I’m lucky to have some good friends that share my love (okay, total obsession) with Porsche. Two friends in particular, Gary Barklind and Martin Wild also share a willingness to adorn their beautiful cars with historical racing liveries…nothing subtle about our cars anymore! We have been talking about getting together for a livery themed drive for some time, but this past summer, we actually made it happen. For more details on my livery, you can see this post from early in 2022.

Gary has a 981 Cayman with the Martini Racing “hippie” livery which looks perfectly psychedelic. Martin has a 987 Cayman with the red and blue striped Brumos Racing livery that is a perfect match for the lines of his car. I have a modern interpretation of the classic Martini Racing team livery on my 718 Spyder. Three different generations of mid-engine Porsches and three timeless racing liveries out to have some fun.

Shep, my 12 year old son, joined us on the trip and also took one of my favorite photos from the day:

We met up early in the morning at the intersection of SR 9 and 20 in Sedro Wooley to gas up, grab some snacks and start the drive:

Our route took us north on SR 9 and some spirited driving on Mosquito Lake Road, a true gem of a twisty back road. We stopped at the one-lane bridge crossing the middle fork of the Nooksack river to stretch our legs and take some photos. We got lucky and another car didn’t come along for about 20 minutes.

Our next stop was in Welcome, and we took another short break and of course…more photos. We had a video crew along with us as well and this stop allowed them to catch up. The poor guys were in an old Toyota Land Cruiser and the didn’t stand a chance in the twisties!

We had a blast making our way up Mt. Baker Highway and we had virtually no traffic. The cars we did see were so enamored with our cars that they pulled over and let us pass (which never happens)! We took our time exploring Mt. Baker and driving up to Artist Point. Lots of fun photos at the top!

Some shots at Heather Meadows:

More photos at the visitor center with Table Mountain in the background and then on to Artist Point:

We made our way back down the mountain for a lunch stop at Chair 9 Woodstone Pizza and Bar:

A few shots courtesy of our our film crew:

Gary and Martin partnered on writing a Spiel article about the trip and it was fun to get to re-live the whole experience a few months later when the magazine arrived! You can read the fantastic Spiel article here – https://www.nwpublishingcenter.com/Spiel_Nov22_Digital.pdf

Here is the video that the film crew captured of the day. It was an amazing day of driving! Huge thanks to Gary and Martin for planning the route and being such great companions. Thanks to Andrew and his crew for keeping up as best they could and capture some great footage:

Avants is an incredible, inclusive and diverse car club that started in Seattle and has now expanded to several other cities around the country. Wonderful people, a first class quarterly publication, and great events. Each year, they hold a big one, AvantsFest, at Pacific Raceways in the Seattle area. Tons of cars, friends, vendors, racing, and this year…a lot of sun. It was hot! I managed to convince both my sons, Gabe and Shep, to come with me, but they quickly retreated into the shade with some sweet treats to beat the heat.

Krissy is the local Seattle club leader and our host for the day. The whole Avants team worked their butts off to prepare for and pull off such a big event!

A tiny portion of the cars but I thought my camera was going to melt, so I put it away 🙂

I found some shade and captured some fun racing action:

It’s been way too long since I updated the blog. Okay…a personal car journal with a readership of two people (thanks Meg and Mom!) can hardly be called a blog, I still enjoy doing it and it gives me an excuse to relive some of the fun car related activities that I get up to!

Remember summer? When it was warm outside, the sun was shining and the streets weren’t frozen over around the country? One fun event that I attended was the Ice Cream Social hosted by Griot’s Garage. Griot’s sells their top of the line car care products around the world, but we are lucky to have this company, and the great family behind it, right in our backyard. This event was hosted at their restoration facility and we had full access to the place during the event. Great people, great cars, free ice cream, and my son Gabe even joined in for the fun!

A few months ago, the whole family helped me install an exhaust in the Spyder and Meg captured the day in photos. The whole day is detailed in this post – https://911maniac.com/2022/01/19/kline/. The Porsche club wanted to turn the post into an article so I worked on some updates and sent it over. They decided to make it the cover feature which meant I needed a good photo for the cover. The new theme for covers is to mix cars and people which gave me an excuse to drag my family around for the day and try to get a family self-portrait. Meg used her artistry to get us staged and the kids did their part by putting up with hundreds of photos at multiple locations 🙂 I couldn’t be happier with how the whole thing came together.

Here’s a digital copy of the edition you can view or download:

Some additional photos:

I’m lucky to live in an area with a thriving car culture, where we typically have a handful of options for car events every Saturday and Sunday. Things slow down in the late fall and winter, but even then, you can typically find something fun going on. One of my favorites is the Saturday morning cars and coffee known as Exotics at Redmond Town Center. Incredibly well run, all volunteer, and I believe the biggest weekly car show in the Northwest. They are particular about the cars they accept in the “show” area, but the event is open to everyone and typically draws a great mix of cars and awesome people.

Here are some photos from one of their biggest car shows of the season…German Car Day. This is a special themed day where German cars are showcased. All exotic brands are welcome, but it is the German models that take center stage. This year, I had the fun of going with Gabe and it was on his birthday. The closer he gets to 16 the more he seems to be interested in cars…funny thing that.

When we arrived, we were pulled out of line and brought to the center court where we eventually shared a space with a stunning Porsche Carrera GT. Very good company for my lowly little Spyder.

A few weeks later, it was just an “ordinary” day at Exotics but the weather and the turnout were great! The last few photos were actually taken at The Shop, on my way home from Exotics.

I had my first real taste of high performance driving on a track at Pacific Raceways not long ago. I wasn’t sure if I would love it or hate it, but I had already registered for another PNWR Driver Education track day at The Ridge. Thankfully I loved my experience at Pacific and I was excited to have another go.

I’ve had more experienced drivers explain the differences between the tracks, and each person seems to have their favorite. The Ridge seems to be the overall fan favorite and I can see why. The track has recently been repaved, and it feels like a more modern racetrack. More turns, a wider track, “more technical”, some blind corners following elevation changes and likely safer if you run off the track because you have nothing but grass and gravel to contend with. Pacific has more walls and trees to greet you if you make a big mistake. I need more experience on both tracks before picking a favorite. Pacific is much closer and I felt like I did better by the end of the day at Pacific. The Ridge remained a mystery to me, but one that I plan to solve with more experience. My day at The Ridge was also very wet…it poured the whole time. I look forward to experiencing The Ridge in better weather.

It was a very early morning start (a theme with most of my car events) and I was happy that Shep was joining me for the day. He wouldn’t be allowed in the car while I was on the track, but he got to hang out at the race track all day and experience the sights and sounds of cars ripping around at speed. I also bribed him with basically unlimited treats for the day. Given the rain he had to put up with, he earned it! We enjoyed the 2 hour drive from Seattle to Shelton, fueled with coffee, breakfast sandwiches and go-juice for the Spyder. You can see how prepared Shep was for the wet weather…that is his swim team jacket and it was perfect for the day.

Once again, I’m thankful that a pro photographer, https://www.bouchezphotography.com, was there to capture some fantastic photos. He put up with cold, wet conditions all day to capture these images and I can’t thank him enough! These are all Christian’s photos:

Here are some videos from the day. Not because they are impressive…on the contrary, I was slow and terrible. I’m just putting them here so I don’t lose them.

Here is the first session where I’m mostly focused on just getting to know the trackJust getting to know the track.

The second and third sessions are wetter. I started to get to know the track, but never felt comfortable at higher speed. The car, even with good wet condition tires, still felt unsettled in the standing water. The straight felt dangerous to me given the threat of hydroplaning. More experienced drivers didn’t have as much of a problem but I have not mastered The Art of Racing in the Rain yet. Given how rainy and wet it was, I called it a day after the third session and Shep and I enjoyed the 2 hour drive home.

PNWR and The Shop…two great tastes that taste great together. This summer, PNWR has partnered with The Shop to host a few Porsche themed cars and brunch. Both were well attended, even though it was raining for the first event. Porsche people don’t mind a little rain, I can’t say the same for the Ferrari club 🙂

The next week the weather was much nicer, but I was too busy chatting to remember to take any photos! Here are a few:

As much time as I spent around cars, and as many high-performance cars as I’ve owned, my actual track driving experiences is very limited. Limited to zero. Tons of tours, a handful of Driver Skills events, countless cars and coffee events…no real track experience. It’s like the Fight Club line, “How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight?”. How much can I know about myself as a driver if I’ve never driven at speed on a track? A big part of what has kept me away is fear. Fear of the expense. Fear of damaging my car. Fear of injury. Fear of getting addicted to it. After my first experience, I’m happy to report that only one of those fears came true…I’m hopelessly addicted.

I’ve gotten to know and admire a number of friends in the PCA/PNWR group that organize our Driver Education / High-Performance Driving events and I’ve met a lot of the instructors over the years. I finally completed my first DE event at Pacific Raceways and it was a total blast. Incredibly well run, fun, safe and I learned so much more about my car and myself as a driver.

The day starts early with a 7am arrival time at Pacific Raceways in Kent, WA. It was a dark and rainy morning and the track was wet. Very wet…standing water in a number of areas. I was very happy that I had my Michelin PS4S tires. They are amazing street tires for the Northwest, but not ideal track tires. Unless of course it’s raining 🤣 Here’s a quick video and you can see how wet it was.

Thankfully the weather gods smiled down on us and the rain stopped, the sun came out and we had a beautiful 2nd half of the day. Dry track…race on! It made for the perfect first time out on the track. I had half the day to go slow in the rain, explore the track, learn some fundamentals and then I had half the day to also go slow on a dry track!

Pacific Raceways is an older track, and can be unforgiving, but we all escaped without incident. My instructor, John Silk, was a great teacher. He took me out in his car so I could experience faster laps than I was capable of putting down. He was patient and pushed me to improve with each session. Coming out of the long straight and setting up for turn 2 was my favorite part of the track. I was able to carry more and more speed into turn 2 as the day went on and my confidence increased. I hit a top speed of 131 mph on the straight, kicked the backend out a few times coming out of turn 3B (still working on that one) and had so much fun testing my limits and the limits of the car. I can’t wait for my next DE day at The Ridge, another local track that I’m excited to check out.

I’m thankful that a pro photographer, https://www.bouchezphotography.com, was there to capture some fantastic photos. These are all Christian’s photos: