Dave's Parade, Trip report Options

[Dave_Darling]

I got back home yesterday at quarter to eleven in the evening. I left home at 7 PM on Thursday, August 3rd.

The trip up was relatively easygoing. I drove to Roseville (near Sacramento) to where My Attorney was staying on her business trip. We left late (10 AM) on Friday morning in an attempt to miss Sacramento rush-hour traffic. My car did not like the very hot weather in the Central Valley; at speeds over 65 MPH (remember the limit for most of I5 is 70!) the oil temps started to go up. We stopped a few times to let it cool down--usually coinciding with a gas stop, a potty break, lunch, or even antiques shopping! (Yes, my sweetie is an antiques junkie!) Her 911 didn't like running 65 MPH, though, as its oil temps went up when we slowed down.

About half the places where we stopped, the 914 drew comments. A lot of people used to own one, or had a buddy that owned one--and evidently the car made quite an impression (though that's not much of a surprise to us). The 911 drew far fewer comments. In Dunsmuir CA, a note was left on my windshield by someone who still has an Oly Blau (same color!) 73, and was wondering if there were any 914-knowledgeable mechanics nearby.

We spent the night in Grants Pass and continued in the morning.

By the time we got to Portland, at about 3 PM, I was brain-fried. My car is fun, but it really beats you up over the course of a long drive. It is loud and low and hard-sprung, and you have to pay attention to all the other traffic and the gauges (remember it was running hot!) and everything all at once. And, of course, not having A/C while driving in the Central Valley will take something out of you as well.

Spent Sunday running around, had brunch with Mom & a couple of her friends (who were also there for Parade). Messed with the laptop, which decided it didn't want to work for more than ~10 minutes at a stretch. (OY!) Went to the Hawthorne for dinner, it was a fun experience wandering there as usual.

Monday was the concours. Tons of neat cars, but few 914s! Saw Jeff B's old 'Bee; talked to the current owner. Took lots of pics, look for them on the Pelican site! Went to a Rally workers meeting; sold my Concours Banquet ticket (was easier to buy the whole package and sell the one ticket we didn't want) and came back "home" to the Residence Inn, which was only one exit south of the HQ hotel--a Red Lion. I think we ate in that evening, but not before stopping into a store and picking up a new (cheap!) laptop. I've learned my lesson; no more expensive laptops for me!!

Tuesday was the Rally. My checkpoint was the last one, but we still had to show up at the Rally start point (70 minutes away from the HQ hotel!) at 8 AM. Just to sit around for 3 hours before setting up our CP out in The Dalles. (And why couldn't we have slept in??) I found that working the timer was much less fun than being a "runner" and handing out the timing slips to the cars. I was busy pressing the button and holding down the EZ-Up, which the wind wanted to deposit in the Hood River. I got done and headed to the finish to look at the museum that PCA had rented for the event. Got back home just in time for the Wine Tasting ("Yes, sweetie, we can go to that!") and got hammered there. Got dinner there too before I was sober enough to drive us back to the Residence Inn.

Wednesday was our autoX session. The schedule was telling us to get there at 10:30 AM, so we did. Our session didn't start until almost noon, and we were in the second half of the session anyway! At least it gave us time to look at the course from the infield and the bleachers. The course was interesting, with an autoX start and end, and a section of the Big Track in the middle. I was very intimdated by that, though My Attorney was much happier there than among the cones. She consented to drive my 914 (because PCA rules tell us a couple cannot drive two separate cars!) and did pretty well, taking the P02L class (Ladies Production 914 2.0 class) by almost a second. That's two times in a row my car has won the P02L class!! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I managed to do reasonably that day, earning 2nd place in P02M by about three tenths over third place (the Bumblebee!). The first place, Mark Brown (AKA "playswithcars" on the Bird board, maybe here too?), was "only" four full seconds ahead of us. Ulp!!! During the later part of the day, I dropped my camera. This became important later...

We went out for dinner with Mom afterwards, skipping out on the drag race thing. There were tons of cars waiting to get in when we left, though!

Thursday, I worked the autoX course. I was the "starter", though what I really did was radio in the numbers of the cars that were on the line. One of the Provasi daughters had the green flag and actually told the cars when to start. The camera was evidently stuck on "full exposure", because it always triggered the flash no matter what and all of the outdoor pictures came out massively overexposed. I will try to see if I can save any using Photoshop later.

My sweetie and I made it to OMSI (the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) just in time for dinner, and went to the autoX awards presentation. Which was massively delayed, so they only gave out the top men's and top ladies' award in each "category" (Stock, Production, Improved, Modified) and TToD and TToDL. Tom and Sandy Provasi won the latter two, to nobody's real surprise.

Friday was the DE for My Attorney, and the Tech Quiz for me. At the beginning of the quiz, they gave away a set of tires (calling about eight names of people who had registered but were not present before finally giving them ou!). I repeated my performance from the Ft. Worth Parade, finishing 1st in the 914 class and 2nd overall. This time I only lost by one tiebreaker, with 60 correct answers (out of 100) and 5 correct tie-breakers (out of 20). The winner had 60 and 6. It was a real bear of a test, as you can see from the scores, with lots of nitpicky trivia. I also went to the Worker Appreciation Lunch, though I didn't win any door prizes there either. I did, however, stop off at another store and buy a cheap-ish digital camera to replace my broken one. The old one was four years old, so it was probably time anyway. I took it over to the DE to take pics of my sweetie driving the track.

The Victory Banquet was that night, and they gave me my Quiz award there. I was going to try something extra special during that part of the evening, but I didn't get it arranged ahead of time... So I dragged Lisa off to the side of the room and proposed, while they continued with the ceremonies. Yup, My Attorney and I are now engaged. With a ring and everything! I'd been planing to do this in different ways for a while, now, but every time the plans have gotten fouled up. I figured if I kept waiting for the "right moment" it would never come, so I just dragged her off and did it.

Saturday was another DE day for Lisa, and the Post-Parade AutoX for me. We both had a good time--though I didn't win my class this time either. On Saturday, the other Bee beat me. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) We then met my mom & stepdad for dinner in the Hawthorne, and finished our Portland experience with a run to Powell's.

Yesterday we drove back. We left Portland at 6:30 AM, and I got home at 10:45 PM. We hit traffic in a few spots, plus we had car-cooling breaks periodically. We met a number of other Parade-goers on the way home during those stops, which was fun. There was construction near Lake Shasta, which caused traffic to really crawl, in 100+ temps. My oil temps skyrocketed, so we pulled over to let the cars cool. A couple of people stopped, partly for the same reason, and some partly to see if they could help. Once we decided to get going, we found that Lisa's 911 had been spending too much time with 914s!! The starter wouldn't work; the "infamous 914 hot-start problem" was affecting her SC. We couldn't get at the starter (on the uphill sloping gravel shoulder), and she didn't want to risk a roll-start against traffic on the shoulder. So we called AAA. About a half-hour into the wait for the tow, the starter had cooled off enough to work--so we called AAA back and said "nevermind!" We made it to Willows for dinner, then at I-505 I split off to head home and she headed back to Roseville for work again. I got home, as I said, at 10:45 last night. And I'm still beat.

Between the cost of Parade, the DE cost, the hotel rooms, the new computer, and the new camera, this past week was a very very expensive one. Add in the ring, and all that goes with it, and...

We did have a wonderful time, though. It was good to see people again, and to put faces with a few screen names. But my bank account is happy Parade is only once per year.

Oh, the official results can be downloaded here:
Rally: http://pca.org//parade/2006/results/RallyResults.pdf
Gimmick Rally: http://pca.org//parade/2006/results/GimmickResults.pdf
AutoX: http://pca.org//parade/2006/results/AutoCrossResults.pdf
Tech Quiz Results: http://pca.org//parade/2006/results/TechQuizResults.pdf
Tech Quiz Overall: http://pca.org//parade/2006/results/TechQuizOverall.pdf

The Parade staff is promising to have PDFs of the Quiz up shortly. Hopefully that means very soon.

--DD