He's baaaack...

[Unka Bart <mendicant@buddhist.com>]

Well amigos, Yer Kindly Ol' Unka Bart is back from six mostly
delightful weeks on the road, covering six thousand, two hundred
thirty nine miles solo; most with the top safely stowed, in his
four-wheeled motorcycle replacement. Although the ostensible purpose
of the trip was to join a bunch of like-thinking motorheads at Pike's
Peak to watch the famous "Race to the Clouds" Automotive Hill Climb
race, the joy of the trip was spending time with friends, some of whom
are folks I've only known through the 'net!  Some notes from the road...

June 1st arrived in a dark, foul mood with a storm system that just
hung over the entire east coast.  Nonetheless I started out with the
top down, in the naieve belief that if the well-known Mr. Murphy could
get away with being such a notorious optomist, so might I.

Speaking of the illustrious Mr. Murphy, he joined the trip even before
I packed the car.  In addition to the regular canvas boot that covers
(only) the top when stowed, I have a full tonneau cover that covers
the entire cockpit and that had never been used. I planned to use this
on the trip rather than the regular boot since the tonneau zips down
the middle and can allow the passenger seat to stay covered from the
sun while allowing the drivers seat to be uncovered.  I haven't been
using this up to now because it is a royal pain in the posterior to
actually use, taking several minutes to button up when leaving the
car, and flapping seriously at speed on the highway.  Despite this, I
wanted the sun-screening that it provides and dug it out of storage,
only to discover that a mouse had gotten into its fancy storage pouch
and had made a couple or more meals from various places on the cover.
[Several colorful and quite vehement explicatives have been deleted
here.]

Feh! Increasingly heavy rain makes me stop put the lid up before I
make it to the gas station, a mere four miles from home.  But when I
do get to the station, I'm astonished to notice that the milage on the
odometer reads 38,000 miles exactly!

On the way to Raleigh, NC to meet D.B. Cooper, a favorite philosopher
on the Firearms list, the sun breaks out prompting me to promptly pull
over and drop the top.  Ah, but Mother Nature is just toying with me
and before long I'm back on the side of the road putting the top back
up.  And so it goes all the way to Raleigh, where I arrive with the
top up for the fifth and final time for the day.

Don't get me wrong, at speeds up to about 75 mph, the cockpit remains
dry and cozy in anything short of an outright frog-strangler; but both
the weather and the speeds conspired against me this day.

I finally have learned to drive the speed limit.  At least until
someone less concerned with the impact of higher insurance rates comes
flying by to play sacrificial lamb to the revenoors.  On the east
coast interstates it's no trick to pick up someone in a big hurry, so
it's never long before I'm tucked in about a quarter-mile behind some
morsel of bear-bait running a hundred miles an hour or more.
Unfortunately, at those speeds the turbulence diverts the airstream
and instead of passing over the cockpit, it swirls against the inside
of windshield (and mirror) instead.  When it's raining, this
eventually makes them opaque, and the higher the speed of the car, and
the harder the rain, the less time it takes to turn windshield and
mirror completely opaque.

I had an interesting (as in the old chinese curse, "May you live in
interesting times.") demonstration of that when, under blue skies, I
tucked behind a woman in an older Buick running slightly over 100 mph
on the final leg to Raleigh.  After about 10 minutes, the skies
darkened and I could see what looked like a wall of mist ahead. Sure
enough, it was a wall of mist, and when I hit it, the windshild was
suddenly turned completely opaque from water on the inside!  At 100
mph, complete loss of visibility is one of those "interesting"
experiences for which one seldom develops any real appetite.

[deletia]

June 8th.  The day starts in Ackworth, GA with the very short drive back
to I-75 headed for Pensacola, FL, and this finally looks like it will be
a day that the top stays down!  I made it to the city limits of Pensacola
in  the best time of the trip, averaging a hair over 80 mph the entire
way, even with a stop for lunch in Flomaton, AL!  Earlier, as I got
into the Montgomery, AL traffic, I picked up a little white Chevrolette
sedan that was FLYING!  As the traffic density picked up, I expected
to see the Chevy slow down, but it seems only to have spurred the very
young-looking female driving to drive even faster, zipping in and out
of lanes like a maniac, and raising her speed to well over 100.  As
much as I like to have a fast-runner out in front of me, I backed-off
and let this one get away. In the first place, I think she may have
been trying to impress the driver of a faster car and I didn't want to
be guilty of encouraging her, and in the second, I'm not happy driving
insanely under any conditions. Even so, I still managed a decent
average speed to Florida, arriving early afternoon.

June 20.  I stopped in Wichata Falls. TX to buy gas (yep, you actually
need a reason to stop in Wichita Falls.  Being out in the sun with
your head uncovered for too long is another dandy, perhaps more common
one - but I digress).  It's only about 40 miles further to Lawton, OK,
and I have a reason for going there as well (besides the obvious one,
exposure to the sun).  My old First Sargeant and one of the best
friends it has ever been my good fortune to claim, the late George I.
Hawthorne lived there until his death this past December.  When he
died, I was on death-watch for my Step-dad and unable to attend the
funeral so this would be my chance to pay my long overdue condolences
to his family, with whom I've always been very close.  The drive to
Lawton (outside Ft. Sill, the home of Cannon-cockers all over the
world) was amazing, I'd never seen so much green in the state before!
But the heat was amazing too, I'd forgotten that we used to get as
many as 20 days in a row where the high temperature of the day would
be 105 F or better.  And I still remember shaking my head in amazement
at hearing the local weatherman report over the car radio "nothing
unusual going on today, a few scattered tornados in the area..."

Unlike Wichita Falls, TX, Lawton actually has a number of reasons to
justify a visit, Ft. Sill being a dandy multi-faceted one; and the
Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge with its herds of Bison and
abundance of Elk and other wild-life being another.  Ft. Sill still
puts on a yearly event that should be seen at least once in a
lifetime, the annual "Firepower Demonstration" in which every piece of
artillery available to support an infantry division is demonstrated by
firing in front of the audience and impacting on Signal Mountain, also
in view; culminating in a Division Artillery massed TOT
(time-on-target)  where all the artillery tubes available the Division
Commander, located in units that are widely dispersed, explode 20
meters above the target at the same time!

[deletia]

7/2.  I drove to Colorado Springs and checked the motel where I had
reservations. Ooops, this place has fewer parking spaces than it has
rooms.  In fact, I've seen cats with more toes on one foot that this
place had parking spaces!  Fortunately, I had arrived early enough
that I was able to find another motel, and checked in. The next day
when I called the first motel to cancel, I learned that Scott Mockry
had arrived and was checked in there, do I drove up to meet him.
Scott turned out to be a Prince of a guy, and I don't say that just
because he let me ride up the mountian with him to watch the race
(although he did, and I am grateful). Scott and I hit it off at once
and we just sort of hung out together for the remainder of our stay,
something I enjoyed enormously!  After grabbing a late breakfast
together, we took both cars out to a car wash that advertised "hand
washing" and got them decently clean for a change.  After stopping on
the way back for a supply of various micro-brews, we returned to his
place to find that the rest of the folks from the Quattro list were
beginning to arrive.  James and Karen Marriott from Idaho were already
there along with Tom Nas from Holland(!) who beat me out for
travelling the longest distance to the event, and they also had a
large stash of micro-brews.  A good thing, because the arrivals became
more frequent, and naturally, everyone who arrived, did so parched!

That afternoon was motor-geek heaven for the Audi cognoscenti, with
prime examples of nearly every variant produced since the first
Ur-Quattro in the early 80s, some of which had been breathed upon in a
very serious manner.  And as good as this was (and it was very good),
the best part was meeting all the folks I'd known so long only as
email addresses!

As the day grew longer in the tooth, a number of us paid a visit to
the Museum dedicated to the race, and we all finished the day together
with a great party at a fancy Pizza joint that furnished us a large
private room and an endless supply of both food and a variety of
micro-brews!  The actual race itself was anti-climatic to me, it was
meeting all the great folk from the List, and especially Scott, that
made it all worth the effort!  My special thanks go to Ben Howell who
did such an excellent job organizing things in Colorado Springs,
including organizing a private parking area on the mountain, and
ensuring that we were able to get out before the enormous crowd parked
on the other side of the road/track from us!  Thanks, Ben!  And thanks
to Eric Renneison for convincing his better half to grace the front
seat of the Porker, even if only briefly!

[deletia]

7/6.  On the road, breakfast in Cheyenne, WY.  I deliberately drove
through downtown Cheyenne to see what it was like and stopped at a
local restaurant that had a crowded parking lot.  Breakfast was good,
but like the town in general. nothing to write home about. Southern
Wyoming and Nebraska consist of miles and miles of rolling hills,
cattle and more miles and miles of the same.  I made it to
Independence, MO and stopped for the night.  (Actually, I thought it
was Kansas city until I checked the motel bill and saw the address.)
This is not exactly what comes to mind when one thinks of a "party
town."  On Sunday night I have to go to restaurants to find one that
is open past 9:00 pm, and that one is a chain.  Even the Outback is
closed!

7/7.  On my way again to Memphis I pass St Louis.  Rapidly.  Just as
I was entering the outskirts on the interstate, a young woman in a dark
gray Porsche 944 gives me a wave, then takes off like a scalded bat!
Shades of Montgomery, only this time the traffic is lighter, the roads
have more lanes, and the lady is driving a machine up to the task, so
I follow from a considerable distance.  She drives with great flair, but
has no feel for the traffic and thus gets balked frequently enough that
it's no problem to hang back, drive sanely and still keep her in view.
I've been  through St. Louis many times, but never nearly as rapidly as
this time!

[deletia]

7/9.  As I departed Memphis intending to head for Indianna, it hit
me that I wanted to see The Faire Dora even more than I wanted to
continue and meet anyone else, so I turned and headed for home,
arriving mid-day the 10th without incident, closing this narrative.  I
had a great time and would do it again in a heartbeat! Maybe next
year...

And for anyone interested, my observations are 1) folks on the east
coast drive a *lot* faster than anywhere else west of the Rockies, and
b) they drive fastest of all up and down I-95.  For whatever that's
worth...

I'm glad to be back and I hope that all my friends made it back safely too!

Yer Kindly Ol' Unka Bart