Great weekend.
There is no place I would rather be then the Monterey peninsular for the
week of the Historic's. You don't even have to go to the track. Just cruise
the parking lot's of the hotel's and motel's, each one is a mini car show.
Actually you can just pick a spot downtown and sit in one place and watch a
concourse go by. The only problem is that there is no way to see it all.
All Friday afternoon and most of the night was spent at the Rolling
Concourse and tour in Pacific Grove. Some pictures are at
http://www.ado13.com/rc99/rc99.html I think I won the "Best British Sports
Car" award. My friend with a 100/6 won it last year. Almost got rammed by my
friend in his MkII (pulling his trailer made from another MkII) during the
tour. He was going too fast, waving to the crowds, and in general not paying
attention. Thank God he has quick reflexes (as does the MkII) as there was
no way he could have stopped. He managed to swerve into the other lane and
did not get it stopped until he was beside us. I saw him coming and there
was nothing I could do. I still don't know how he managed to miss us.
Spent Saturday and Sunday morning providing security along the "Great Wall"
display and the afternoons roaming the pits.
Saturday was a madhouse. The largest crowd I've seen at Laguna Seca. Around
40,000. Sunday was better, only 20 to 25,000 as Pebble Beach draws away a
lot of the fans.
Sterling Moss treated us to a strip show when he changed into his driving
suit prior to taking the Aston Martin DBR1 out for a spin. I guess if I had
his body at his age, or at any age, I would not be modest either. The ladies
really enjoyed the show. The DBR1 was interesting in that it has 10mm plugs
and you have to install a set of hot plugs to start and warm up then switch
to a colder plug for driving.
Followed Jay Leno down the wall as he tried to look at the cars, pose for
pictures, and sign autographs. Seems like just another car nut.
Pictures of a few of the cars we were guarding can be found at
http://www.ado13.com/ls99/ls99.html The silver #10 car at the upper right is
Fangio's 3 time world championship Mercedes.
The pictured "T" series MG pickup was not one of the cars. It had just
finished tow starting another "T" series MG. They had tried push starting
the thing and could not get it started. The driver leaped out of the car a
gave it a good kick like it was the cars fault he was not a good mechanic.
After they tow started it, the driver flung the rope away, hitting a Trans
Am car, gunned it down the lane, and damn near ran down one of the officials
directing traffic onto the track.
No Bugeye's or Spridget's this year in the races.
Did not get any pictures of the Auto Union's. By the time we got around to
going for a look I was too tired to care.
We missed Gerard on Saturday as we had to leave the house before he got
there to pickup the ticket's (we left them under the door mat) and they
changed our assignment when we got to the track. We were supposed to provide
security at the Auto Union display (where I told Gerard that we would be)
but got moved to the Great Wall instead.
On Sunday we ran into Jan & Steve Lehmann from Windsor CA. I know they are
familiar to a lot of west coast list members as they drive their Bugeye
everywhere and they miss very few west coast events. They drove it from
Windsor to San Diego and back for the recent Healey gathering.
Larry Miller
http://www.ado13.com
If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be
dead.-Johnny Carson
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