This morning Vancouver classic car enthusiasts woke up to blue skies and sunshine, and thus a huge crowd of classic cars met up in North Vancouver for the annual Sea to Sky Thanksgiving Run. After a short parking-lot show and shine, while we waited for everyone to arrive, there was a quick driver’s meeting and we were off!
The group enjoys a drive North on the famous Sea to Sky highway, where twists and turns swap between hugging cliff edges on one side, and ocean views on the other. Along the way you may find yourself driving with a group of pre-war cars, early volkswagens, European sports cars, Italians, American Hot-Rods or an example from pretty much any enthusiast area of interest.
Our destination was the Sea to Sky Gondola in Squamish, where the group enjoys coffee, morning pastries and a chance to really check out each other’s vehicles. As per our tradition, donations for the Squamish food bank were collected. This year we raised just over $450 in cash donations, and enough food to take up the parking space of an entire Volkswagen in the garage!
We’ll post more photos as we have them, but here’s a selection from Dave and Warwick
[print_gllr id=4719]
With the driver’s meeting out of the way, we departed the hotel and headed south towards highway 20. Typically the organizer doesn’t depart in the first half of the group, instead staying to ensure cars get fired up okay. Today, as I closed the driver’s meeting, I almost went for a Le Mans-style dash to my car…I had to be near the front! Leading most of the group onto Highway 20 West, it soon became quite evident why. The climb from Okanogon up to Twisp via the Loup Loup pass is fairly steep. One might say “very steep”, if you find yourself with only 60 horsepower behind you. It wasn’t long before I was using every pull out possible to let our entrants by. I may have started in the front, but by the time we arrived in the town of Winthrop, I was very nearly the last car in the group. 
Winthrop, though, was a planned stop for the group. The route book tells us that in 1972 the town residents agreed a ‘theme’ should be created to attract visitors traveling the soon-to-be-finished Highway 20. An “old-west” theme was chosen, and bylaws written requiring every business and building to appear period correct. The sidewalks are boardwalks, even the gas station appears as though it was one of the first in the early 1900’s. With tourism thriving, it makes the perfect morning stop for coffee and pastries, and/or simply walking around to take in the sights. Having once again caught up with the group, I used it as my opportunity to lead the charge towards the finish. 
For the first thirty miles I began to wonder if i had left too early. Even with just 60hp, the Beetle simply rocks along the flats, easily wrapping the speedometer needle into the police-issued ‘performance award’ territory. But soon enough, the climb towards Washington Pass began. This would be the steepest, longest climb of the entire weekend. It wasn’t long before I was passed by an E-Type. The gang of Mini’s appeared in the rear view mirror, with a Mercedes mixed in for good measure. Our speed differential made it seem as though the whole group was escaping a bank heist. A pair of Alfa Duetto’s went by with a Citroen DS, followed soon by a Spider Abnormale. About halfway up I pulled over to check the engine temperature on the beetle (if you can hold the dipstick for more than 30sec, you’re okay!), and was passed by the rest of the group, including a 1950 Jaguar XK150. Oh sure, it has a bazillion more cylinders than I do…but it was all those aluminum body panels that did the trick. 
You would think that crawling up the hill in 2nd and 3rd gear, being passed by all your friends, would be a disappointing part of the day…but in truth, it was absolutely incredible. I got to see each of our entrants today, enjoying the roads together and in new groupings of cars. It wasn’t just the Alfa’s traveling with the Alfas, everyone had been mixing it up and driving with new friends. And while I may have been the slowest one to the top, I did make it! And that’s probably the most important part. I did my best to make up some time on the way back down the passes, but between the speed limits and the swing-axle rear end, I was destined to enjoy the day alone.
Arriving at our Golf Course finish, it turns out I was ‘just’ behind the group, and many of them were still unloading having just parked their cars. The row of cars, each plastered with insect remains, sat otherwise gleaming in the sunlight. The weather had held out for us on day three, the perfect ending to a weekend of driving. Together we dined outside on the patio, overlooking the Skagit Valley. 
I awoke for Day 2 of the Hagerty Fall Classic at about 5:15am, roughly two and a half hours before my alarm. The anticipation for today’s route was too much, suddenly I was awake and the next moment I was reviewing each road for the day in my mind. While we’ve done remote routes and destinations in previous events, today’s roads put a whole new meaning into “out there”. Fuel and food was widely spaced, and careful planning had gone into working out a route that would ensure cars, and their person contents, wouldn’t run out of fuel. Despite weeks of going over the timing in my office, here I was lying in bed at 5:30am doing the math all over again
By our 8:45am driver’s meeting, I had nothing but pure anticipation and excitement in my head. Often, when creating a route for Classic Car Adventures, the process begins with a single road, or destination in mind. When we find brilliant road, the puzzle becomes whether or not we can mix that road into a three day event, and do it at just the right moment. Leave the road too late in the day, and your entrants could be too tired to appreciate it. Start the event off with the best road, and you’ve potentially wasted the ‘wow’ moment before there could be any buildup. For us, designing the perfect event is far from simply booking a few hotels and drawing a squiggly line through the map. As the moment of the ‘perfect road’ nears, the anticipation of having it all work out is like a big adrenalin rush. And so, with that rush in my head I opened the drivers meeting…
At one point this morning, I was looking out the windshield of my ’58 Beetle, following a pack of Mini’s and a ’58 Alfa Romeo Spider. I was being passed by a Mercedes 280SL working it’s way up the pack, and as I looked in my rear view mirror a Jaguar XK120 had just come into view. You simply can’t spend a Saturday in any better way!
With lunch over, the time for our chosen road had come. We’d be heading West, through the highland mountains back into the Okanogan Valley. To find the turn the route book simply described a ghost town, gave a mileage estimate and then marked the lone road sign you hoped your co-driver didn’t miss! Fortunately, everyone seems to have made the turn. Our signature road combined every element of the “perfect adventure” into one road. There were mountain passes, tight twisting sections, open flowing sections, lake side driving with cliffs right next to you…this road had it all. 
…and besides, this particular road is just as good in the opposite direction but for a whole different reason. It slowly builds, as you travel West to East. Tempting the driver first with a corner set here, a corner set there. But as it nears the Kettle mountains the driving experience becomes like a symphony racing towards the crescendo. It tightens and twists into a brilliant mountain pass before crashing down alongside a lake in a ribbon of turns to the finish. And that, will one day be a feature road of a future Hagerty Fall Classic.
Typically for me, when a CCA event starts all of the stress (or worry) of organizing disappears the moment the first driver’s meeting starts. At that point all of the planning, spreadsheets, bookings and selections are done and finalized. I find that moment to be a relief, I am as much participant as organizer, ready to see if people enjoy the details as much as I hoped they would all through the planning stages. Why then, was this event different? Why, after the driver’s meeting, did I still feel the worry and stress of wondering if it would all go well?
It could be the car. Yes, we could blame the car. My 1958 Beetle is fresh from a restoration, hitting the road for it’s first extended road trip. The furthest the car has travelled in a single trip is to the start of the event…not typically the way you want to ‘test’ it. I shouldn’t be worried, the restoration was completed with the help of RWM&Co and Airspeed Custom Werks, and it appears to be simply brilliant. Outside of a slightly more powerful engine (60hp over the original 36), it’s basically stock. But it’s been a long time since I drove a stock Beetle, can I keep up with the group? The organizer can’t be the last one to the hotel at night. Truthfully, though, the new car only counted for part of my worries. On today’s route, we chose a road which some might think was a little questionable.
I can’t say whether it was the great roads, fantastic time spent with classic car friends or a flawless drive in a car that reminded me just how much fun ‘stock’ can be..but whatever it was, by the end of the day I felt my usual stress-free self, with nothing but a weekend of great driving with my closest car-nut buddies and friends ahead of me. You can’t dream up anything better!
