On the Road to Nowhere
Cold yet? As the winter of 2007 is about to come to a close here in the North East United States, your editor JamesJ takes a jovial look as only he can at the joys of cruising in your Bimmer on hot summer days, taking in the sights, enjoying the performance of the Ultimate Driving Machine, all the while reminiscing about the care free days of summer.
Road Trip!
So, the planets had finally aligned properly and was kind enough to give us a Saturday in July that wasn’t either raining, extremely hot and humid, or in most cases here in the metropolitan NYC area in the summertime, all at once! In any case, both bimmers (Pete’s Black 323Ci and my Topaz Blue 330Ci) were fully washed and fueled and all we needed was something to do…ROAD TRIP!
The question was, where the heck to drive to. The Hamptons were out of the question, because this being the “season”, it was guaranteed to be full of the B&T crowd (that’s the Bridge and Tunnel people for you folks outside the NY area). Our old standby…Route 25A, a twisty two lane road which travels along the length of Long Island, was a tempting option, but we’ve been up and down that particular road so many times that we could probably drive it blindfolded. Besides, we still haven’t found Callahan’s bar!! (Extra points for you guys that get that reference…) So, with the destination dilemma hanging over our heads, we head over to Bayside Diner to mull over the problem.
“So, what’ll you boys having?” asked the weary looking waitress.
“I’ll have the eggs benedict, some O.J. and coffee.” said Pete.
“You’re going to have to go slowly…this is my first day here,” she replied.
“Okay…I’ll have this,” Pete said, pointing to the item on the menu, “with some orange juice and coffee.”
“I’ll have the corned beef hash with eggs over easy, O.J. and coffee also.” I said.
She left with our orders. “Jeez, what happened to the regular waitresses?” wondered Pete.
“Alright, lets get down to brass tacks.” I said, laying out the maps, “Where are we going?”
Having hashed out (pun intended) the route over breakfast, I proceeded to pay the check while Pete gave the pretty Greek cashier the once over. We pulled into an Exxon station next door to stocked up on some items like water and some batteries for the two-way Motorola radios we were using to communicate with each other since we were going convoy style. So, with the radios prepped and our bodies full of caffeine, we were finally ready for the drive ahead. We hop in our respective vehicles and I follow Pete out of the gas station towards our first leg of our trip: the Whitestone Bridge.
It funny how most of our road trips, like the annual Fall Vintage Festival (which used to be sponsored by BMW) in Lime Rock and the Grand Prix du Canada, in Montreal, start out on the Whitestone bridge. The annual Bimmerfest starts out from the Holland Tunnel…but that’s another story. Anyway, as with most things, you have to endure some “bad” to get to the “good”, so the “bad” we had to endure came in the form of the dreaded Cross Bronx Expressway. This piece of road, if I can call it that, is riddled with potholes, uneven patches for potholes, and other road deficiencies that can cause havoc to the finely tuned suspensions of our beloved “Ultimate Driving Machines.”
So, being very careful and avoiding the potholes, we trudge though the Cross Bronx and make our way to the magnificent George Washington Bridge. For those of you unfamiliar with the metropolitan New York City layout, it basically an island with dozens of bridges and tunnels connecting it to the outlying areas, hence the “Bridge and Tunnel crowd” reference above.
Crossing the GWB with very little traffic since it was an early Saturday morning, we head over to the Palisades Parkway. Quoting Peter from his F1 Road Trip article, “A most excellent road, two lanes, twisty, and nicely paved….” Quite frankly I have to agree with him, this is one of my favorite roads with plenty of twisty parts and some nice elevation changes. The only thing I have to add is that the scenery is really breathtaking, especially in the Fall season when the foliage turn to that orange-reddish hue that blankets the surrounding mountains! It also has some sentimental value to me because it was on this particular piece of road where I first learned how to drive…but that’s another story.
Just a couple of miles off the start of the Palisades, there are some lookout points with some spectacular views, since the parkway is situated on a 550-foot precipice, running along the west bank of the Hudson river. Ear popping territory!
Because traffic was virtually non-existent, we started to stretch out the bimmers’ engines. Fairly confident that there were no smokeys around, (we both had our electronic counter measures on. Read: radar detectors), I put the hammer down and the speedometer started to inch northward. Pete follow suit and stuck to my tail. We cruised for a bit like that, hovering around the century mark, enjoying the smooth ride and the confident, inspiring handling that these magnificent machines afford. Driving around like this on nicely paved roads, one can quite easily understand how those lucky folks in Germany can drive like this every day on the Autobahn (traffic permitting of course).
Traveling at this high rate of speed, we quickly arrived at our next way point: the Tappan Zee Bridge, a 3.1 mile long bridge which takes us across the Hudson River into Westchester county, located here are some of the most historic areas of New York State. We make our way into the Taconic State Parkway, which was one of our “destination” roads, having been inspired by a recent Roundel (BMWCCA Magazine) article on the joys of driving this particular piece of road. Although it certainly lived up to its billing, we started to run into some traffic, which significantly cut down on the SAG (silly ass grin) factor. Since we really had no place to go, we went with the flow and used the opportunity to down shift and pass on the left when traffic permitted. We also made some good use of my Nikon digital camera and took some pictures whenever a photo-op presented itself. As you can see from these photos…the opportunity presented itself quite a bit.
During one of these photo ops, we were kind of trespassing on someone’s property to get a nice shot of the cars, so Pete suggested that I pretend to look at the map while he was taking pictures so that if anybody asked, we could pretend to be lost. While he was taking his sweet time framing the perfect shot, I actually did look at the map and to my chagrin, found that we were only about 15 miles west of the Lime Rock Raceway! Lime Rock is the cradle of motor sports in New England, home to numerous racing events, a small track steeped in history and a very enjoyable venue for the fans and drivers.
“Pete, you know we are not that far from Lime Rock. Wanna head over there?”
“Why not? We haven’t been there in a while, but let’s stop to eat first, I’m getting hungry.”
So, with a destination finally decided on, we point ourselves west and make our way to the raceway. Crossing over the border to Connecticut, we had to turn off and remove our radar detectors, since the laws there do not allow it. It did not really matter too much though since the road we were on was only two lanes wide (one lane in each direction) and was nice and twisty with lots of elevation changes. Just the kind of road that makes you appreciate the tight handling that the 3 series have, especially if you opted for the “Sports Package”. Those tighter suspension and the excellent sports seats really come in handy! With hardly anyone on the road, we push the cars to the limits on the curves, the SAG pasted on our faces the whole time. It is times like these that one tends to realize that even though you might have paid a pretty penny to own one of these magnificent machines, it is damn worth every penny!
We stop at the next town, if you can call it that. It is basically one main road and a bunch of buildings on each side. Anyway, we look for a place to eat, and with a town this small, you are probably thinking a quaint diner or a local pizza place, but what do we end up having? Chinese food! It’s nice to know that wherever you go in the continental United States, you can always find someplace to eat General Tso’s chicken.
After lunch, we get back in our respective bimmers and continue on towards the raceway. It wasn’t that much further and after a few minutes on Route 112, we end up in familiar looking territory and eventually at the Outfield Gate, which is the entrance closest to the main straights.
Since we didn’t really plan on ending up here, we didn’t check the schedule to see if the park was open for any events. The gates were locked, so it didn’t look like anything was happening.
WELL!! We weren’t going to have a locked gate deter us from getting in! We didn’t drive all the way here to be turned back now!
“You want to try the Infield Gate?” I ask Pete through the two-way radio.
“Why not.” Came the reply. “It’s worth a shot.”
I follow Pete around to the Infield gate and we see an old man sitting on a folding chair blocking the gate entrance.
“You think he’ll just let us in?” I ask.
“I don’t know?” Pete replied, approaching the guard in his car.
I watch Pete from my car as the old man hands him a piece of paper and a pen. Pete hands back the pen and paper and drives into the raceway grounds!
“What the #%&*! How the hell did you get in?” I say into the Motorola two-way.
“He hands me an agreement and says to sign if I wanted to go in.” Pete replies.
I drive up to the guy and he hands me the piece of paper which was basically a boilerplate form with lawyer speak stating that they are not responsible for any damages or injuries to our cars or ourselves. I sign the agreement and he waves me through!
I pull up behind Pete’s car and follow him across the bridge over the track into the infield. We find that we have the run of the place…it turns out that there was a Porsche Car Club meet happening and that some of the boys were running their cars on the track. After getting some stares from some of the club members, (after all a couple of bimmers in a sea of Porsches does tend to stand out) we drive down into the paddocks and park our cars in the grassy area near the footbridge by the hairpin turn off the main straights.
We stretch our legs a bit and start to explore the area. From past experience when we were here on an event day, we were allowed in the paddock areas but were never able to go into the pits or the media towers. Well when I said that we had the run of place, I wasn’t kidding! We were able to go up into the media tower and get a view of the track from above that we never had before. We were also able to go into pit lane and check out the queue of cars waiting their turn at the track.
After watching some of the Porsche boys drive laps around and taking some pictures, we get back into our cars for the long drive home.
The drive home was uneventful, until we hit some traffic from the people coming home from the beaches. Having waited about an hour in line for the privilege of paying to cross the Triboro Bridge, we make our way to our respective homes. Although the cars were splattered with dead bugs, I think even they were happy to have finally been driven properly. Next time maybe we’ll plan a little bit better and have a destination in mind before driving off…nah!
