The Definitive Pikes Peak Report...long

[Michael Williams <daserde@ucla.edu>]

OK, here it is, the definitive Pikes Peak Report...at least on from the 
west coast...

Day 1, July 1, 1998:
    
Sleep 2 hours the night before while i make ALOT of last minute 
preperations...like laundry, packing and gathering tools...Then head out 
on the road at approximately 8 AM.  I drove to Chico to pick up my friend 
Mark and we were off.  Drove to Delta, UT with an average speed of a 
leisurely 85mph and arrived at approximately 10:30 pm.  About 1000 miles 
driven that day by yours truly.  uneventful except for some great 
twisties on Highway 50.

Day 2, July 2, 1998:

Sleep another 8 hours...whew.  anyway, Mark and I left Delta at about 12 
noon or so, maybe a bit earlier and got to Denver in the early evening, 
maybe about 7 pm or so.  We had some time, so when we passed the Malibu 
Grand Prix, our heads were turning. ("Was that a Malibu?" Yeah i think it 
was.  "Do they have the Varage cars?"  Yeah....they do.)  veering off of 
the freeway immediately, we decided to waste a quick 20 bucks on 11 laps 
at malibu before even looking for a hotel.  Mark's best time was i think 
a 58.x seconds while mine was a 56.57 seconds with a HORRIBLE start....so 
i betcha i can take you guys on....hehe...Slept at the Best Western down 
the block from Malibu and that was a ripoff at 80 bucks for the 
night..jeez...

Day 3, July 3, 1998:

Get up and check out of the hotel and realize that we have nothing to do 
until Steve's bbq starts.  So, what else, but Mark and I head over to 
Malibu again and waste another 10 bucks each in the video games for an 
hour or so.  I called steve and he told me that no one else was there, 
but that we were welcome to come over.  So mark and i hopped in my car 
and sped over to Steve's house.  We were there for about 3 hours until 
some other people showed up and the fun started.  We ended up with a very 
good sized crowd and start having alot of fun....discussing various 
things relating to Audi and looking over some pictures that Steve has of 
his dissasembled UrQ.  the food was good, man i love BBQ'd burgers...The 
conversations were even better.  (Scott J. glad we could finally 
meet....you remind me of me in about 30 years..hehe) and many rides in 
various cars including a nice 83 UrQ, 91 V8 5-speed (congrats steve), and 
ingo's 90 V8 Q....damn those brakes are nice.....

Day 4, July 4, 1998:

The day arrived.   We all get up REALLY REALLY early and meet in the 
lobby of the sheraton for some bagels and discussions....i dont think 
that we were drinking beer yet were we?  There was so much of it that i 
lost track of when it was....anyway, it was a site to see when we had the 
10 or so cars there in a nice caravan on down to the base of pikes peak.  
Great picture opportunities and a few nice ones to show off my coilover 
suspension.  "What?!?! Im the last car?  Nope, aint gonna happen that 
way" <hit the gas> <accelerate through very tight turns and im sure 
making a few of you nervous...including passing Bob Myers in his S6 on a 
30 mph turn, on the inside at about 60+ mph....) "Ahh, thats better...im 
the 2nd car now"  WEll, the trip up to the top was definitely interesting 
as i heard a ping and some more dings and realize that some bolt from 
under the hood fell out of my car.  Not a good thing, especially when i 
started hearing clanking when i went over bumps.  Finally figured it out, 
the upper retaining bolt for the alternator simply fell out...great...now 
what do i do...where in the world will i find one of those on saturday, 
july 4 on Pikes Peak....Well, all i had to do was talk to Scott Justesson 
and we came up with an idea...we took my craftsman, 1/4 inch extention 
and pounded that into place, and then scott proceded to do one hell of a 
job with some safety wire....looked stronger than stock.  Anyway, the 
race was great...that is until we were invaded by a swarm the size of the 
mountain of these little black flies that were perhaps the most 
irritating thing that i have ever experienced.  One minute, im sitting in 
my car taking in the radio and the clean air, next the car is full of 
hundreds of little black flies...damn...  so as Ingo said, we got to head 
down the mountain before everyone else, which was an uneventful trip, but 
still cool to see the view.
     We decided to head back to the hotel and meet at some point to have 
some food.  Well, it was a mistake to let all of us get to the parking 
lot of the hotel with a few coolers full of beer.  WEll, we decided to 
stay in that lot for a few hours, a decision helped no doubt by the 20 or 
so young, cute girls dressed in sports bras and spandex short shorts 
behind a nice screen in a tennis court.  Brendan, Scott, Christion (dont 
let breeze read this Christian...hehe) Mark and me were all sitting there 
for a long time fighting for the most strategically placed position to 
see them...a bit young, but nice viewing nonetheless.  Anyway, we go 
downtown and try to get some reservations for food.  We were going to eat 
at this one place which i forget the name, but they couyldnt seat us all 
together, so after about 30 minutes of ogling what we determined to be 
Steve Beddor's S6 Avant, we took over the bottom floor of another new 
restaurant...great milkshakes...if a bit expensive.  Bob Myers was kind 
enough to hand me the keys to his newly acquired S6 sedan (btw, im 19 
all..hehe) and let me drive it home.  The onramp to the freeway was a 
nice one...posted at 35...but i wonder why that other car i passed was 
going so much slower than that speed...oh yeah...i know, it was me that 
was flying....dang that car is fast...congrats Bob.
     We headed back to the hotel after dinner, drank some more and went 
to bed in anticipation of the track day before us.

Day 5, July 5, 1998:

The day had arrived for the track.  We all were told to meet just before 
8 am, but on par with the rest of our meetings, we were on time, but 
decided to take over the parking lot for an hour or so talking and 
continually ogling our cars for the umpteenth time.  We headed down the 
freeway to the track, i got some great pics of the convoy and eventually 
pulled into Pueblo Motorsports park.  We met a couple guys there, on with 
an M3 and another with an A4 (named John, dont know the last name).  My 
car actually did pretty well.  I think i totalled about 35 laps on that 
track, with about 27 or so driven by me.  i was impressed with the way 
mine handles now and i put more than a few smiles on some 
passengers...hehe...I was also complimented on my ability to drive the 
lines on the track...by a few people no less.  Not bad for never having 
been on a track before eh? hehe...anyway, i also got a ride in the A4 and 
M3,both of which are amazing cars.  I still have the smile from them.  I 
got to drive Brendan's A4, but couldnt quite adjust to the feel of it so 
never quite pushed very hard...which puts me in the extreme minority for 
those who drove that car apparently ...ahem..ben...hehe
     The track was incredible, very technical, very difficult in a couple 
of the turns with a great straight as well.  I was even hitting close to 
100mph on that straight...not bad eh?  Anyway, we left the track around 5 
oclock and we were exhausted. We met back at the hotel and downed some 
more beers while continuing to watch the baton twirlers.  This time there 
was a very cute one that was dancing around about 50 feet from us.  (you 
know she knew we were watching her...).  anyway, we then headed over to 
chilis and enjoyed another decent dinner and talked for hours...Then 
headed to the hotel after that and said goodbyes and slihghtly depressed 
for the end of the weekend had arrived, i retired to my hotel room.

Day 6, July 6, 1998:

Well, i was off, with Mark in tow and drove on home.  Actually, we 
decided to hang out with Ben and Brendan for a few hours, watched one of 
my rallye videos and had a few good laughs before heading out on the 
road.  Mark and i only made it to um...shoot, i cant remember the name of 
the town we stayed in, but it wasnt too far, way inside of utah, so we 
had alot of driving left to do.  Nothing really happened this day, but i 
have to say that my driving lights are freaking amazing.  There is 
something about shining 270+ watts of light down an empty dark road ahead 
of me that was alot of fun.

Day 7, July 7, 1998:

Well, Mark and i head back on the road and stop at Great Basin national 
park to check out the caves there...we missed the tour by about 5 minutes 
so we decided to check out the map.  I noticed down in the corner what 
looked like a nice long dirt road.  WE looked at each other, hopped in 
the car and were off.  We got there and that road was great.  For the 
most part it was very smooth and there were some nice turns.  On the way 
back on the road when we turned around i got a little overzealous in 
being a rally driver and kicked the rear out.  fortunately for me the 
combination of turns at that point was left-right-left, so the road 
matched my corrections perfectly and we went sliding sideways through 
those...talk about a gorgeous feeling..hehe..
     So then on our way out to CO, we passed by what we would later find 
out to be called :"Sand Mountain."  Its somewhere in NV and looks like 
some guy was really bored for a few years and brought out a bunch of sand 
into the middle of nowhere.  anyway, we took my car out on the sand with 
its wonderful sport 8000 sand (guffaw) tires and proceded to tool around 
in the sand for about 45 minutes.  We also got some great video footage 
of it, <rev, rev, sand all over car, rev, rev> hehe..i will capture some 
stills and put it on my web page.  Anyway, after about an hour total of 
that excursion we were back on the road and hit Reno (well, Sparks 
actually) for the night.  Watched some TV, went online for about 4 hours 
and went to sleep.

Day 8, July 8, 1998:

Well, we headed into reno to check out Harra's Auto museum.  Nothing 
really too interesting except for the 1920 somthing radial 5 cylinder 
engine where the crank is stationary and the cylinders rotate around it.  
Very interesting design.  Also, they had a little exibite of p-cars and 
they had the Paris Dakaar 959 there, a wierd concept car, and a couple 
awesome race cars.  That 959 was simply awesome....I have pictures of 
them all, so when i get everything scanned, i will let you all know.


Well, thats about it as far as the trip went.  I want to thank everyone i 
met for being such wonderful people,  Ben for oversleeping and allowing 
me to sell my 2 extra tickets to Breeze and Christian, Bruce Bell for 
comparing notes with me about the different ways we did our coilover 
setups and the free bra (i feel so supported now...thanks).  in addition 
i have to say that it was wonderful seeing you guys again, like Ben, 
Chad, Bob (thanks for letting me drive the Q Ship), Brendan (thanks for 
surprising the crap out of me when slamming on the brakes in the middle 
of a 50mph turn and kicking the tail out without any warning), Ingo, Jim 
Griffin (hope you liked the car, and loved the conversations), Ed Kellock 
(aka corn flake), i know there are more that im forgetting...im sorry.

Also im really happy to meet some of you for the first time, such as 
Christian (after only what 3 years of talking to each other), Breeze 
(wonderful, delightful woman who constantly was trying to fix me up with 
any girl we met withing 5 years of my age, including her 15 year old 
sister.. :o) ), Scott Justesson (for fixing my alternator, providing me 
with hours of side aching humor and for giving me alot of input into my 
car.  Im just sorry i didnt get a drive with you as a passenger to get 
some input.  Great finally meeting you, look me up anytime you are in the 
vicinity of CA).  Anyway, i know that there are alot of you that i am 
forgetting, please forgive me for doing so...there were just so many 
there this year that i lost track.  But at least remember thati can name 
you when i see you, so at least i have that going for me.

I wanted to say thanks for setting this up everyone and allowing a dork 
like me feel like he can at least fit in somewhere in regard to his love 
for audi.  Thanks also for giving me perhaps the most fun i have ever had 
in my life, for a whole week no less.

So lets start getting ready for next year.




later...


Michael Sheridan Williams
ICQ# 11740998

1985 4000 S Quattro 180,000+ miles, 1998 Pearl White (almost at 
least...no body damage fixed...yet), Koni Yellows/2Bennett, strut brace, 
Sport 8000 Tires, K&N, MOMO 4pt harnesses, Hella XL Driving lights 
(2x130w), magnacor wires....<out of breath>
1986 Oceanic Blue, 4000CS Quattro--Parting Out(ask if you want anything)
My father's: 1986 4000 CS Quattro--Graphite 161,000 miles

http://members.aol.com/daserde2