I rode down from Connecticut with the gang at Sports Car Restoration. We left at 4:30 AM and it took took 14 hours to get there. I've known the guys at SCR for a couple years now, but only recently have spent enough time there to really get to know them, and I have to say they really are a bunch of legitimately cool guys. The craft work that goes on in this shop is second to none.

We brought the e30 323 Euro, the e30 325 with m50 swap, the 69 ///M2 (2002 with s14 swap), and a 1969 Bavaria. I rode down with Matt McGinn, owner of SCR, in the m50 swapped car. It has a full Bilstein and spring setup (don't know which springs), plus an e36 rack upgrade and E30 M3 seats, which made for a supremely comfortable ride.

It was a very mellow ride down, with great conversation and company. I took a lot of pictures on the way down, something that continued the whole weekend. We got to the hotel early in the evening, and the parking lot was already full of intriguing vintage BMWs including several 02s, a few e28s, a couple e30s... all very cool.

We hung out Friday night and enjoyed some light carousing. Saturday morning we slept in, and admittedly blew off the driving event before the show. While it might have been fun to drive around in a couple miles of vintage BMW traffic, we had just driven 700+ miles in vintage cars and needed the rest. This also allowed us to make it to the Vineyard fairly early, and I spent the next several hours walking around taking pictures of as much of the show as I could.

Saturday night we had tickets to a CCA dinner, but few felt any urgency to attend. We relaxed back at the hotel for a couple hours, and I transfered all the day's pictures, took a nap, and showered. We ventured out to Winston-Salem and enjoyed dinner at a local spot.

The next morning I woke up to find that most of our party didn't feel like waiting for us, and had left for Waffle House for breakfast. It worked out well because I needed to bust out a speedy valve adjustment on the Bavaria, as 4 hours at 4000 rpm had left it with a couple ticky valves. 20 minutes later, we were good to go. We teamed up with an e28 M5 owned by a Rhode Island gentleman who had been staying at the same hotel, and an e28 ACS S5 owned by another Connecticut resident. The owner of the M5 mentioned there was a route that would take us an extra hour or two of travel time, but it was said to have some of the best winding roads to be found anywhere. It sounded like a no-brainer to me, so after teaming up with the Waffle House traitors again at a combo gas station/McDolnard's, we hit the road.

After a little but of street driving we arrived at the Blue Ridge Parkway. It began as a fairly mellow, green, tree-lined backroad, but after a bit of driving we suddenly found ourselves in the kind of on-camber corners found in magazines or movies. Thiese were the kind of roads that dreams are made of - I was riding in the Bavaria at this point, taking pictures, with the owner of the car driving and excitedly yelled for me to take pictures. I loved it. I was actually alternating between taking photos and grabbing at the Oh Snap! handle as the Bav is a little squirrelly under hard braking, and doesn't have a lot of power to power out of corners. We quickly lost the rest of the cars in the party. A few miles up the road we caught up to them again, and we soon stopped for fuel. Everyone was pretty amped up about that section of windy road, I myself made the comment "that was awesome, totally worth coming this way!" The response to that was "What are you talking about, we've got another 85 miles of that to go!" My joy at hearing that was only outweighed by my desire to drive the Bav. The owner happily complied, and we set off again.

Let it be said that the Blue Ridge Parkway is not to be missed. There's an elevation change of approximately 3000 feet, and its every single square inch is stunningly beautiful. We didn't hit any of the scenic vewpoints as a group, but the owner of the Bav and I pulled off for about 30 seconds to grab some quick pics. It took us a good while to catch up to the group again at that point, but we were thoroughly amused while doing so. We couldn't experience the full Blue Ridge Parkway as it would have taken us too long and too far from our route home. I plan on returning the Blue Ridge and driving the whole length of it this summer/fall. It's such an amazing road that I'd be willing to drive several hundred miles to get there.

The rest of the trip back was as unremarkable as the trip down, in the sense that nothing went wrong. We stopped for dinner and had a couple fuel and bathroom breaks. I was pulled over for having a taillight out on the Bav, but was let go without even a verbal warning. I have to say the entire trip was excellent, and not due to any one heart-stoppingly amazing event, but instead due to the overall enjoyable pace of the weekend. it was very relaxed, and nothing was ever rushed. Never once did anybody have to be the "cool guy" doing drive-bys on the highway at 120+ mph, and it was all basically traffic speeds the entire ride down and back with very responsible driving. Nobody had to be yelled at for pulling stupid driving stunts, and we never had any problems with other traffic on the road.

I get the impression that the vast majority of the people going to the event had a different experience than we did. I can see them going on the drive Saturday morning, and going to the CCA dinner that night, and putting the car back in the garage until the next event or perfect driving day, whereas we were just there to hang out and have a good weekend. Not on anyone else's schedule or timeline, we got to do things at our leisure and at our own pace.

We got back to Connecticut around 12:30 am, unpacked the travel cars, packed up our stuff and headed for home. The next day was Memorial Day, a much-needed day off. The entirety of the next week I was still on a high from the trip. It was exactly the way road trips are meant to be experienced, and I would jump at the chance to take a road trip with these guys again.