Carlisle 2019

Alan I'm here where r uSent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone

I'll be right down

Wait, what?!

Lane Anderson posted:

Wait, what?!

You fell for it Lane. You should have known better.

Yes, I should have.  In my defense he isn’t entirely here, having enjoyed the perks of flying first class. 😈

Im up dressed and getting coffee. Ill be on the road soon to Carlisle  See everyone this afternoon 

On my way 

Leaving at 8:00 this morning.  Sunny day - but cool - for a nice drive.

Oh crap, sorry GERD I cancelled your meal.

Chris Lane and myself had the distinct pleasure meeting Gerd at the hotel bar last night.....a lot of laughs

IaM-Ray posted:

Is that a new car @East Coast Bruce?

Not new, purchased it 4 years ago from Speedsterowner.com member Andy Burger.  

About about half the cars are here

Wish I was there. I’ll be thinking about you guys when I play out at the bar tonight :-)
>

The new Beck Coup on display at Carlisle Host hotel Thursday night meet and greet. It is a mid engine Subaru drive train. It looks very nice. Great job Carey and crew!

Some views of the rear parking lot tonight.

Nice Pics, Jimmy.

Glad you made it!

One very positive sign I have noticed over the years with pics like the above of car guys/gals.  Almost all of us who smoked have quit!  Good for us, eh?

Jim Kelly posted:

One very positive sign I have noticed over the years with pics like the above of car guys/gals.  Almost all of us who smoked have quit!  Good for us, eh?

Haven’t had one since last Thanksgiving!

😎😎

Connie and I arrived home in West Virginia and unpacked by 2:30.  Last evening on the way to the dinner my fresh speedster engine decided to act up, we did a U Turn back to the hotel covered the car and off to the dinner in our truck.. I'll take a look at what went south on the engine tomorrow  but so far it didn't run hot and the oil looks good.  Glad to meet Stan, Gerd, Vince Terry Manto, Jim Vickers Mike V and son as well as renew the  friendships of past attendees. Weather during the daytime  was perfect......more to follow !

Made it to my overnight stop in Christiansburg, VA.  Traffic on my side of 81 was reasonably light but the northbound side was packed.

Jose and I arrived back home at 3:30. I want to thank everyone for the welcome my son and I received. I was told by Alan Merklin that you were a great bunch of people....I couldn't agree more! We had a great time this weekend and will definitely return next year! Safe travels home everyone! Thanks again, Mike and Jose Valenzano.

Nice to meet you and your son Jose ~

 

Safe travels everyone. Great to see so many old friends 😁😁😁😁😁

Stan and I made it back to Illinois about an hour ago. We did hit a bit of ran in Indiana and had to put the top up, otherwise it was top down. What a great weekend and so nice to see  old and new friends. I have some serious cleaning to do tomorrow  

 

.

Yes it was nice to meet the Valenzanos and renew old acquaintances... great weather too

 

I got back at 4 ish

 

ray 

Fun time.  Finally got a ride in Bob's IM6.  Very fast.  Felt very solid and glued to the road.  The car is very controlled where my car is kind of out of control.  Not sure I could keep up with him in my spyder.  But I'd like to give it a shot.  Maybe next year.

We got home at about 6:30.  The last two hours were heavy rain.  After a while of that my wipers got loose on the shafts and started flailing about uselessly.  It was quite an adventure trying to stay alive on the freeway with very limited visibility.  Finally, I managed to exit and got the one on the driver's side to work.  We took local roads home from there.

The flailing wipers nicked my gel coat and gouged the rubber at the base of the windshield.

It was great seeing the old familiar faces and the new ones.

Karyn and I had a fantastic time! This was our first "full" experience. Last year, we were convinced there couldn't be more than the twenty amazing people we met last year. Turns out, I was wrong. There are at least 50 more. What a great group. 

It was a great gathering - one of the best for me.  Lots of old friends, and newly made ones.   After a horribly hot drive today, we are enjoying a beautiful breeze coming off the ocean on the Outer Banks.

Looking forward to 2020’s get together.

Oh hell yeah! Thanks everyone for coming and making a great weekend. I really appreciate all the support you gave me on my first try at banqueting, and thanks again to Alan and Connie Merklin for carrying most of the planning weight. Looking forward to next year.

I hit the show field this morning very briefly and rolled up our banners. Those of you who do the Sunday thing know it's pretty quiet there. Drove home on back roads in my pickup truck wishing it was the TD or the Spyder, but still grateful for the perfect weather and farm roads. I passed an MGA coming the other way at one point and thought how great that would have been in Bridget. Ah well.

Made it home and unloaded by 1:30 and took a nap.

Thanks again to everyone who brought such amazing things for the raffle. I am astonished every year by your generosity. Much love to my PCCA brothers and sisters.

Dianne and I arrived home at the River Shack around 2PM to 90 degree temps after a 6AM start and heavy fog early but smooth sailing.

We had a great time  with old and new friends.

On the way home we heard a  Beep Beep along side of us somewhere in Maryland and  was a real 356  in white with all the PCA and 356 registry adornments.

It had teadrop tailights, "They were real and they were spectacular"

MikelB posted:

“It had teadrop tailights, ‘They were real and they were spectacular’”

🤣 Hah!  I love it!

This has to go down as one of the best.  Nice job to Ed, Connie, and Alan. 👍👍

See y’all next year - in the Coupe!

I got home at 6:00 PM, CDT last night, after leaving the hotel at 6:00 AM, EDT. I had a burrito in Batavia, IL-- but otherwise, it had been 13 hrs straight in an automobile not necessarily tailored to an silver-backed ape. I got home, sorted through 4 days of mail and Amazon deliveries, visited my mother next door, looked at my 6" high lawn, and went to bed for the first good night's sleep in 5 days. 

Like most of you, I spend way too much time on this site, instead of doing more productive things. Unlike most of you, I've been "visiting" (more like checking 3x/hr for new posts) since 2000. I've seen a lot of people come and go, and have met a few of you. You've been excellent people, each and every man.

I've been to your weddings. I have a lot of your phone numbers. You have my insurance business, and a good portion of my retirement plans invested. I've prayed with you and laughed out loud at your humor. I've wondered how you ever got to be so smart, and so stupid (sometimes at the same time).

What I have never done is actually gone to Carlisle.

You all know why, because I've repeated the reasons every March and April for more than a decade. It's a LONG way away to Tipperary. I really don't care to exhibit my car at shows. May is a ridiculously busy time of year for my business. Weather in May is mercurial at best. For me, it has been (and remains): the wrong event, in the wrong place, at the wrong time of year. I've looked at pictures of you huddled under tarps in a driving thunderstorm, rubbing burn ointment into your sunburned heads, or bundled up like you were going to drive the huskies down to the Circle-K for a truck-stop cappuccino, and did not envy you.

But there are guys I've been getting to know from a distance for almost 20 years whom I've never met, and that just seems wrong to me. Jeanie used to call you my "imaginary friends", until she met some of you and saw the bond we had. She encouraged me to head east while she was in Denver waiting for the arrival of our 10th grandkid.

So this year, I did.

I drove up to Chicago after work on Wed., slept in @Joe Fortino's guest room (thanks again, Joe), and rode in his beautiful Beck straight through (10.5 hrs) while he piloted on a cannonball run to Shippensfreaking Nowhere, PA.

The weekend was totally worth it. Meeting the portion of you I didn't know was the purpose of the trip, and I would like to thank each of you for taking the time to come out and to make me feel welcome. I didn't get to everybody, and I'd never try to list each of you by name (because I know I'd miss somebody), but I was grateful for the opportunity to shake your hands and look you in the eye. I won't say, "get to know you", because I feel like I have over all these years of virtual back and forth. It was an excellent weekend.

I don't know if it will ever work to come out again, but this weekend was totally worth whatever it took to get there. I've always said that you only live once-- but if you live well, once is enough. You all seem to be embodying that.

It's my pleasure to have ridden with you.

Thanks to all! Especially those who put so much time and effort into organizing this gig. My second year at Carlisle was terrific and thank you all for welcoming my Buffalo friends too! You can tell I talked up the quality of the people in this group.  We had a great ride home on the motorcycles... perfect weather and it was over 80 when I got into Buffalo! 

   See you all soon! 

Jim

Jim, Stan and all the rest....so good to see the " family " again and to meet Stan....sorry we didn't get to spend the time I would of like to with all but stuff just kept on popping up including my engine issue that I am digging into today. The weather was picture perfect as well as the hotel venue this year.

Spent the morning getting the car cleaned, definitely killed a few bugs along the way. Included is a picture of how my wheels look/work without the cap. 

Just gorgeous, Joey!

I have to mention that I thought the venue was quite good and I liked it more than the Carlisle area hotel we were at the last few years.

Great job @Alan Merklin and @edsnova and company. 

Finally,  the treck to the Showfield you could choose togo via the two lane Walnutbottom road or others so it was very pleasing to drive the hills and country roads in and around the area.  

I had a great time and came back with one of Rich's artwork too. ..(T-Shirt) 

I am back at my office this morning a little tired from the 10 hour drive home yesterday. I Still need to unload my Speedster and other incidentals from the trailer. The trip home was happily uneventful and safe. My first experience at Carlisle was worth the time and effort and I enjoyed meeting some of the members that I have come to know on this site.  Thanks to all who made me feel welcome, you all are a bunch of interesting and fun people. I now have faces to match to the posts I read. I too spend way too much time on this forum, but at least I don't facebook lol.. Thanks to all who organized the weekend, it turned our perfect in my book.