Brian Fights Breast Cancer

I don’t have breast can­cer, but lots of women do, or will. Approx­i­mately 175,000 cases of inva­sive breast can­cer will be diag­nosed in 2000. Not that I can’t get breast can­cer, about 1,600 breast can­cers will be diag­nosed in men as well.

BMW spon­sors a lit­tle thing called “The Ulti­mate Drive for the Susan G. Komen Breast Can­cer Foun­da­tion,” a nation­wide pro­gram to raise funds for the fight against breast can­cer. The pro­gram fea­tures two cross-country car­a­vans of spe­cially marked BMW cars, a white fleet and a sil­ver fleet, that take the Komen mes­sage to the streets of Amer­ica. Guests are invited to test drive the vehi­cles and for each mile dri­ven, BMW con­tributes $1 to the Komen Foundation.

The Sil­ver Fleet was to be at Tay­lor BMW on Wash­ing­ton Road, Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 9th. Rudy told me about this event at the Bug Splat. He said he was going to sign up and do it, I thought, cool, I will too. That night I went home, logged on the inter­net, went to the BMW web­site to reg­is­ter. You had your choice of a wide vari­ety vehi­cles from almost any 3 Series vari­a­tion (even an M3 Coupe) to the new X5 to a 750il. I reserved a 325i con­vert­ible because of the need for four seats. Donna, her mom and her aunt were going to come along for the ride.

You had to pick a one hour block of time for your drive. I chose 11:00 AM to 12:00 noon, pic­tur­ing a leisurely cruise around Clarks Hill Lake before drop­ping the car off and get­ting lunch in Augusta. Wrongo. There was a des­ig­nated 15 mile loop to drive con­sist­ing of mostly River­watch Park­way, I guess they didn’t want you wan­der­ing around willy-nilly with their spiffy new BMWs. That’s OK, I still get to drive around stylin’ in a new BMW on a nice day with the top down.

We got there about 20 min­utes early. It was a good thing too, just because you filled a form on the inter­net with gobs of infor­ma­tion didn’t absolve you from fill­ing out the offi­cial form at the desk. Plus they had to check your dri­vers license and have you swear on a stack of bibles that you wouldn’t try to dump the car at one of those Title/Pawn places for a wad of cash. Just kid­ding about that last one. They a tent setup with chairs for wait­ing and dough­nuts and cook­ies to eat as well as bot­tled water and Pepsi to drink. We set­tled in for a wait, but not too long after the man with the clip­board called my name. He passed us along to Heidi who was to put us in the car. It was time to drive.

Not quite. Heidi took one look at said, “You have to lose the drinks.” “Even the water?” “Yep.” Heidi had me buckle up and start the engine. Then she went over the route and asked if I had any ques­tions. I looked at the sky and asked, “In case it rains, how does the top go up?” “Push that but­ton.” “Any latches?” “Nope,” she replied, “they’re mag­netic.” Cool, I think to my self, off we go.

Slowly out of the lot over sev­eral speed bumps, past the Rich­mond County Sheriff’s Deputy (crowd con­trol?) and on to Wash­ing­ton Road head­ing west, try­ing not to stall it as the clutch engage­ment is way dif­fer­ent from the Miata. A right at the first light and another right and we are headed into Augusta on River­watch. Up go all the win­dows as the back seat pas­sen­gers were get­ting mighty wind­blown. Man this is smooth, quiet too. At River­watch & 15th street you turn left at the stop­light, which was red. I go slowly left (still feel­ing out the clutch) as it turned green, slow enough that the other stop­light 50 feet away turns red before I get to it. I decide when I get this baby pointed straight back on River­watch and headed back to Mar­tinez, we’ll see what she’ll do. The red­line is 6000 RPM and it comes up quickly. Two things to note here, the shifter throw is a lot longer than the Miata’s and the plas­tic fake wood shift knob is snapped on, not threaded like most. You guessed it, when I slammed that shifter from 1st to 2nd the knob came fly­ing off. Donna screamed as the knob landed in her lap and of course the trans­mis­sion never actu­ally got into sec­ond gear. I calmly reached down and placed the shifter, with­out knob, into sec­ond and con­tin­ued to accel­er­ate. Donna hands me the knob just in time for me to fig­ure out how to snap it back on and make the 2–3 shift. Hmmm, remem­ber not to do that again. The rest of the first cir­cuit is fin­ished with­out fanfare.

Want­ing to get the Komen Foundation’s monies worth, we keep mov­ing past Tay­lor BMW to make another lap. As I drive by the deal­er­ship I wave and honk the horn, thereby caus­ing my pas­sen­gers to try and shrink down below sight level. At Pleas­ant Home Road it is two lanes that turn right onto River­watch, so I take the left­most lane and accel­er­ate madly by another 325i con­vert­ible with two girls in it (to be fair it was prob­a­bly their first lap and the dri­ver was feel­ing out the clutch too.) We then ended up zip­ping down and back on River­watch at about 70 MPH in tan­dem zig­ging and zag­ging through the other slug-like non-BMWs.

Hey we have enough time for another lap. No objec­tions from the pas­sen­gers (until I beep and wave while pass­ing the deal­er­ship again.) We lose the other con­vert­ible here as they turn in and maybe change cars. On the third lap I got the clutch and the lights at 15th Street fig­ured out. As soon as the light changes you stomp on the gas going left then left again never slow­ing and you get through both lights. Unfor­tu­nately you hit the rev lim­iter as you are straight­en­ing out, caus­ing a hur­ried shift from 1st to 2nd, and the knob comes off in your hand again. Yikes. I guess if I owned one of these I’d super­glue that sucker on. $45 quick dol­lars to fight breast cancer.

I asked if it was OK for Donna and I to try a lap in a Z3 and there were no objec­tions. After a short wait for a free one, off we went for another 15 mile loop. This time I ambushed an X5 at Pleas­ant Home entrance to the River­watch Park­way. They spent the next 7 miles work­ing hard to catch me. They did, at the stop­light at 15th, hehe. When the light changes, off I go like a bat out of hell, they of course, get stopped. Big grin. The X5 spent the next 7 miles catch­ing me again. They are now in front of me at the light where we go left to head back to the deal­er­ship. As the light turns yel­low they snap a left turn, I attempt to follow…and stall the thing. Grin gone.

The Z3 inte­rior had this reto/70’s Ger­man feel, we found it ugly, but I guess if you are a BMW per­son you would love it. You sit up a lit­tle higher in a Z3 than a Miata and the wind­shield is more upright mak­ing the header seem in the way, not unpleas­antly so, but dif­fer­ent. The car is quicker, but not as much as you would expect for some­thing that costs 1.75 times a Miata though. There was hardly any exhaust sounds, the car was so quiet that I hit it’s rev lim­iter a cou­ple of times. Would have been nice to try and drive it through some twisties, I bet it would be very com­pe­tent through the Gap. But it wouldn’t be the same, I really love the 4 cylin­der rasp and the feel of the extra oomph that comes at 4000 RPM in the Miata. The Z3 felt more, I hate to say refined, but that is all I can think of, and I guess that is what you get for the extra money.

With our dri­ving done we headed back to Mom’s Honda Civic for the ride home. On the way to where we parked, we passed right by the Sheriff’s Deputy. I said to him, “You’re in the wrong spot, you should be out on the River­watch Park­way, there are lots of folks speed­ing out there.” He replied with a smile, “Bet they’re easy to spot too.”

All in all it was a great way to spend an after­noon and I plan on doing it again next year, even if I have to take a day off from work. Not only do you get to drive BMWs, but they give you a T-shirt and you get to sign your name on an X5 along with every­one else who has par­tic­i­pated around the coun­try (it is going to end up in the Smith­son­ian.) Next time I’m going to drive them all; a 3 series sedan, an X5, a 750 and one of those M3 Coupes for sure.