Well, the 2005 East Coast Ramble is over! :-( We had a great turnout, with over 42 people attending and a total of 24 cars. We had everything from plenty of 914's, and a sprinkling of 911SC, 944Turbo, 996, 911S, 911T, and 986.
Friday night started out with a BBQ and a KEG of German SPATEN beer, which was donated by Peter Boll, the owner of the Palmer House. Thank you Peter :-) :-) . Peter also had another big surprise for us as he had hired three young women from Poland, for a summer internship at this resort, who were our hostesses for the night. They BBQ'ed hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill and served our attendees with food and kept our glasses full of beer. We really did not have any work to do! The night was spent eating and drinking and talking to old friends. One couple, Don and Cindy Watson could not make it for personal reasons and we really missed their presence. BUT....we drank their beer! By the time we broke up, it was around 1 AM and the KEG was empty! :-P
Saturday morning we had breakfast, and then assembled for our 130+ mile ramble. The roads in Vermont were great, curvey and sometimes a little damp from the fog. It did rain for a bit, but not enough for anyone to get discouraged or slow down. One interesting note, and maybe this is something that will happen at every Ramble, we had Nick and Heather Coles car break down on Friday night and it had to be towed to the resort. This same thing happened last year with Michel Richard. Saturday, a team assembled and Mihai Serbanescu volunteered to crawl under Nick's 914/6 to work on the damaged axle. Eventually it the work was completed, and they met us later on during the Ramble. Of course, Saturday night we had our Banquet which was catered at a Manchester, Vermont restaurant. The meal was very good and we even had Ben and Jerry's Ice Ream after.
Sunday morning we met after breakfast and assembeled for our "run" up to the summit of Mt. Equinox. A big surprise for all of us was that Peter Boll had his 911 track car and even though it was not street legal, he brought it along. As it was a all-out race car, it did not have ANY muffler, so you can imagine how loud it was. To prevent anyone from picking it out during our ride through the small, Vermont town of Manchester, Mihai and I boxed Peter in and we drove very slowly through town. Once out of town, Peter opened the 911 up and I estimate he was going about 130-135 MPH on a two-lane country road. Mihai and I eventually hit about 100 and Peter was still leaving us. Anyway, it was a real fun run. We got to Mt. Equinox and since it is a private 2 lane road, going up to the summit in curvy turns and some short straightaways, we were able to "race" up the hill. Luckily there was only one car coming the other way (down). The summit was at about 3500 ft and we started at about 800 feet. So it was a good climb! I know my oil temp hit right around 245 F. It was too bad that the top was in the clouds. After we got to the top, most of the group said their goodbye's and a few others returned to the resort.
I know the above description does not cover all the fun we had and all the friends we made. We had a great number of our regular ECR attendees and we met some new people that attended for the first time. We hope to see them all next year. The rumor has it that we want to do a joint event with our PA Porsche friends that had their yearly weekend BBQ the same weekend we had the ECR. If this occurs, we should see about 80 people attending.
By the way, Ted Emmerson has gracioulsy volunteered to run next years ECR. I am confident that he will be contacting everyone on the list next Spring. In the mean time, here is a link to my webshots album - where you will see about 100 pictures of the 2005 ECR.
http://community.webshots.com/album/456087221DqiMeF
Many of the pictures do not have captions, mainly because I got tired and will do them some other night. If anyone has any corrections, additions, or can provide me with names to the particular picture #, please contact me off the list.
Thanks again to you ALL. You made the event!
Best regards,
Ralf and Peggy Hartmann
Plattsburgh, New York
