[TR] Fwd: Satisfying

[Rye Livingston]

Speaking of driving, I just got back from an amazingly fun 100+ mile drive which is held on Super Bowl Sunday, this was the 11th running.  

As many of you watching the game can see, we are having some great weather in California Bay Area, so today was excellent. I'm including below my summary which I'll be submitting to our Triumph Travelers newsletter.

Now time to watch the game.  Go Broncos!

Rye

Wow, wow, wow, what a fun drive!  Great weather, amazing cars, fantastic roads.  

Super Sunday Drive met up at Sea Bowl in Pacifica.  We got there an hour early, 9am, and there were about 6 other cars there.  We had the pleasure of watching these cool, 1980 and older, cars stream in for the next hour.  Triumphs, BMW 2002s, Porsches: 356, 911, 912, 914-6s, Spyder, Alpha Romeos, Ferraris, Jaguars, Corvettes, Bugeye Sprites, late 50s Oldsmobile 88, Chrysler 300 and Chevy Belair. Two 60s vintage Thunderbirds, Citrons, Renaults, MGA, MGB, 1952 Land Rover, and the list goes on.  Around 70 cars and we all spent the next hour checking them out and meeting people.  Some cars were pristine, some were pretty beat but loved and driven hard.  Was very cool

We were supposed to leave at 10AM, and about 10:15 we were wondering if there was going to be an air horn or a shotgun blast, but instead a couple of loud V8s started up with a roar, and everyone busted a move back to their car.  Route directions had been left in our cars, and several drivers like me were driving solo, so we just followed the car in front.  It was interesting as we all tried to get out of the parking lot, through the stoplight heading south on HWY 1, so that kind of metered everyone into groups that made it through the stoplight.  I thought on a Sunday drive it would be slow going, oh contraire.  Everyone else must have been going to the Super Bowl because the roads were pretty clear and we were cruising right along at or above the speed limit.  A little slow going through Half Moon Bay, then it was some serious “pedal down” as was bombed along the coast in the sun with calm ocean views.  It was spectacular.

We hung a left onto Stage Road for a windy excursion/short cut over to HWY 84 then up through La Honda up to Alice’s Restaurant.  This is when I got an ear-to-ear grin.  We were flying through those sweepy turns, and I look ahead and our pack of cars was led by a Sunbeam Tiger, followed by a Hudson Hornet, a Bristol, two 60’s vintage Alphas, 69 911, another Alpha, a red TR3, then my TR3.  Behind me was a Volvo, 914-6, some two more Alphas, a 60s Plymouth Barracuda convertible, and a Ferrari.  How that Hudson and Bristol could go so fast I don’t know.  I was going as fast as I wanted to.

Some people stopped at Alice’s Restaurant for a pit stop but there wasn’t much parking room, so most of us turned onto Skyline Drive HWY 35 south and off we went.  Once again little to no traffic so we were going at or over the speed limit all the way down to Saratoga, turning right at HWY 9 heading down to Boulder Creek.  There was an option to turn left to Boulder Creek but the directions took us straight through Big Basin State Park.  Very narrow roads and we all got bunched up and speeds were appropriately low, and it was great to look at all the cool cars ahead and behind me.

As we rolled into Big Basin State Park, most of us needed a pit stop.  Amazingly as we were in the bathroom line, all the Travelers met up again.  Steve Homer, Paul Henderson and his daughter Enee, Craig McAmis, and we saw the Bergmans parked across the street.  After our break we drove another 15 mins or so to Boulder Creek which had cool cars parked everywhere.  We got lunch at a little sandwich shop and sat out side in the hot sun, checking out all the cars that were done with lunch and heading out, or still coming into town.

The mix of cars was incredible.  The weather was spectacular.  The route was fantastic.  And all the Triumphs ran great!  It doesn’t get much better than this.  I’ll be on this drive again next Super Bowl Sunday.

Rye
Activities Chairman
1960 TR3A




On Feb 07, 2016, at 02:31 PM, dave n <dave at ranteer.com> wrote:

some of us get to drive the cars pretty much year round . . .

and, we get to do maintenance, pretty much year round . . .

same joys and frustrations, I think. although I couldn't imagine having to 
bed my car for the winter!

-----Original Message----- 
From: terryrs at comcast.net
Sent: Sunday, February 7, 2016 4:22 PM
To: triumphs at autox.team.net
Subject: [TR] Satisfying

Something eminently satisfying about winter maintenance. During the driving 
season, irritants pop up, ignored whenever possible during the joy of it 
all. But winter...that's when they get sorted.

The needle that fell off the speedometer last spring? Fixed.
The dim yellow lights that illuminated the speedo and tach, replaced by 
amazing LED's.
The clutch that slipped. Replaced.
The soft clutch pedal, replaced with a much less used pressure plate...it'll 
change the whole feel of driving, I'm thinking.

Then there's the usual oil change, greasing, wheel-bearing packing, fluif 
topoffs.

I know people can love these cars and enjoy driving them without ever doing 
their own work, and that's as good as anything else. But for me, 
personally, there's something amazing about squeezing an extra two spurts of 
grease into a zerk that you had no idea was quite so dry as all that. And 
testing the instrument panel when you've transitioned from filament to LED, 
and seeing it shine brighter than ever, brighter white than I even thought 
possible. Watching the guy at Quantum Mechanics fish a broken tooth out of 
my transmission. Draining the oil and putting a fresh WIX filter and new 
oil in while not seeing any metal shavings around the magnet in the drain 
plug.

I joke about engineers and English majors here. But in these moments, I 
know why you do what you do. Or at least a bit of it. And I find it 
gratifying. In fact, if it weren't complicated, I might do it too.

Now, with luck, I won't have any irritating bugs this coming driving season 
so I don't have so much to fix next winter!

Terry Smith, '59 TR3A
New Hampshire 


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