Saturday was another great car day but this time with the Jeep (bad weather). It was another day spent with awesome car people, beautiful cars and all for a good cause, more toys for kids in need. 2020 has been a terrible year for everyone but it certainly hits some much harder than others. We had hundreds of cars show up throughout the day to donate much needed toys to help ensure a happier holiday season for every kid.
I met a friend early before we ran to Starbucks for some coffee and breakfast. Starbucks drive-thrus are a wonderful thing. I had to get a shot of my Jeep doing its best Rudolph impression. A red nose…antlers and Christmas lights on the inside:
Then it was on to The Shop where they had sponsored with Avants and DirtFish to hold a socially distanced, masks required, cars and coffee. There was a very rare Audi RS6 Wagon, DirtFish brought out their student cars, we had a ton of beautiful Porsches show up including a brand new 992 Turbo S in a paint to sample Deep Sea Blue and a beautiful old back 356. Santa approved of Rudolph and told me that everyone was going to be on the nice list this year.
December in Seattle is filled with excitement for the holidays, cutting down Christmas trees, lights, school and work breaks, family fun…a lot of wonderful things. It is also typically filled with rain…lots of rain. Fun summer cars with performance tires are kept safely in warm garages, waiting for warmer, drier days to return. 2020 has sucked for a lot of reasons, but December has felt like a gift when it comes to the weather and this Saturday was no exception. Cold but dry and warm enough for safe motoring so a full day of car fun was planned.
I started my day waiting for The Shop and Derby to open. I wanted to have breakfast surrounded by cool cars and then I had a haircut planned at the on-site barber, Annie Oakley Cuts. Then I had blocked a time to use the wash bays and get the car all cleaned up. A full day before noon and I was just getting started!
Now that the car was all clean, it was time to get it dirty again! The Avants car club had organized a toy drive down to the Griot’s headquarters and flagship store in Tacoma. They provided the coffee and donuts, you bring a toy for Toys for Tots…sounded like a good deal to me. Adam, the fonder of Avants, was there to meet and greet and give out copies of their incredible magazine. If you are into cars and you live in Seattle, Portland or Denver (more coming), I highly suggest you join Avants. Their philosophy of drive everything is very inclusive and the culture seems great so far.
After hanging out with Adam, I decided to go explore Tacoma a bit and see if I could find any places to take some cool photos. Mount Rainier is a favorite landmark of mine, Meg always makes fun of me because then you can see the whole mountain I’ll say “the mountain is out in full force today”. I’m a dorky old man, what do you expect. Well, the mountain was out in full force and I wanted to find some views of it. I found a parking lot at Cliff House Restaurant that had a great view and then I found an open marina parking lot. I think they look best in black and white but I’m on the fence. You help me decide…what looks better to you?
A few more fun photos that I was playing with:
After watching the sun set, it was back in the car to head home to the family for dinner! I was running late after stopping for some of these photos…the turbo helped me make up that time, no problem 🙂
At a recent car event, I was introduced to the annual Northwest Toy Run. The Toy Run is a fun car themed event where thousands of gear heads come from all around the region to donate toys, money and their time to ensure that every kid has a special gift to unwrap this holiday season. Cars…kids…hosted at Pacific Raceways…I signed up immediately!
To make the event a full day, a friend of mine arranged a pre-meet and backroad drive from Alderwood Mall to Pacific Raceways, we would not be taking I5. Those twists and bends might not look extreme, but with chilly weather and summer tires, we had to be careful and it felt pretty thrilling for this old man!
The alarm went off at 6 for a pre-sunrise meet up in West Seattle. The car needed gas and I needed coffee!
Dan and I had to grab a quick shot as the sun was rising. No really…there is a sun up there somewhere behind those clouds.
We drove up to Alderwood to meet up with the rest of the group. We had an eclectic mix of cars and some great folks. A few of the guys on the trip have some extensive personal car collections, the stuff dreams are made of, and they brought out some fun toys to play with. We got to know each other for a while, then enjoyed a “spirited” drive to our coffee break pitstop and then it was on to the racetrack.
After more miles of fun driving, we made it to Pacific Raceways. Volunteers were busy helping everyone unload the toys, Santa was there to welcome the cars and then it was on to the Avants reserved parking and a slow lap around the track. It was advertised as a 10mph crawl but it was much more fun than that…we did 45 to 50 most of the time. Even at 45mph I still managed to miss every apex! In my defense, I was trying to take photos and my hat kept sliding over my eyes 🙂 That’s okay, everything is fun when you are sporting a Santa hat and I can’t wait to do this again next year!
Soon enough it will be too cold and too wet for me to risk taking the 911 out with the high performance summer tires so I need to take advantage of every opportunity I can get! The weather this past weekend was stunning and just perfect for a long drive. With clear skies and temps in the low 50s, it was warm enough to keep my tires happy and cold enough to feed the turbos with endless amounts of cold air.
I explored mostly backroads from Seattle to Bellingham and turned a four hour drive into an all day adventure, hugging the coast and blasting through some empty farmland along the way.
Chuckanut Drive was pretty crowded but I managed to have some fun on the twisty road and find some beautiful places to pull over and take some photos. To tuck back into one spot, I may have almost backed off a cliff and while avoiding that almost hit a tree. Perhaps I’ve grown too dependent on backup cameras in more modern cars 🙂
On the way home, I decided to take the long route and drive around Alki. I pulled over to admire the clear Seattle skyline view and grabbed a few more photos before heading home. I’m a sucker for any view of the space needle and ferries!
Living in West Seattle, I’m fortunate to be so close to Alki Beach. One of my favorite things to do is take a slow cruise down Alki to soak in the view of the mountains, the Puget Sound and the beautiful sunsets. The people watching is fun too. The busted West Seattle bridge may be a bummer but if I’m going to be stuck anywhere, this place will do nicely:
I half tried to talk my kids into joining me but I was glad when this trip up to Snoqualmie Forrest ended up being a solo drive. Sometimes you just really need to get away from everything and I decided to spend the rainy day looking for “waterfalls” in the woods. When it rains, the runoff from the mountains can make for some beautiful roadside waterfalls…the silver lining to an otherwise muddy day.
This was my route. Without kids telling me to turn around or that they were hungry, I managed to do quite a bit of exploring. I found many dead ends, some beautiful scenic views and a few overgrown passes that became too narrow even for my Jeep. No big animals though.
Okay, so I’m better at taking photos of cars than I am taking photos of waterfalls but here are a few okay ones from the dozens that I found:
You can’t really tell from the map, but I did manage to find some nice elevation and some pretty view points to stop at along the way. Then I ended the day back at The Shop to get the Jeep all nice and clean again:
Unlike the Italian car owners, German car owners know that our cars are waterproof and we show up rain or shine 🙂 As is often the case, the forecast was wrong and the weather was beautiful for German car day @ The Shop. It was the biggest turn out I have seen all year (still in masks and keeping distance).
One of my favorite cars of the day was ”Kermit”, a very bright green 1984 3.2 backdated 911R tribute. The color stood out in the sea of white, gray and black and there was an adorable pug along for the ride:
This stunning 356 Cabriolet grabbed everyone’s attention when it arrived. It was a family affair to drop the top and it is always awesome to see these classics still on the roads doing what they were meant to do!
A collection of great cars with one imposter for you to find…an imposter so bad ass looking that it would be welcome anywhere:
My 997.2 Turbo S getting some attention:
My second favorite car of the day was this beautiful 991 GT3RS:
This was my favorite car of the day. This is a 997.2 GT3RS, a more track focused car and typically in some wild color combinations. It would make the perfect pair with my Turbo S and these things are only going up in value. Garage dreams!
Last Saturday was Italian cars and coffee at The Shop and while it wasn’t raining, it had rained overnight and there was a chance of rain in the forecast. That of course meant that almost nobody showed up for the cars and coffee event because Italian cars are allergic to the rain…or at least their owners are! A few fun cars (and a really cute scooter) did show up.
With C&C being a bust, I went home early, grabbed Shep and we went back to the Snoqualmie Forrest to make the most of the wet weather. Bring on the Jeep!
Shep took a video of us “playing in the puddles”. He’s almost 10 and I’m almost an adult 🙂
911 Maniac 