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Porsche
Club of America
By Tom
Tate
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When the calendar turns the corner and starts down that Jan, Feb and Mar slope, those of us in New England tend to sit in front of the fire a lot. It wasn't always that way. There was a time that we were out in the cold making those stories not just retelling them. We still go up north for a little ice driving on Newfoundland Lake in the dead of winter, but now it's in a car with heat, four-wheel drive and real tires. Boy, have we gotten soft. There was that ride from D.C. to Baltimore one cold weekend with a girl that I was trying to impress.I took my '58 A coupe that only had the heater hooked up on the drivers side. It was so cold on the passenger side that a Coke that spilled on the floor froze to the mat. Not very impressive but still a great ride. An all night ride from D.C. to Syracuse just to meet a friend for breakfast (and to see if the '53 Sunbeam Talbot Salon would make it that far). Heater? We didn't need a heater. We had a couple of blankets in the back covering the torn seats and protruding springs.. Besides it was 50 degrees when the four of us left D.C. at 9 PM. How cold could it get just a couple hundred miles north? How about 10 degrees with snow flurries by 6 am? I never realized how many holes that car had in it until that icy wind started coming through at highway speed. Even the steel sunroof, that sealed just fine in a warmer climate, brought in more wind that an open window. But we made it back in time for class on Monday. OK, we had to stop at that gas station in Elmira NY, pull up the floor boards and add 3 ½ qts of oil to the transmission to stop the wailing noise that was overtaking the radio. I still say that we could have made it with the ½ qt that remained if it wasn't for the noise. We used to look for challenge like the Tri State Rally that covered ME, NH, and VT over a 24 hr period. A $100 bet that said we (Ed Sanborn & I) couldn't finish the Rally in a $100 car. The weapon of choice turned out to be a '68 Opel Kadette with a 1100cc engine in it. We were told to dress warmly and did with Long Johns and all. In the middle of the night a belt was slipping on the generator causing the voltage to the heater fan to drop, stopping the flow of heat off the lawnmower sized engine. I jumped out on the side of a logging road to tighten the belt and thought I'd left my pants in the car. It was 22 degrees below zero and the wind was blowing hard enough to rip the doors off the car if you weren't careful. All I got from my driver was " what's taking so long?" Somehow it always seemed colder when it was dark than when it was light. When the eastern sky started to lighten the coffee always seemed to taste better even if you were in the back of the pack on the scoreboard. You'd made it through another challenge. And usually gotten some great stories along the way. Doing four-wheel power drifts in the snow are still great fun it's just that now you have to do them in your long driveway. Or when nobody's around. And it always seemed to me that we used to go a lot faster. Like at 70 or 80 miles per hour in 6 inches of snow. Now I look down and I'm only doing 45 and that's the absolute limit. Maybe it's like revisiting our old elementary school. Everything looks smaller than we remembered. Now we're older and wiser and it's just as much fun. There are some real benefits to being older. You don't get pulled over as much and when you do you have a 50/50 chance at getting a warning as a ticket (ask me how I know). Now, your driving may have toned down some or you may be just "picking your spots" a little more carefully. Or when the db level of the stainless exhaust system starts to attract attention just say that the car actually belongs to your kid and it seems loud to you too. When the cop asks why you have a Grateful Dead sticker on the back of your car, you can tell 'em that your kid put it on there and you're not sure of the name of the band. Works for me! It's amazing what they let old guys get away with. |
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