Well,
My son, Benjamin, and I made it back home safe from
VTR '97. The total distance covered, round trip, from
Bedford, New Hampshire to Fort Worth, Texas was 4689 miles,
with 2410 of that spent driving to the convention, including
the entire length (479 miles) of the Blue Ridge Parkway,
and about 300 miles on the Natchez Trace Parkway. We spent
seven days driving, with two "rest days" on the way down,
and four days spent in Fort Worth. We used 171.82 gallons
of gas on the trip, for a total MPG of 27.29. Our roads
travelled were a pretty fair mix of freeway, mountain road,
and city driving, with a few rallies and an autocross in
there, too.
We had a great time at the meet, and definitely
created memories to last for a lifetime. The Red
River Triumph Club did a good job hosting the National
event, and this year we didn't have any hurricanes
to contend with (although it sure rained hard for
about 20 minutes during the funkhana on Wednesday!)
We met lots of great Triumph enthusiasts, were able
to again see many friends from past years, and generally
had a great time! I autocrossed my car for the first
time and managed to avoid hitting any cones, avoided
tearing out a rear hub (unlike Steve Toth...) but also
avoiding collecting any trophies...
Ben and I ended up getting trophies for longest
distance driven in a Triumph to the convention, 2nd
place in the TSD rally, and, to my surprise, received
a silver certificate in the concours (311/400 points).
Along the way we had only to replace a bad condenser,
which took us nearly a complete day to find, as it was
one of the first things I suspected and replaced, only
to later discover that my new, out-of-the-box spare
condenser was bad, too! Of course, this was only after
replacing rotor, cap, points, wires, plugs, fuel filter,
and removing the intake manifold w/carbs to clean/inspect
the float chambers and needle valeves.
Lots of thanks are due to Fred Thomas, of Stafford, VA,
who spent about half of a Saturday helping me track it
down, and gave me a condenser to use! (I also got to
have a nice long ride in Fred's immaculate TR-3A!)
Our other "mechanical failure" was late Tuesday night,
only about 150 miles from home, which seemed that it could
have again been a bad condenser. I replaced it along the
side of the road, only to have the car start right up, but
die after about 2 seconds. My son, Ben, then asked if maybe
we had run out of gas, even though the gauge still read 1/8
of a tank. Since I'd never run the tank down that low before,
we pushed the car down the street to a gas station to fill up,
and all was well again. It truly is amazing how much better
a TR6 runs with gasoline in the tank... :-) :-)
Thanks again to all the people who helped put on the event
in Fort Worth.
For those of you that missed this year's National convention,
next year's event is July 22-25, 1988, in Winona, Minnesota,
hosted by the Minnesota Triumphs. I hope to see you there,
and maybe you'll be able to beat Ben and I for Longest Distance
Driven in a Triumph next year -- it's only about 1400 miles for
us to get to Minnesota!
--ken
--
Kenneth B. Streeter | EMAIL: streeter@sanders.com
Sanders, PTP2-A001 |
PO Box 868 | Voice: (603) 885-9604
Nashua, NH 03061 | Fax: (603) 885-0631
|