Another Talladega review (looong)

[RELAYER@aol.com]

Well, here I am, finally home from an exhausting 1600 mile vacation to
Talladega and back.  My car is still in one piece, but most of my right front
tire and CV boot are still in Alabama.

Here's all what happened.....or at least what I can remember....
I met up with Eric Renneisen in Atlanta (he IS as much of a dork as I thought
he would be :) ), and we headed out to meet up with the rest of the caravan on
the edge of town.  We missed most everyone at the meeting place, so it was
just Eric, Chick Wells, and myself.  Chick gave us a short and intense lesson
on how to achieve triple digit speeds through Atlanta traffic.

At Friday night's drivers meeting, the QCUSA instructors got a good idea of
what type of crowd we were when we showed up at the meeting with a cooler of
beer (thanks Eric)!  After the driver's meeting at the hotel, we all B-lined
straight to the Apple B's next door for some food and car talk.  The rest of
the night was kinda a blur from there as I helped myself to many of Eric's
beers and I started to catch the flu.

Saturday morning; 6 am.....what the hell are we doing up so early anyway?  We
make it to the track by 7:45 after Ed Kellock, Eric and I make 7 different
stops along the way.  I was in the first run group, and had the pleasure of
running against Tom's awesome S4.  The day was perfect, and we all had plenty
of track time.  We started with some braking exercises, then did some slaloms.
I personally plowed down most of the cones in my first run, but after a couple
more careful runs, I figure out that you can't do slalom at full throttle.
After lunch, we start hitting the track.  You could now start measuring tire
life in hours.  I was in a run group with Tom's S4, a highly modified A4 1.8t,
V8, CQ, 90Q, and another A4.  Tom and I were just hitting triple digit speeds
on the back straight, which made the following double 90 degree turns very
nerve racking.  By the end of the day, we all were smiling from ear to ear.
Eric had shredded his hydraulic belt at the end of the day, but otherwise, we
all did real well in keeping our cars in one piece.

We leave the track and head to the local parts store to track down a belt for
Eric's CQ.  In typical QList fashion, we make it a group project and had 6
Audis driving around town in attack formation looking for a parts store.  We
decide to pass on the first parts store we find that had the sign out front:
"Fred's Auto Parts, we have blue bulbs!"  We finally find a decent looking
parts store, and all 6 of us head in looking for an Audi belt.  What we found
was a generous supply of NASCAR stickers.  We all started yelling NASCAR jokes
at each other, and we attract some dirty looks and we decide to leave as soon
as Eric got his belt.  Of course in true Audi tech fashion, Eric measures the
new belt by putting it around his waste...."yup, 32 inches, that must be the
right belt!"  But, before we left, we did buy a very large NASCAR sticker that
found it's way on to Tom's S4.  

Saturday night, raining like crazy.  We all are disgusted and shocked at a
pedophile that was in the hot tub.  Maybe this is OK in Alabama, but a 40 year
old man kissing a 14 year old is pretty damn disgusting wherever you are.  We
give him dirty looks and make some snide comments as we walk by.  We hit the
Apple B's again, and end up talking cars all night.  Later, we go to Tom's
room and get kicked out, we sneak into the hot tub, and get kicked out.  So,
we take the hint and go to bed.

Sunday morning....still raining.  I am sick as a dog, looks like I have the
flu or a cold or something....but I still can drive!  The rain stops by the
time we reach the track, and the water burns off by the time we do the second
run group.  Everybody was starting to realize what little rubber they had left
on their cars by now, and we start taking it easy on the track.  We do run
groups all day long.  My tires started to act up, and I start turning some
slower laps.  At the end of the day in the last lap, Chris Woodward decides he
is going out in a blaze of glory.  As we are all driving pretty slow to save
tire life, Chris attacks the track with no fear.  This results in a shredded
tire on his last lap....Talladega claims another tire.  As we packed up, I
counted the cars going home on donut spares....90Q, A8, CQ.

After the event was over, we all headed back to Atlanta via the mountain roads
to have a little fun.  Once we were in the national park, 6 Audis screaming
through the woods got some attention from a ranger who had some warnings for
us.  After a very long and very eventful trip through the mountain roads, we
jumped back on I-20 and headed back to Atlanta......very very slowly.  I spend
the next day in Atlanta in bed trying to beat out my flu/cold/fever/sore
throat/anthrax illness before heading back to Orlando.

This weekend was a great time and worth the 8 hour drive. If you have never
been to a QCUSA event before, you have no idea of the good times you are
missing.  Tom Saltino and I are going to look at doing another event in the
south before long, probably late summer/fall.  See you there.

  /\        _I        Christian J. Long (& Breeze Parker Long)
/    \ I_I I_I I      Orlando, Florida, USA
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'98 Audi A4 1.8tsm    Neuspeed .8 bar, K&N, 17" Ronal R28s
'90 Audi 90              
'96 BMW 318ti         For sale!
Past Audis: '84 CGT, '85CGT, '87.5 CGT, '90 CQ
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