. There was much discussion in the paddock about the forecast for Sunday. I’d rather it not rain, but I won’t have any say in the matter so I don’t obsess about it. I had two people show me Sunday forecasts that were quite different. Some said rain at 3:00 pm, others said rain at 7:00 am. It did rain on Sunday, but it was over before 6:00 am.

Driving on the wet pre-dawn roads to the track, I couldn’t know that the weather would be good. I had been joking about the track day gods testing my resolve, exacting a heavy toll. The gods didn’t bring another deluge down upon my head, but they weren’t done with me yet. A quarter of a mile from the entrance to the facility, my check engine light came on.

I texted a screenshot of the code to my trusted advisors, cleared the code, and went on with my business. It’s an O2 sensor. The code hasn’t come back.

This is my third event with Chin Track Days, with a two-day event at Mid-Ohio and last year’s aborted run at Road Atlanta being the others. This experience taught me a few things. First is that Chin Events are more expensive than most. On a per-day basis, including this trip, my five Chin days are five of the six most expensive events. Only a day at Circuit of the Americas was more.

The second nugget of information, related to the first no doubt, is that the vast majority of cars entered are fast and expensive. I neglected to save a copy of the roster before the event (and Chin won’t share that info with me after the event), but the number of Porsche 911 GT3s and GT4s is off the chart. Average cost per car is higher than any other event I’ve been to, except the Ferrari customer appreciation days.

They put me in the Yellow group. This group includes all the novices and the solo intermediate drivers who haven’t been to this track before. I think It’s the best group for me. Passing is by point-by only, and only on the straights. Other groups are point-by, but passes can be done anywhere. Another advantage to this group is that it could get smaller. After Saturday, some yellow group drivers may graduate to a higher group leaving less traffic for me.

And, theoretically, running with the novices might mean that some of these fast cars won’t be going so fast because the drivers haven’t figured things out yet. A downside might be that novice drivers are struggling to cope with information overload and may not be as attentive as they should be to their rear-view mirrors.

Okay, enough prelude. On to the track.

What a track it is. The first thing I noticed, even in the pre-dawn dark, was that there is art all over the grounds. It’s mostly sculptures, from a giant woman soaking in a pond, to a bear in the woods, to trolls peeking out from under drain covers. There are impressions of leaves in the concrete like fossils, there’s a skunk on the stairs, there are giant dragonflies and metal insects. There’s a small herd of bison in the infield being hunted by some big cats. And a giant spider. Three different people told me “Barber is the Augusta of race tracks!” I’m not a golf fan, so the allusion is lost on me, but if everybody says it, it must be true!

  • Hunting party
  • Lounging in the pond
  • Look under the stairs!
  • Sleepy cat
  • Sasquatch
  • Testing my resolve
  • Optimal

Each day at a Chin event, the first session is open to drivers from all run groups. It’s a yellow-flag session, no passing allowed, to allow folks, especially those of us new to the track, to familiarize ourselves with the track and locate all the corner workers.

Two pedestrian bridges cross the track. I later walked across these bridges when I visited the museum. On my first lap of the yellow-flag session, I spotted the hanging lady under the first bridge. It’s a mannequin, and she’s hanging by her arms underneath the bridge. It was a little jarring, given the lynched doll I spotted hanging over the road yesterday in Mississippi. For just an instant, it freaked me out.

After that session, one of the other drivers asked me if I’d seen her. Of course I did! He told me that he ran an entire day without spotting her. He didn’t know about her until one of his friends asked him at the end of the day if he’d seen her. How can you go under that bridge 40 or 50 times in a day without noticing? Is it an unintentional test of a driver’s observational skills?

There are a couple of other notable mannequins on the track. There are two of them sitting on the wall where the cars enter the pits. I’m not sure if one of the mannequins is pushing the other off the wall or not. I’ll admit to another quick feeling of shock when I first saw them.

I have a practice of walking through the paddock looking for other Lotus drivers. For a short while, four of us were registered but two canceled. The only other Lotus was a blue 2005 Elise. I chatted briefly with the owner. He’s an instructor, his car is supercharged (265hp, he tells me), and he’s running on slicks. I tried to track him down a couple of times on Sunday, but we never reconnected. I was going to jokingly ask him if I could run a few laps on his slicks.

As usual, I’m running on my hard street tires. I get a lot of grief about it. Not so much grief on these road trips, but most track rats make it sound like they run on slicks or not at all. I’m not racing, so I don’t really care how my lap times compare to others. I’m competing with myself. How close to “maximum performance” can I get? For me, the skill is getting as close to the edge of performance as I possibly can. With hard tires, you get to the edge at a slower speed.

This weekend, though, I think I’d have been happier on stickier tires. There were only two cars in my group that were slower than I was. I looked at all the videos to count how often I was passed, but I did count passes in one session: I got passed 13 times and made 3 passes. If that was a typical number of passes in a session, and it was, over the course of 8 sessions I was passed well over 100 times.

Every time I pointed somebody by, it cost me about a second. Getting passed on the front straight compromises two laps. To get a decent time, I needed a “clean” lap – neither passing nor being passed. Because I was so slow, I got passed nearly every lap. Some of the Porsches were fast enough that I didn’t need to get off the throttle to let them by, but there were so many of them, I couldn’t always tell before the pass if I had to lift.

Had I been on my track wheels/tires, I reckon I’d have been 6 or 8 seconds a lap faster. That would have been fast enough to get me quite a few more clean laps. Cars that passed me twice would have only caught me once. And I’d have sometimes gotten an extra lap.

I didn’t have a target lap time in mind. My goal is constant improvement: to be faster in my last session than in my first. This I achieved: my fastest lap of the weekend was my very last lap. And that lap was compromised by letting a Porsche pass me on the front straight. Even with these tires, given a few extra clean laps, I might have reached a 1:50 lap time. Tall order, yes, as my best was a 1:53. But in one session, my timer said my optimal time was 1:49.

In addition to my eight sessions as a member of the Yellow group, each day ended with “happy hour” where people from any session could run. I joined in near the end of the session, thinking there’d be fewer cars. I lasted only 2 or 3 laps each day. On Saturday, I was getting passed left and right without giving point-bys. That didn’t happen on Sunday, so I’m guessing somebody mentioned it. In any event, the other cars were just too fast for me to enjoy myself and it was clear I stood no chance of getting a clean lap. So it goes.

Here are some more photos, including the giant spider.

  • Charlotte
  • The Exxon Valdez

I had a great time. I spent two days hanging out with people who share a common passion. Everybody played nice on the track. Nobody bumped into anything, but there was one red flag. A brand new Toyota Corolla GR lost its oil drain plug in turn 15 and spilled oil all the way down the main straight and into turn 1, where he spun out on his own oil. I’m guessing the track charged him four figures for the oil-dry they had to deploy.

Here’s the obligatory lap video.