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On-The-Road Diary Entry 9/09/26: As Carol is always ready to tell me: "Hey, THIS is what you wanted, Bozo!!!" And of course she's right. And I'm both pleased and privileged to be where I am (or have been, or am about to go...even if it makes my head spin around on my neck now and then like barfing-up-pea-soup Linda Blair in The Exorcist) and I realize every day what a lucky, lucky sumbitch I am. Even if I occasionally feel like I'm drowning (or, conversely, am in the process of being run over by an entire squadron of lumbering, clakety-clack, 75,000-lb. WWII Sherman tanks)...but, like Art Baker used to say on my folks' old B&W TV set that looked like a goldfish bowl back when I was in short pants, a runny nose and skinned knees: "YOU ASKED FOR IT!"
Then again, having work to do that feels important and worthwhile and even a little bit desperate now and then is a genuine gift, and having a (mostly) willing & wonderful partner to share it with--I mean over the long haul and the rough spots, too--is an even bigger gift. So if I feel a little worn down and run over by my own ambition and expectations and ridiculously optimistic scheduling and a hefty dollop of raw hubris now and then, I just have to keep reminding myself that it's a GOOD thing. And a really, really LUCKY thing, too... I am blessed. Truly. No doubt about it. So here's the current state of affairs, projects in process and travels to [mostly] exotic,far-flung locales for exciting and enrichening motoring events. Carol and I took a wee break from flogging away on the new book (it's ALMOST done...really!) to head east to Lime Rock, Connecticut, so we could hawk books to the swarm of entrants, spectators & attendees at the 44th annual Lime Rock Historic Festival. Which featured Alfa Romeos this year, and I don't have to tell most of you how close to my heart and personal history Alfas live. Let me explain: I only ever won ONE SINGLE RACE in my own car during my early, anglo-partisan Triumph TR3/TVR 2500M "Dinosaurs, Disasters and Disappointments" motor racing period. And even that was just a frickin' 5-lap MCSSC Saturday "grid race" at Milwaukee's well-worn and seriously gnarly old State Fair Park road circuit in Milwaukee. And the only reason I won that race was on account of my TR3 (see image below) didn't realize the nrace was only 5 laps long and hadn't gotten around to blowing a head gasket or spewing out oil or bursting a radiator hose or losing a wheel yet. But I'm pretty sure it was getting ready to do just that... Me (below) on my way to my ONLY TR3 race victory at State Fair Park in, say, 1973? I'd done extensive (if occasionally ill-advised) suspension work (can you say "STIFF?"), and it handled like a freaking brick on a roller skate...
But then I met my wonderful Italian bride-to-be Carol (on a blind date, no less) and, even if she was the product of a good home and a Catholic Girls' School upbringing while I was a bit of a substance-abusing, free-wheeling/free-thinking college-dropout/ethnically Jewish wild man freshly back from a multi-year hippie-era odyssey in Lansing, Chicago, Denver, Boulder, Oakland, San Francisco & Seattle! And if it seems we were a bit like oil and water, let me just remind you that all really great salad dressings start out with those same two ingredients... We both knew we were Meant To Be that very first night. Honest we did. Go figure. So we got married and opened up our ill-starred and destined-for-the-dustbin sports car shop (Mellow Motors at 747 Wrightwood in Chicago) and I raced a slightly less raggedy Triumph TR3 that I put on its head at the very first race we went to after we were married...full story with all the grimacing, angst, embarrassment & eye-rolls is in the new book. We eventually sold Mellow Motors (we really deserved to go broke, but kind providence supplied us with yet another gullible young motor enthusiast with money in his checking account and a hot, moist, sportycar gleam in his eye). Carol had an office job downtown then and I did several brutally cold & unsatisfying winter months in suspended-rcer purgatory as a service writer/possible "future assistant service manager" (my unsmiling boss loved to dangle that title in front of his service-writing staff) at a north side Lincoln Mercury dealership. It wasn't a good fit for me. Or for the Lincoln-Mercury dealership, if I want to be honest about it. Then I answered an ad for a job as a Mercedes-Benz service manager (for which I was thoroughly unqualified) and, at the end of the interview, the General Manager smiled and said: "There's no way I can hire you as a Mercedes-Benz Service Manager, Burt. You wouldn't last a week. But I'll hire you right this minute as a car salesman. With your background & your line of bullshit, that's what you should be doing!" And so I did. And that led me, through a slightly circuitous route, to becoming a salesman at Loeber Motors (Mercedes-Benz, Rolls-Royce, Volkswagen & Alfa Romeo) in downtown Chicago, and I sold the living shit out of the new, Bosch fuel-injected VW Rabbits because I had a mechanical background and honestly believed--still do--that they were, at that time, the best damn small car you could buy. And there is nothing more capable, effective or successful as a good salesman who truly believes in his product... I also came to know Alfas. Oh, I knew they were considered a bit "fringe" and "quirky" (remember my Anglophile sportycar roots) and I'd never really had a lot of interface with the brand, the cars or their truly magnificent history. But several of my exoticar-mechanic racing friends had Alfas (or, at the very least, loved and respected Alfas) and called them "the poor man's Ferrari." As you can imagine, it wasn't long before I became infected myself...and the disease quickly took root and flourished. Thanks to selling a lot of Rabbits and a supposedly "totaled," insurance-claim '74 Alfa Spider up in the dealership's body shop, I had my first-ever Alfa racecar. And my first Alfa street car. The important note here is that they were the same blessed car! And it served me well in both roles. Plus it was a hell of a good racecar at our home track of Blckhawk Farms. Through Blackhawk's Turn Three Carousel and out of Turn Six, my Alfa would squat and squirt while the previously dominant Datsun Z-Cars would hike up & even spin their inside rear wheels and not put their power down. In fact, once we got the right tires & figured a few things out, we started winning. And winning. And then we won some more. To the tune of three class championships in a row! I ultimately went through a series of Alfa Spider racecars, earned some excellent--even gaudy--results on the MCSCC, SCCA National and Vintage Racing circuits and became a through-and-through Alfisti. The Alfa people and the Alfa club(s) are pretty good, too... Images below Middle: My 1982 SCCA "Showroom Stock" (wink-wink/nudge-nudge) Alfa Spider. 8 Nationals, 4 class wins, 2 lap records More Middle: Late friend/head wrench/crew chief Eric taking my Alfa through Drivers' School (with ME as his instructor!). This was his first solo lap... Bottom: The originally Horst Kwech-built AUSCA Duetto Spider we restored/rebuilt, prepped and ran in the early days of North American vintage racing. Joe Marchetti was my partner/backer in this car and, up against the relatively inexperienced & unsophisticated competition of the mid-1980s, we racked up 13 class/under-two-liter wins in 15 races and suffered only one DNF when one of those little, cube-shaped Facet fuel pumps crapped out. Wish I still had that car...
But back to a couople weeks ago in Connecticut: The Lime Rock weekend kicked off with a racecar tour/parade through the surrounding countryside, villages & hamlets that ended up at the quaint, relaxed and lovely Falls Village Inn (in Falls Village, natch!) and included a very large bagpipe band that appeared seemingly out of the trees and played some wonderful music, and they were followed by an equally excellent jazz combo while people milled about, ate, drank, chatted and soaked in the equally historic & bucolic motorsports atmosphere. And the blessed race weekend hadn't even started yet!! You have NEVER seen a turnout of Alfas like they had at The 44th Annual Lime Rock Historic Festival! this past Labor Day weekend. Not anywhere. Not ever. More on that in a moment... But first, a little personal history: I have to admit that when I first came to Lime Rock Park lo, these many years (no, make that DECADES) ago, I thought it was a quaint, handsome, lovely and ostensibly genteel place, heavily infused with history, the gorgeous, green scenery of the surrounding Berkshires, proper manners and the kind of respect that only comes from old money and breeding with no (or very little) in-breeding or dilution. We've come to love it there, as the rest of America seems a bit loud, crass, boorish and strident by comparison, and it's a real treat to have all that noise turned down for awhile. But I was not quite ready for the unique driving challenge that Lime Rock presented. I mean, I'd raced at Road America--all 4.048 miles of it!--and I could see by the track map I almost scoffed at on the plane ride in that Lime Rock struggled to be a mile-and-a-half around. What terrors could it possibly hold for an experienced hotshoe like myself? What I didn't quite notice was that the lap average speed was higher than damn near any other road-racing circuit on the calendar... Oh, I was fine when I first ventured out in one of Skip Barber's regularly over-revved & abused Formula Fords (on a freebie journalist deal, of course!), and that feeling of control and security lasted all the way through the great, compound sweeper (or is it?) of Big Bend flowing into Turn Two. There was lots of runoff space should you stick your toe a little too deep into the water. And before I was through The Left Hander (the only one on thr track) for the first time, I could see how you had to give that one up a bit so you could be properly positioned for the far more important right-hander over a small bridge that followed. Because that led to what was then "No Name Straight" (now, and quite properly, "Paul Newman Straight" after the brilliant, philanthropic, fun-loving and multi-talented Nice Guy actor/racer who learned much of his racecraft flogging laps around Lime Rock). From that heartbeat on, Lime Rock gets faster, seems narrower and feels FAR more intimidating with every yard of pavement traversed. And the final, plummeting downhill Diving Turn is a true gut check, like The Kink at Road America, Turn Two at Mosport and Turn Six at Laguna Seca. Plus it's vital to both a decent lap time and any chance of getting around the gentleman (or lady) up ahead... In fact (as I have said many times over the PA there): "Lime Rock races more like a short, paved oval than a traditional road course." And it does. Like I said, Lime Rock is SPECIAL! But the Historic weekend there is doubly special because of the incredible collection of cars and eclectic assortment of people it draws in. And how eveyone seems to make allowances and act nice and leave space for others because that's the only way you can fit a damn ocean into a hip flask like they do every year at The Lime Rock Historic Festival! The Alfa turnout was nonpariel, what with cars from my friends at The Revs Institute in Naples, FL (if a visit isn't already on your Bucket List, it should be!), Alfa Romeo's own heritage collection in Italy and an unbelievable selection of cars from the 1920s, 1930s and right on through the 60s, 70s and 80s from assorted racers, diehard Alfa enthusiasts, reknowned "name" collections (Auriana, Audrain, etc.) plus a few private collectors who, for understandable reasons, prefer to avoid gaudy publicity and remain anonymous.
OVERDUE BOOK NEWS (it's not the "news" that's overdue...it's the freakin' BOOK!) At Road America this past weekend I was actually able to show off the full-color/glossy-paper PRESS PROOF of the new book, and folks were properly impressed with the fact that it looks wonderful and takes at least two strong hands to lift it! There's still lots of niggling things to do, fix, sand, polish and worry over, but My Hand to God it should be off to the printer in a couple more weeks. No, I really MEAN it this time! But that means you sideline-waiters & knuckle draggers can STILL get in as sponsors (or into the Vanity Gallery, with pix of your favorite car!) if you just get off your butts and give me a ring or an email. But the Window of Opportunity is closing, so don't be a dawdler. Remember that, long after you're gone, people will look at that picture of your wonderful car and say: "I figger he coulda had a nice house in Florida for the same damn money..."
For those of you who may be intrigued by our "vanity shots" gallery photos, let me assure you that the artists and I have been hard at work making SURE that this is a special and unusual opportunity. These pix go in every freakin' copy. And just LOOK what we've done to make them special: We can do the same for you and YOUR ride... (Blurb attached at bottom, and you can always reach out to me at thinkfast@mindspring.com or call the Think Fast office at 708-383-7203)
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For those of you WITHOUT a memorable ride (or 500 bucks to blow on something that will truly last forever), you can still get in as a sponsor. You get your name (or somebody else's name if you want it to be a surprise gift) in the book on the sponsor list. You get a freakin' driving cap. You get a fancy-schmancy sponsor & advertiser Special Edition. You get a huge helping of my undying gratitude! Carol's too. And all for $250!!! Details on the website at www.lastopenroad.com. |
Catch the latest poop & pictures, the Jay Leno interview, Last Open Road swag & highly inappropriate attire from Finzio's Store and the lurid & occasionally embarrassing "ride with Burt" in-car racing videos on the hopefully now fully operational website at: |
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