GREAT weekend!

[Scott Fisher <sefisher@cisco.com>]

For the past seven years, I've put on ("organized" is far too strong a
word for it :-) the annnual Day Before The Britcars Day tour through the
Santa Cruz mountains on the San Francisco peninsula.  (About the name:
on the Sunday after Labor Day, there's a huge gathering, between 700 and
900 cars, of British sports car enthusiasts in Palo Alto, CA, and in
1991 I put together a Saturday tour for the National MGB Association's
national convention held that same weekend.  The tour was a hit and
we've had between 10 and 20 cars every year, the Saturday before the
huge event... don't give up on me, I'm getting to the Audi connection!)

This weekend, my 1964 M.G. having been sold last March, I led the tour
in... my '83 Audi Coupe GT.  (And yes, I *did* get to joke with a
Bentley-owning friend that his car and my car were made by the same
company...)

The tour route, for Bay Area Audisti, runs up highway 84 to San
Gregorio, over Stage Road to Pescadero, down to the beach to Pigeon
Point Lighthouse for a picnic lunch, then to Bonny Doon Winery south of
Davenport for a leisurely tasting.  After that it's Empire Grade to
Felton Empire Road where we wind through redwoods before hitting Highway
9, thence to the White Cockade, a Scottish pub about halfway between Ben
Lomond and the summit.

If you *don't* know this area, the route I've just listed has been
described, by nearly everyone who's ever made the tour with me, as a
given for anybody's top-ten collection of best sports-car roads on the
planet.  What do you like -- narrow forest tracks with hundred-foot
redwoods on either side, moss all over the rocks, and canyons that echo
the exhaust on 2nd-gear blasts from apex to apex?  Yep, got those.  How
about fast third-gear sweepers and short fourth-gear straights on empty
roads?  Got those too.  As for scenery, there's everything from
spectacular coastline to rolling golden hills to deep old-growth redwood
forests to -- you get the idea.

This year, I led the tour in the Audi.  The cooling system repairs were
perfect, installing the correct 5-cylinder fuel pump relay gave me full
revs, and the semi-metallic pads on fresh fluid meant superb braking
even at the bottom of a fast downhill run.  

If I'd had any doubts, they evaporated by the end of the weekend -- I'm
hooked.  Of the half-dozen vehicles I've used to lead or research this
tour, the Audi is far and away the *easiest* to drive fast of any of
them.  The suspension just soaks up bumps that would have sent most of
my other vehicles scuttling off line, particularly important on some of
these poorly maintained, limited-use roads that are little more than
once-paved forest tracks.  

Best of all, my two daughters came with me this year, and now *they're*
hooked too.  "Who needs a roller coaster?" my ten-year-old said,
laughing.  "All you need is an Audi."

How much fun did we have on Saturday?  Well, on Sunday, I went to visit
all my friends at the British car meet, and took the girls plus their
little brother with me.  They maxed out on shiny cars after about an
hour and a half, so we headed back to the Audi and got everyone belted
in.

"I wish if we could go back through the deep dark forest," said the
seven year old.

"Me too!" said her big sister.

So we did, running some of the alternate routes the tour has taken
(King's Mountain Road, Portola Valley, Arastradero, Highway 92 and
Skyline, for locals).  The best part of the weekend for the girls was
the stretch on Arastradero where there's a hump in the middle of a short
straight.  I certainly wasn't going at Walter Rohrl or Michele Mouton
speeds, but I caught a little air at the crest, and the kids screamed in
delight.  

Now they *both* want to drive race cars.  I can't wait...

--Scott Fisher