Everyday Driver

Today’s drive was 75% on I-15 North & I-84 West, and 20% was on US Routes. The rest was a palette cleanser of some uncrowded surface streets after gas stops and a lunch break. There was one little slowdown a couple miles shy of my exit for the night because of a small brush fire next to the highway.

Staying here takes a bit of sacrifice, there is no Wi-Fi, but it does have rock-solid 5G. Also, your bathroom is 50 feet away! It is the short silo to the left in the top photo. This spot is right next to some train tracks, and the trains have to use their horn when they cross the road. Since I have been here, two have gone by, and it really isn’t that loud because there still is a lot of potato meat attached to the skin. 🙂

On the drives of the adventure we have a total of 23 cars and 20 participants, the 2 Everyday Driver guys, Todd and Paul, and Mandi, who is their logistics person. All of us, after the first morning’s drive, kind of sort our positions in the pack by car and skill when we take off after any stop. Either Todd or Paul takes the lead, and the other is the sweep, and Mandi will be somewhere in the middle. The parts of Utah we are driving through are extremely scenic and littered with national parks, so the roads can at times be busy, and we all kind of like to be in one long line. But when we are driving all in a line, we can be half a mile long. Invariably a local going about their daily business or a big RV will get in our line, and because we are in sports cars, we will take the first opportunity to gun it and pass them to get back in our long line. Roughly 30% of the time when we all pull into a rest stop or lunch place, we are arriving in drips or drabs. I am usually in the back third of the group because there were a lot of hi-po cars and/or very skilled drivers, and I’m perfectly happy there. This is where I was yesterday coming into lunch, and now for the promised “most exciting thing” happened.

In front was the Porsche 911, then a Subaru BRZ, a Porsche Macan, a Porsche Boxster, myself, and then Paul, who was behind me sweeping in his Porsche 928. The 911 was in the lead about 50 yards ahead of 4 of us, with Paul trailing us the same 50 yards back. About 5 miles from our restaurant, on a long straight, we came up fast on a slow-moving RV. Almost in sync, we all floored to pass at a very high rate of speed. We were already booking it to begin with, and our speed going around the guy was right around the three-digit mark. After we were all safely around, a big SUV coming the opposite direction lit up some red and blue lights in his grill. Oh oh.

We all slowed to the posted 80 MPH limit. It took him a while for him to stop. He sat for a second, so we thought maybe he was going to give us a pass, but no. He got right up behind Paul until he pulled over, then did the same for the three of us before jetting off to get the lead car. That by now the 911 was far enough ahead that they kept going. After we four had been stopped, the sheriff took off looking for the lead car. The five of us slowed to the speed limit and cruised into the lunch spot.

When we got to the restaurant, our sheriff was talking to the 911 guys. We late arrivals, quietly parked, and made our way to the rest of the group that was already seated on the patio of the restaurant. They were talking to the 911 occupants, who are not the actual owners because they had car swapped at the last break, and the owner. Meanwhile, the rest of us that had gotten pulled, along with everyone else, were speculating about getting ticketed. Somehow after all the talking and our sheriff contacting his supervisor, we all came out unscathed. It’s a good thing too because he had clocked us at 104 MPH, and over one hundred is classified as reckless endangerment and requires a trip to the jailhouse and the car impounded. Phew!

The top photo was on my pre-drive coffee run. A lot of the day looked like this, but there was about an equal amount of sunshine to go with it. The drive was great; it was about 330 miles through all kinds of scenery and roads. All in all, it took us right at 9 hours of travelling, which includes our lunch break and several scenic pullouts.

On one of the rainy segments we were climbing up a mountain pass, and at the top, about 8,000 feet up, that rain turned to almost snow that created a layer of slush on the road. A second highlight was we came upon a herd of sheep crossing the road to get some water troughs. The flock was huge, and our 22-car caravan came to a halt. We politely waited for them to move, but after about five minutes, our orange Lotus Evora 400 driver in the back had a brilliant idea; he started to rev his extremely loud exhaust while creeping forward at them. Instantly the sheep cleared the road.

According to Baseball Reference, the Red Sox still have a greater than 99.9% chance of making the playoffs. This means that they have less than a 0.1% chance of winning the division. Statistics, who knows? To me it looks a lot like zero chance of winning the division. Tampa Bay has a record of 96-61 with six games left, so the worst record they can end up with is 96-66. Boston, on the other hand, has a record of 84-73 with 5 games left. If they win them all, their best record would be 89-73. How is that a better record?

Today was the official first day of driving, and boy did we. I was actually worn out from all the driving chasing down trying to keep up with the group. There were several through valleys, up one side of a pass and down the other. The drives are excellently laid out with planned stops to gather up all the cars back together that are either scenic pullouts or dedicated potty stops. In the middle there is a lunch break at a good restaurant. There are occasional short stints on regular roads and a bit of Interstate in between. And we’ve got two more full days of this to come.

One of the hallmarks of these trips is people swapping cars if both parties are agreeable. Honestly, after watching the caliber of driving, I would trust any one of this group with the GTI. The flip side is I wouldn’t feel comfortable driving a lot of these cars because of their power or price. Maybe around a parking lot, but not on narrow, windy mountain roads that have frequent shear drop-offs.

But there was one I wanted to drive, and he agreed to swap. He is the son of one of the Everyday Driver guys and a high school student, but knowing his dad and watching him drive the first half of the morning, there was zero worry. He has a 2006 Mini Cooper S, which is supercharged. It was an absolute hoot, and he really liked the driving the GTI. Truth be told, if he kiddingly asked if we could swap titles, I just might have taken him up on it.