I am back now from my sojourn to Monaco for the Historic Grand Prix weekend. I wrote a story about the experience and I would like to share that with you.

2012 Monaco Historic Grand Prix

Every two years, vintage racing cars come from around the world to race on the streets of Monaco. The race course at Monaco is hopelessly out of date by modern standards. It is too dangerous, too twisty and too narrow. There are only a few places where a driver can make a mistake without doing serious damage to the car. The likelihood of injury in the event of a crash is high. 

There has been motor racing in Monaco since 1929. All the greatest drivers – Chiron, Fangio, Moss, Hill, Clark and Senna – have pushed their race cars to the limit in the corners at La Rascasse, Ste-Devote and Massenet. All the greatest constructors – Bugatti, ERA, Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, McLaren and Lotus – have brought their cars here to challenge the streets of Monaco. 

This is not just another race track. This is Monaco, the crown jewel of motor racing since the earliest days of the sport. Sitting in the grandstand overlooking the yachts in that famous harbor, you can hear the cars leaving the starting line behind you, streaming through Ste-Devote before streaking uphill to Massenet. There is electricity in the air, a sense of excitement builds as the cars hurtle through the tunnel and then downhill to the Nouvelle Chicane, put there years ago to prevent the cars from sliding straight off the track and into the harbor. Again.

Soon, they swing into view, scrabbling for traction, the rear of the cars dancing and sliding through Tabac before sweeping past the yachts tethered along the inner harbor. The drivers tug and haul on giant steering wheels with their elbows outside the cockpit, struggling to impose their will on the cars as they dart by. Then in a flash, they are around the swimming pool and out of sight, the smell of burnt gasoline and alcohol trailing in their wake. 

The Historic Grand Prix is organized into 7 classes. Serie A is for grand prix cars built before 1952. Serie B is for grand prix and Formula 2 cars before 1961. Serie C is made up of sports cars built before 1952.  Serie D is where rear engine grand prix cars from 1961 to 1965 are found. Serie E is comprised of
Formula One cars from 1966 – 1972. Serie F  represents the heavy iron, Formula One cars from 1973 to 1978. And Serie G consists of 2 liter Formula 3 cars from before 1985. Friday is open practice for the cars. Saturday is devoted to qualifying and Sunday is race day. 

Most of the fans are here to see the old race cars, the ERA’s, Bugattis, Alfa Romeos and Maseratis that ran these same streets 60 to 70 years ago. Some delight the crowd with the sound of screaming superchargers. Others assault our ears with the thunder of large displacement engines. But all of them skitter around the track on narrow tires, slithering this way and that, always just on the edge of disaster. 

The machines here this weekend are museum pieces worth up to a million dollars or more - in some cases, much more. In vintage racing, there is an unwritten rule that you do not collide with your competitors. Nor does anyone want to bend his collector’s item by stuffing it into a wall. But still, the level of racing is spirited, to say the least, at least near the front of the field.

There seem to be two kinds of drivers at Monaco for the Historics. The first group consists of racers who are bound and determined to be first across the line when the checkered flag waves. But many are simply content to be part of the scene. They drive with passion, yet you can almost hear them thinking, “I am driving at Monaco in an antique race car. How cool is that?” 

One of those is Alan Patterson, driving an Allard J2X that he bought new in 1952 and has owned ever since. Alan is 82 years old this time around and promises to be back for the next event in 2014. In a 10 lap race, he completes only 7 circuits of the course. But he is here at Monaco in his flawless red Allard driving where the legends have driven. The sun is blazing in an azure Mediterranean sky on a picture postcard perfect day. Who wouldn’t wish to be Alan Patterson at this moment? 

Part of the charm of Monaco is its mix of cultures. Nestled in the southeast corner of France only a few miles from the Italian border, it brings together race fans from many countries. Four announcers call the action in French, Italian, German and English. Yet whatever the language, the names of the drivers and constructors are the same: Carraciola and Dreyfus, Ickx and Andretti, Stewart and Senna. Ferrari and Maserati, Bugatti and ERA, McLaren and Lotus . The legend is everywhere around you, soaking into your soul like the afternoon fog that often envelopes the Inner Harbor.  Now you are part of the legend as well. Life will never be quite the same after you have been to Monaco.

Countdown To Monaco

Every two years, the Principality of Monaco hosts an Historic Grand Prix, featuring race cars from yesteryear. For some of us, these early race cars are more interesting than modern race cars with all their aerodynamic doodads and geegaws. And so tomorrow, Wednesday, May 9, I am off to see this spectacle for myself.

I am flying to Geneva where I am meeting up with Alex Corn who lives in the beautiful town of Annecy France, just across the border with Switzerland. On Friday, we are driving to Monaco, but this will be no ordinary road trip on the SuperSlab. Oh, no! We are driving down and back through the Alps, where the roads bend and sweep through mountain passes and Alpine meadows for mile after sinuous mile.

Once in Monaco, we will be gawking like the rank tourists we are. We are staying in Nice, where the hotel rooms are UNDER $1000/night. Word has it that Nice is a pretty nice place to visit in its own right.

Copious pictures will be taken. Gigabytes of video uploaded. And when I return, all of it will be culled through, edited and assembled into a complete report on the trip.I'm excited. This should be one for the ages!

The Lane Motor Museum

Every year, the Lane Motor Museum in Nashville, Tennessee lets several dozen enthusiasts rent one of the cars in the collection and drive it on public roads for an afternoon. What could be better than that?

This September, a bunch of my online buddies drove or flew to Nashville for the event. One came from Atlanta, one for Dallas, two from Kansas and one from Rhode Island. We had a fellow who started this ball rolling from western Canada, but family issues kept him home at the last minute.

The Lane specializes in the offbeat, the weird, the strange and flat out whacky. My group signed up for a bright orange Citroen DS fitted out as a rally car and known as La Belle Orange! At about 9 am, we were turned loose on a twisty set of back roads through the Tennessee countryside, ending up at the Jack Daniels distillery in Lynchburg where we had a sumptuous lunch. Then we switched drivers and motored back home over another selection of country roads to the museum, where we were invited to roam the lower level that the regular patrons don't see. Here are all the cars that are undergoing refurbishment and restoration and may be added to the collection someday.

It was a rather long day that started at 7 am and did not end until after 10 pm when we got back from a delightful banquet hosted by the museum staff at a local restaurant.

Kudos to Jeff Lane and his organization for putting on such a well run and fun event. If you're interested, visit the museum website as www.lanemotormuseum.com and see what they have planned for next year's adventure.

For photos of the museum and our rally adventure, please visit this link:  Lane Motor Museum

Make sure to browse the sub-albums as well.

Motorcycles
In The Basement
Micro Cars
On Display

A Return To Puerto Rico - 2011

After I came home last February with glowing reports about Puerto Rico, we decided to forego a cruise this year and just go park ourselves on a Puerto Rican beach for a week and dip our toes in the warm waters of the Caribbean. Cruises are nice, but we really like the beach and you don't get much beach time aboard those big ships. Usually, stops are in some exotic port where you have 3 hours to sightsee and shop before piling back on board before the ship sets sail again.

Yes, it's true. We didn't get to eat 14 times a day. But we did get some quality beach time near San Juan and at Loquillo. We even rented a car and visited the rain forest that rises up to the south from the road to Fajardo.

We stayed mostly in Isla Verde, a beachfront community east of Old San Juan. It offers lots of dining and shopping opportunities and, of course, miles of unspoiled beaches to stroll or just relax on. We did both.

Come share our photos as this link:  Isla Verde

Day Sixteen: Coming Home

I got back to Annecy on Thursday, Day 13. On Friday, I slept in and then went with Alex to a lovely riverside home in the country, where he played music with his band for 5 hours. Truthfully, it was one of the highlights of my trip! During the evening, I heard songs in English, French, Russian and Spanish. I think my favorite was a rousing version of The Irish Rovers. These lads are very talented!

Saturday was cold and overcast, so we hung around the shanty and then went for a ride later in the afternoon to the small town of Pringy (pronouced Pron-gee, more or less) where young Alex spent his formative years. There are some photos from above the town attached and I have to say, it was a peaceful and very beautiful place. With the city of Annecy just 10 miles away, it's the kind of place where I could live and be very happy!

And then on Sunday, my odyssey came to an end.  Now that I have been home a week, it's time to reflect on the journey and figure out what, if anything, I learned.

One of those things is that travel is about meeting people, not seeing places. I met some warm and wonderful people along the way: Alex, Francesco, Slavia and Erik, Mariassunta and Claudio, Malcolm, Alex's parents, Patricia and Jean Claude and his two delightful sons, Valentin and Emmanuel.  All were unfailingly kind to me and all made me feel instantly welcome. Thank you to you all. How often in life do we get to make a dozen new friends in just two weeks? It was an incredible experience.

I also had some of my prejudices exploded. I grew up in a part of the country where the Mafia was in the headlines almost daily. Mob hits were legion. Years ago, a red Ferrari was dredged up near the Providence ship channel, its owner still behind the wheel, encased in concrete. The same dredging operation turned up dozens of skeletons with their feet encased in cement, something that was referred to locally as "Italian overshoes."  Suffice to say, my opinion of Italians in general was rather negative.

But now that I have been to Italy, and seen for myself the wonders that country has to offer, that opinion has been totally exploded. I can't wait to go back and explore the 90% of the country I did not see this time around, especially the east coast that borders the Adriatic.

I learned that in France, civil protest is handled entirely differently than here at home. How is it possible that 10,000 protesters march through a city without riot police and SWAT teams ready to swoop down and make mass arrests. How civilized are we here in the US, really?  I wonder.....

But most of all, I had an opportunity to discuss life and things in general with all sorts of people from a variety of backgrounds. There were several things we found we agree on:

1. Nowhere in our memories did Jesus EVER tell His followers to kill people they didn't like.
2. Everyone feels their government is too powerful and intrudes too much in their lives.
3. All are concerned about what sort of world their children will inherit.
4. We all are concerned about how our governments are being dictated to by powerful and wealthy interests.
5. Things would be better if the people had more say in their own affairs.


That's a pretty impressive list for a group of people of different ages, different nationalities, different education and different life experience. Was it worth two week of wandering to learn these things?  Absolutely!

And finally, after watching dozens of organized tour groups during my stay in Europe, I got to reaffirm my belief that choosing the road less traveled really does make all the difference. 

Thanks for following along with me. For the remaining photos, please follow this link:  In Conclusion

Day Thirteen: The Protest In Annecy.

Here is the First Amendment to the US Constitution in its entirety:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Yesterday was a national day of protest here in France and I got to watch it up close and personal, as they say. I was profoundly shocked and disturbed by what I saw. Why? Not because the people here were marching and sounding off about their grievances against the government, but because it made me realize that nothing like this could EVER take place in the United States any more without squadrons of riot police carrying rifles, batons and tasers or without massive arrests. And WE claim to be the land of the free!  Hogwash.

I watched about 10,000 French citizens take to the streets under the watchful eyes of perhaps a dozen policemen within my view. Some of the protesters lit highway flares and were whipping up the crowd amidst a display of fire and smoke. The cops just observed. No official action was taken.

How is this possible? In America, we are required to obtain a parade permit before being allowed by our government to stage such a demonstration. In France, the organizers simply notify the government in writing of the date and time of the demonstration and the route it will take. The government then dispatches the police to close off the necessary roadways at the appointed hour. Try THAT on Pennsylvania Avenue or Main Street, USA.

In France, the protests are not confined to "designated protest zones", chain link fence enclosures miles away from the seat of power. Such a thing would be thought of as ludicrous in France. Bear in mind that the writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau were a powerful influence on the men who constructed our Constitution, along with such kindred spirits as John Locke. "Liberal," in the political sense, means nothing more than that the people own the country and the government and not the other way around. And yet, in America today, "liberal" is a term of scorn and derision. How far downhill we have traveled from the lofty ideals upon which our nation was founded.

It is popular these days to disparage France. Many Americans think of the French the way Bart Simpson phrased it: a nation of cheese eating surrender monkeys. Our disdain for the French stems from their refusal to participate in America's criminal misadventures in Iraq over the past decade.

Yet we could learn much from France, especially when it comes to the people exercising their right to express displeasure at the machinations of their government. A free people should do no less. And so, let me leave you with one of my favorite cartoons of all time:

America is many things, but that doesn't mean we are the best at everything or even most things. If we refuse to see what is going on in the world around us, we do so at our peril.

Vive la France!

For pictures of the protest march in Annecy, please follow this link: A Protest In Annecy

Day Thirteen: The Dash From The Sea To Annecy

I awoke in Valbonne to yet another glorious day. The weather during my trip has been great and today was no exception. I needed to return my rental car by 2:45 pm. MapQuest said it was a 5.5 hour drive along the Auto Route, which would take me southwest down to Marseilles before turning north toward Grenoble and eventually on to Annecy. Since today was the date for a nationwide protest against the government, and since Marseilles is famous for its anti-government stance, Malcolm suggested the highway might be quite congested in that area, I looked on the map and decided my best route was from Grasse to Digne and on to Gap before rejoining the Auto Route near Grenoble. It looked to be the most direct and efficient way to go.

This is one of those cases were a dash of local knowledge can be very helpful. Little did I realize that the road I had selected ran straight through the French Alps!!!! Now, the Alps are littered with quaint little villages and awesome scenery, but driving in them is a little like tacking upwind into a gale against a running tide. It takes about 40 miles of driving to make 10 miles of forward progress. I don't think I have seen so many first gear switchbacks in my life! My target was to reach Grenoble by noon. I got there at 1:30. But, oh! What a fantastic journey it was!!

The drivers in this area are far better than Americans. I got behind one woman in a Peugeot 206 diesel who led me on a merry chase for better than a half hour as I struggle to keep up. I swear you could pluck ordinary citizens off the streets, stick them behind the wheel and they would beat les pantaloons off you and me. I was passed by electrician driving a work van at one point who sailed into the distance like I was tied to a rock.

The scenery was amazing. And so I had one hand on the wheel, one hand on the gearshift, one hand on the camera, one hand on the map and one hand in my lunch bag all the while. I apologize for the lack of artistic framing of the pictures I took along the way, but I knew by then that it was going to be a close race to get to Annecy on time and I didn't have time to stop.

All I had to do now was pickup the highway and cruise into Annecy. But somehow I got on the wrong highway. I was now headed to Lyon, which is about 100 miles west of where I wanted to go. I pored overmy map and decided my best alternative was to exit at Voiron and wend my way northeast to Chambery, where I could get back on the highway.

Now, the clock is ticking and I am back on a rural route through some mountains and lots of little towns with names like St. Guilliaume of the Fleur de Lis, St. Bernadette of the Blessed Valley and St. Henri of the Holy Sandwich. All cute as can be and all traversed at speeds approaching 15 mph.  Tick, tick, tick.......

At last, I steer back onto the highway. I have 20 minutes left to get to Annecy. I push the Aygo up to 150 kph, which is as fast as it will go. Tick, tick, tick...... Then I see a sign: Annecy - 88 km. NOOOOO!!! The game is lost. All those hours of pushing to gain time are for naught.  Curse words ensue.

But wait!  Here comes another sign.  Annecy is but 30 km. It is Geneva that is 85 km away!  I can still make it if I really, really try. I have to get gas.  A service area magically appears with no other cars at the pumps to interfere. I sprint to the office to pay and sprint back. I am back on the road and back up to 150 in no time. On the downhill parts, I see 160 once or twice. The exit takes me directly toward the bus station, which is where the rental agency is. I find a place to park the car and dash to the office.

I hand them the keys. They type some information into the computer. And they are smiling at me!  They are happy to have their little car back. I am happy to give it back to them. Everyone is happy and smiling and I feel like Sterling Moss at the end of the 1952 Mille Miglia when he found out he had won the race. What a great day this has been!

The photos from along the way, such as they are, can be viewed at this link:  Day Thirteen