In a message dated 1/26/05 20:11:55, APPTEL INC writes: << Just finished my March issue of SCI; combined with the previous narrative from Mr. Drew, it completes the picture. My hat's off to you, Mike. Living the dream of almost every "car guy" >>>Well, there is that little 'unemployment' thing. Oh, and the occasional 'being shot at by pissed-off Iraqis' thing. But yes, other than that, it's been pretty much a dream life for the past year. :>) >Well written, great descriptive photography and a sense of place that makes us all wish we were there. Bravo. >>>Thanks! I'm glad you liked it! I was pretty happy with the way the art director laid out the photos atop a watermark of the route book, although they did brutally hack great chunks out of the original story, and although you might not have noticed anything missing, it looked like gaping holes to me, as entire days were simply glossed over. >Need a co-driver next year? >> >>>HAHAHA!! Well, not for the Euroclassic. George Gordon-Smith is going with me again; it's in May this time (normally it's in October) and starts in Denmark, then goes up and all around Sweden, both places I've never been and know nothing about. As luck would have it, I have about 30 Swedish friends scattered all over the country (Pantera owners all) and hope to combine the event with a social trip to visit some of them. I haven't really fleshed out my events calendar for the year yet. I do intend to go to the Goodwood Festival of Speed this year (I've never managed to make it to that), and of course Le Mans. As of now I really don't have any co-drivers lined up for any of those events? Claude Dubois, who back in the '60s was the European distributor for Shelby cars as well as the GT40, is a good friend of mine. He was also the De Tomaso distributor, and campaigned (as team owner) a factory race Pantera at Le Mans in '72. A wealthy vintage race type guy is in the process of purchasing a sister car (one of 14 made, and only a handful of those remain) with the intent of racing it in a new series that is being put together by Patrick Peter, the guy who puts on the Le Mans Classic every other year. This new series is going to consist of 70's style FIA endurance races, 1000 km each, at Spa, Monza, Le Mans and, I think, Imola? Anyway, Claude, 73 years young, is going to be the team manager and they have asked me to join the team as well, in some sort of gofer support role. So I may be traveling around Europe going on the vintage race circuit with them. Ah well, there's any number of events both here and abroad to keep me occupied this year as I watch my bank account draining away. After this coming winter I'll have to suck it up and work pretty much full-time with the Air Force Reserve until I get my airline job back (late 2006, probably), and then I'll have TWO jobs to keep me busy. :<( So I'm enjoying the freedom while I can. Apropos of nothing, tonight I was supposed to be flying a local training sortie with the Air Force (before leaving for another Iraq trip Saturday), but the damn airplane broke before we even took off, so we had to call it a night. I came home around 8:00 p.m. feeling frustrated, but then several thoughts occurred simultaneously: 1) After weeks of rain and horrid weather, the skies had cleared and it was actually a pretty nice night. 2) Commensurate with that, the roads were mostly dry and clear 3) After an absence of over two years, I now have a fully functional 427 Cobra replica in my garage--basically a 569 hp, 610 ft/lb mood elevator. So I didn't even bother changing out of my flight suit--I just pulled on my Snoopy WWI flying ace leather helmet, goggles and gloves, jumped in the Cobra and set off for some gentle twisty roads driving. There is a network of spectacular roads which begins only a block from my house (located in a small mountain range which forms the eastern border of the Napa Valley, which itself is only 12 miles away as the crow flies, but a good 45 minute drive via the most direct route), so within two minutes I was all alone on a tiny road. Since the Cobra has a close-ratio top-loader, first gear is rather tall, and I spent about 10 minutes climbing and then descending a hill in first gear, along a tight series of switchbacks and tight corners. The road then opened up a bit and I cruised along, mostly in 3rd gear, loafing along at 2000 rpm, occasionally zinging it up to 4000 before stabbing the brake to slow for yet another corner. Rarely would I have enough straight road to enable me to take my eyes off the road for long, but when I did I could look up and see the stars, and the moonlight illuminating the rain clouds off in the distance. As I crested hills and descended into valleys, crossed streams and paralleled rivers, I could feel the temperature rising and falling (dipping into the low 40s in places), and occasionally the windshield would suddenly fog up (on both sides) with a sudden drop in temperature and/or increase in moisture. I saw little wildlife other than the occasional owl that would flash past, caught momentarily in the beam of my headlights, although the smell of skunk became prevalent a couple of times. I really love driving my GT-350 clone in Europe. But driving a 427 Cobra is the closest it is possible to come to riding bareback aboard a tremendous V-8 engine. During daylight I sometimes really beat on it, winding it out as the car literally catapults me towards the next corner. But tonight I was just loafing along, ambling through corners at 1800 rpm, then rolling on the throttle, the sidepipes emitting an onomatopoetic *TOOOOORRRRQUE* from the 427 side-oiler as the individual exhaust pulses could clearly be made out as they bounced off the rock canyon walls..... I drove around in the dark of night for almost 45 minutes before I encountered my first oncoming car. It's amazing when you think about it--I'm only an hour out of San Francisco, a half hour from Sacramento, yet there is NOBODY out here. I was driving with my high beams on, extremely powerful Cibie Z-beam halogens, and it's pretty spectacular when you see how effective they really are when there's no other light sources around. Eventually I found myself back on flat land, the road opened up, and on one good straight section I wound it out to 5000 rpm in 4th gear, a fair bit over 100 mph, before slowing for a no-kidding 25 mph corner at the end. Later on I started to encounter traffic as I approached I-80 from the north, in the town of Suisun. I followed a herd of cars onto the freeway, with an old VW Beetle (the absolute antithesis of the 427 Cobra) immediately ahead of me. Almost without thinking about it, as I gained the highway I just hammered the throttle in 2nd gear, rocketed past the VW, snatched 3rd gear and went sailing past a minivan as I made my way across four otherwise empty lanes and into the fast lane, where I grabbed 4th and then slowed it down to 80 mph or so (the speedo is currently inoperative, wanting for a new speedo gear), then cruised back home, getting there about 15 minutes later after a good hour, hour and a half spent up in the hills. Yes, I guess you're right--although I rarely stop to really contemplate it, when I do I realize that I really am pretty damn fortunate to be where I am in life..... Mike
