Well the response has been kinda impressive, so here 'tis.
Permission is graneted to use all or part of it in any club publication
so long as I get a copy!
If there are any factual errors (Those who were there...) lemme know.
I wrote it from my notes, but those are not always the most legible things
in the world.....
Anyway, here 'tis:
Westward Ho!
Or Bob Goes to Boulder for 1990 NATC.
Well, VTR national 1990 is finally over. We've gotten
together again and survived despite driving hundreds of TR's
from all corners of the U.S. and Canada to Boulder,
Colorado.
First the facts. The 1990 VTR/NATC was held Aug 1st
through the 5th at the Harvest Clarion hotel in Boulder Co.
Boulder is a relatively small city just north of Denver
tucked right up into the foothills of the Rockies. Look
east and you see the plains, look west, an you see the sheer
rock wall of the Flatirons going up probably a thousand
feet. Spectacular! The convention gathered over 600 people
and nearly 340 cars.
The Trip Out
Lizbeth and I were planning on doing some damage again
this year @ the autocross, so we spent the weekend before
the trip getting ready. Getting ready included building an
awning for out @ the racecourse, mounting up 2 new tires,
and packing the trailer. "Trailer!?" you say? Yup, trailer.
I borrowed a 4'x 5' utility trailer from a coworker to throw
all the tools, tires, and luggage in. A quick hack with some
U stock and we had fashioned a trailer hitch which bolts
into 3 conviniently provided threaded holes in the back
bumper. Worked like a charm!! Trailer was low enough to see
over, but big enough to cover everything. And best of all, I
didn't have a spare tire as a codriver!
So Monday we headed out just after lunch. Headed out
across Wisconsin, got to Minneapolis, made a left and headed
south to Des Moine, Iowa. As I think I've said before,
northern Iowa is kinda pretty. Lots of low rolling hills.
Reminds me of the Syracuse area. Once in Des Moine, we hung
a right and headed out into the plains. Made it as far as
Omaha and stopped for the night. Got up the very next morn-
ing to tackle the bulk of the drive. Nebraska. Seemed like
we were in Nebraska for 2 or 3 weeks that day. But 'long
towards afternoon, a sign marked 'Colorado' popped up in the
distance, we made a 15 degree left and aimed the lights for
Denver. 'Bout 3 hours later we turned off the highway onto a
little side road and headed out across the foothills in the
general direction of Boulder.
Rolled into downtown Boulder and couldn't remember the
name of either of the hotels. Ah well, they're near the
university somewhere. Finally spotted another TR-6 in a
hotel parking lot, (after having driven past the Clarion
twice without noticing all the TR's.....) turned in, and
discovered that I was even at the hotel I was supposed to be
at. Since the Clarion was a little high priced, I had
decided to split a room at the 'alternate hotel' which was a
little cheaper, with one of the british-cars mailing list
folks, the proprieter of the Fat Chance Garage and Brewery
and driver of a white TR-4, Mark Bradekis. As it turns out,
quite a few of the attendees including TRF was bunked down
at the Holiday Inn. Made for interesting evenings at the
bar.
Wednesday - Registration & Pool Party
Since I got in a day early, I was up and registered the
next morning by about 10:30. Started running into folks I
knew from the last 2 years right away. Was horribly
embarassed by how many names I had forgotten, but once I
started seeing people with their cars, it began to come
back... Made a quick impromptu run down to Colorado Springs
(about 70 miles due south through the foothills) with Jeff
Rust and some other friends from Ontario at 'a brisk pace'.
Had a blast. Got back just in time to wander in to the patio
party and meet everyone else.
Spotted Mark @ the patio party, grabbed a couple of
beers, and had an impromptu british-cars group meeting. Met
Chris Kent and So Susan, dragged Bill Sohl over, as well as
John Lye. Now to understand, I talk to Mark, Bill, Chris and
John nearly every day, but Bill is in N.J., Mark in Utah,
Chris in northern California, and John is in St. Louis. So
we don't get to actually see one another often. In fact, I'd
only ever actually met Mark & Bill before.
Thursday - The Autocross
Since the autocross was scheduled to begin the next
morning bright and early at 9:00 am, they were running tech
out in the lot @ the Clarion. Got 'Lizbeth all checked out,
but had to go to the autocross chairperson to clarify that
Yokohama A008R's were in fact street tires and didn't put me
into modified class.(remember this, it becomes important
later....There will be a quiz) Got that taken care of,
grabbed the rest of the folks, took a look at 'our' cars,
and headed out to dinner.
Got up to a cloudy and cold Thursday morning. Gathered
Chris up (too early as it turns out - sorry Chris) and
headed out to the track. "Track?" Yup, track. RMTC had
rented the racetrack at Mead for the day with the general
plan that we run the autocross in the morning (3 runs no
less) and then have open track in the afternoon. Had there
been some remote semblance of organization it might have
been a distant possibility. But alas, the organization was
pretty thin. After setting up the official SOL (Slaves Of
Lucas, as we on the british-cars list tend to call our-
selves) pits complete with 16' x 20' awning we trundled over
to the driver's meeting.
The meeting consisted of a few Do's and Don't as well
as the basic plan for the day. Once it was over, they said
"Ok, everyone line up". Well that approach works fine with
10 or 20 cars, but when you have over 125 TR's it doesn't
work so well. Almost immediately, the line was well past the
SOL pit, so I figured, I'd just wait till it went down a
little and hop in line. In the meanwhile, there were things
that needed to be done to get the car ready. Tires to
change, carbs to tune, tweaks to make. But the line never
got any shorter. As noon started to approach, it looked like
the last of the folks were making their first run, so I
managed to get in line and head out for the track.
The course was a big open one. It used most of the
track and came in at just under a mile long. It was a quick
run from the Start line through a light left and a quick
right 90 degree sweeper. This put you straight into a set of
offsets and headed for a very sharp right 90 degree bend.
The exit lead into another slightly confusing set of
offsets. Then you were on the backstraight proper. To keep
the speed down, the put in a 14 cone slalom that reached
2/3rds of the way down the straight. Once you were good and
seasick, another very sharp right lead into a narrowed but
light turn onto the main straight. From there all the way up
to pit in was wide open. I was doing somewhere in the vicin-
ity of 80 across the start finish line. It was fast.
Pulled off course and around into the pit. Pulled what
started to be a quick tire swap with a friend who wanted to
see what A008R's were like on a TR-6. Ended up stripping 2
lug studs and had to clean what was left out with a needle
file. It wasn't pretty. But it was a good thing that I
didn't get run number 2 in until well after 2pm.
Given the lack of organization, and the approaching
rain, it became real clear about 3pm that we were going to
get no more than 2 runs in altogether and that it was going
to rain Real Soon. Pure Luck. The last 3 or 4 folks got
their last run in in the rain and then it started to pour.
All the not-so-serious folks packed up and ran home. That
left about 8 of us die hards after the 10 minute rain ended
and the sun came back out. Then it was time to play in
traffic.
They cleared the cones off of the course and opened the
back section that had not been used for the autocross. The
track manager lead us around for about 10 minutes, brought
us back in and said, "Ok guys, stick together and no pass-
ing, but otherwise just have fun". We had a blast. I was
very clearly the most powerful car out there with Mark's
TR-4 close behind. How badly I wanted to pass the MkI Spit
in front of me. Sigh. But all in all, we got about 45
minutes of track time. It just couldn't be beat. Finished
up, packed up, and headed back to the hotel and dinner.
Friday - Rallye and Funkahna
Got up the next morning to look for the mystery 'clunk'
that had bothered me the day before and to replace the 2 lug
studs that were fried. This meant skipping the rallye, but
it was kinda fun to have TR-6 scattered all over the lot and
kibittzers who knew what it all was.
About 3:00 the funkahna got started. This traditional
event involved driving about 20 yards around one turn blind-
folded (with the aid of your navigator), stopping and chang-
ing a spark plug in a head on a table, jousting 3 tennis
balls off of pylons, fishing a soda out of a cooler with
hook & string, driving in a circle holding onto a string
attached to a central pylon, running over 2 strategically
placed balloons, and stopping, getting out and hitting a
horn.
After watching this for 5 or 10 minutes I convinced
John to navigate while I drove Mark's car. Complete with 8"
wide 50 series tires. Doesn't turn like my car at
all.....While we were in line, we came up with the bright
idea of doing it in full fireproof drivers suits, gloves,
helmets, etc. It was a blast. Especially the blindfolded
part. See I had paced it out earlier... I told John to tell
me when to turn. The starter said 'go!' and I punched it.
Mark's TR-4 accelerates quite nicely. John yelled 'TURN!', I
twitched the wheel counted to one and hit the brake. Took us
about 2 or 3 sec for a section of the course most of the
rest crawled through..... Much applause. But unfortunately
we hit 3 cones we shouldn't have at 10 seconds apiece,
dropped a tennis ball (2 sec penalty) and missed one balloon
(5 sec penalty). Finished to thunderous applause and lot's
of laughter. We had fun and thought no more of it, it was
time to head up the mountain for the Autocross awards.
As we finished up the funkahna, I was approached by one
of the convention organizers who wanted to sound me out
about moving my car from Stock to Modified class in the
autocross since I had beaten every other stock TR-6 by at
least 9 seconds. The next closest car in my class was a TVR
up in the 1.23 range and my fast run had been a 1.14.608.
When I inquired 'Why' the response was that I was using race
tires. Hmmm remember this had been cleared up earlier? I
though so too and pointed this out. "Well, we'll see" was
the reply. After a few other talks it turns out that moving
me out of stock class moved aforementioned organizer from a
third place trophy to 2nd and one of his buddies from 4th to
a 3rd place trophy. Start to smell a rat? I was a little
upset at the after the fact rules change and had a word with
the other convention chairperson. "We'll get it cleared up
and let you know before the awards" was the reply. Well,
they never did talk to the autocross chair, and didn't get
back to me at all. I found out that a TVR had won stock TR-6
class while my stock TR-6 had won TR-6 Modified class when
the trophies were handed out. Not a happy puppy. But Chris
Kent took a 2nd place in Stock TR-4, Mark 1st in Modified
TR-4, John Lye a 1st in Under 2.2 Prepared class, and Kirk
Beucher a 3rd in Under 2.2 Prepared.
Saturday - Concours, Panoramic photo, and Banquet.
Well after Friday night, Saturday at 8:00am came
entirely too early. We were to drive over to one of the
University fields to line up for the photo which would be
taken "Promptly at eight". Riiiiiight. Well, at 8:10 I was
still in line in the lot across the street where they were
prestaging us. But they managed to get all the cars lined
up and have the picture taken about 8:30. My copy arrived in
the mail just earlier this week and I must say it is rather
well done. The cars parked on the grass and the mountains in
the background make for a really spectacular picture.
Once the picture was done, we headed across the street
for the concours. They lined the cars up more or less in the
pattern of the British flag, though not separating the
colours, just using the line pattern. There were some ter-
rific looking cars out there. Over 75 TR-6's alone, several
long door TR-2's, just bunches of TR-3's, but a bit light on
the Spitfires and TR-4's. But most definitely the hit of the
show was the 1940something 2000 Roadster. A gorgeous res-
toration that had been finished only days before the conven-
tion started.
Once we all departed from the concours, it was time to
go and get ready for the banquet. Many thanks are due to
Darlene Turner who insured my presentability by taking a
decent iron to my otherwise rather wrinkled french cuff
shirt. Anyway, we all managed to make it over to the Ban-
quet site in the double decker London bus in time for a few
cocktails before it was time to begin. And amazingly
enough, the banquet was rather smoothly done, though I hate
to think what it would have been like if they had thrown the
autocross awards in. As it was, it was 10 minutes shorter
than the 1989 banquet.
Despite the best efforts on the part of all the team
SOL, we amassed quite a pile of trophies on our table by the
end of the evening. Aside from the autocross trophies we had
brought along to have Ken Richardson sign, we collected a
trophy for second place in the funkahna! There was some
serious shock about the table when they called out our names
and announced that we had missed 1st place by not a whole
lot. And that was after over 30 seconds worth of penalties!
Ah, well, we had all but forgotten about it. I think there
should be an award for the most novel method of completing
the funkahna next time. Something akin to the 3 muddy,
grungy tennis balls Andy handed out in '89. My personal
favourite was the car that the navigator got out of and
jumped on the balloons.
Probably the biggest hit of the banquet was the slide
show that they put on just before the awards. Some folks had
gone through the entire 3 days with cameras and had a ter-
rific selection of shots that reflect more on the spirit of
the convention more than anything else I have ever seen. It
was full of pretty cars on the tours, rallyes, at the auto-
cross, and the concours. Ton's of shiny fenders and brilli-
ant smiles.
Sunday and the Long Trip Home
Come Sunday morn, it was time for everyone to saddle up
and drive home. Except for your intrepid Midwest editor how-
ever, who was due to catch a plane at 4:00 and go to Dallas
for a week and come back to Boulder and pick up the car
driving back across the great upper Midwest. Anyhow, we all
gathered for breakfast and had a good farewell. It was kinda
sad to see everyone leave, but there were many promises of
'Next Year in Kentucky!!!' I can't wait...But first I have
to get the engine compartment cleaned out, and the new head,
and the reupholstry kit, and..... Hope to see you there!
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