Fort Casey Drive 2019

[bertvorgon]

Howdy all, thought I would drop into Ratsun and see what is going on these days here. 510realm.com is very quiet these days.

 

How do I post pictures? If interested. Don't understand the URL thing

 

 

A FIRE ENGINE…….SERIOUSLY…!!!!???

 

I woke up at 3:00 Am sharp, the super bright “strawberry” moon blasting through my window, I thought I missed my alarm and the sun was up…arg.

 

Oh well, it gave me time to have a couple of cups of coffee and really wake up for a change. I wandered out the door at 4:30 to head to the garage, arriving to the sounds of a LOT of sirens heading somewhere.

 

I decided to just run my “hot” plugs, as most of the drive is really a cruise with small blasts of boost. With that in mind it was just a case of rolling the car out, close the door, hit the key and roll a block away to let the car warm up.

 

Mike was already there with his gleaming copper 350Z with beautiful new wheels, they really look good on the car. Soon Norm and Jonathan showed up, early, so we headed to the Border. Norm, Jonathan and I got through ok but, Mike was sent to secondary, what the hell. Soon I saw the hot lights come on, the sound of a bamboo cane being used, and, maybe some water boarding going on. Mike finally came out, smiling, seems they had some issue with his last name and wanted to check that it was not some alias. Go figure…….

 

After stopping for some fuel we were finally off down I-5, right on time actually as we did leave earlier. Traffic was zip and in a half hour we hit Fairhaven, where, the local deer was standing in the middle of the intersection (Like our last trip) making sure we obeyed the 25MPH speed limit.

 

Finally clearing the town limits we could wick it up a bit.

 

Now, if you have never done the Chuckanut drive, it is a 20 mile stretch of winding, hairpin corners, totally covered over with a canopy of trees, and, just wider than our 510’s, with either a rock retaining wall, or, natural rock wall, lining the sides most of the way.

 

As I had not driven my car really hard this year and unsure of how much heat was both in the tires and the pavement (which was cold), I was getting a feel for grip. We had already done a few good blasts and were about three quarters of the way through, when, on a blind left hand sweeper (which was very tight), a FIRE ENGINE CAME AROUND THE CORNER, LIGHTS ON BUT no SIREN, SLIGHTLY IN MY LANE!!!!!!

 

Holy Mother of God Crudmucker #@&*%$#@ I had no time to think, just squeezed to the right as far as I could, as the engine went past me with inches to spare. I glanced in the mirror for a micro blink hoping Norm, Jonathan and Mike were over also.

 

It is a good thing that on our drives that we do stay in our lane, no matter what. If we cannot see through a corner to maybe use the whole road, it is our lane only. If ever there was a case for that, this was it. I swear I could see the bugs on that retaining wall and my pop eyes in the gleaming chrome of the fire engine as it went by with 6” to spare!

 

The 20 miles went by in a blink and on this trip I elected to just stay on the main road to get to Hwy 20. Last time our “detour” had Norm and I showering the cars behind us with pea gravel, as the new road surface had not been seal coated yet.

 

The great land of Washington State has decided to embody roundabouts, which to me are G-Circles and on the way to Oak Harbour, we did encounter a few, one even under construction.

 

The sun was up now but we ended up under a mix of that marine cloud, keeping the temps nice for the motors.

 

Frank’s Diner was our breakfast stop, a total homage to the American Military and, for us Canuck’s, a pure slice of Americana, which I always find interesting. A good hearty breakfast was had by all, heading out into the morning sun.

 

Fort Casey was but a 40 minute drive, light traffic and on the last segment to the Fort, a series of hairpins was attacked with enthusiasm.

 

A cool marine wind greeted us at the Fort and after paying for our parking, we wandered the area, seeing of course the deer and LOTS of baby rabbits. The Fort had opened up the powder magazines, which were a labyrinth under the gun emplacements, really cool. I snapped a few pictures of the lighthouse for a friend and upon our leaving, witnessed a small herd of deer with two young fawns playing tag at the entrance to the park.

 

Our next leg had us none stop till Sedro Woolley for fuel, then heading back the old Hwy 99 towards the Aldergrove border crossing, where Mr. Grumpy Border guard gave me a bit of a hard time about not moving forward on the green light. He had screwed around in the booth, even waving to the two cars in front of me to come forward, all the while mucking about with his sun screen, where he could not be seen. You could tell he was just not a happy camper with that job and his face looked the part!

 

We did get some open road on that leg where we could blast along at 10 over, and, lucked out again with the section that has some great right angle corners with good sight lines, too much fun. As the group was all on sticky rubber, the “train” stayed very close.

 

I zipped back to my place, let the car cool down, re-fueled it and gave it a de-bugging wash. I did that whole trip on one tank of fuel with maybe a gallon left, which would have been 24’ish MPG. I did 220 miles, 4:55 hours moving time, 6:14 total. I was back home by 12:30 and had another part of the day to use! Early is good! Our moving average was sure slow, speaks to all the traffic and towns we had to go through.

 

Thanks to all that came along, that was a good day and even better, as none of us had RED fire engine paint down the side of our cars!!!!

 

Keith Law

June 16, 2019

[banzai510(hainz)]

I remeber you from the Realm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Hows Byron doing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!tell him hello

 

Ratsun is on life support.

 

More 720s fixing.

Edited April 3 by banzai510(hainz)

[bertvorgon]

I'm good these days, our group here is ok for the most part, getting together soon for 510 day.

 

Realm too is VERY quiet, I drop in occasionally, went to FaceBook to see when cars shows etc are happening.

 

Still have my 510, rock'in good with a new motor, quite spectacular actually. I had to turn the boost down a hair to maintain

traction balance.

 

I thought I would drop in here, maybe post up some of my stories. Response is obviously quiet!!!

 

Hope your doing ok.

 

Keith

[datzenmike]

Afternoon Keith. I drop in about once a month to The Realm. I somehow missed your original post but if you would post some of the great rolling dyno tales, that would be great!