Why we have these cars, revisited (1)...

[Scott Fisher <sefisher@domain.elided>]

Last weekend, I played host to the owners and passengers of 14 other
sports cars of a staggering variety on my annual "Day Before The
Britcars Day" tour through the Santa Cruz Mountains, to the south and
west of the San Francisco Bay in California, USA.  I mention this on
this list because I was driving my 1974 Alfa Spider Veloce, and also
because I'm going to be leading a tour over many of the same roads and
destinations with the Alfa Romeo Association in about three more weeks,
so those of you who are in or near the Bay Area may want to get a
preview.

The tour last weekend was different from any I've done in the past, in
several ways.  Most obvious to the participants: we started on the ocean
side of the mountains, in the tiny (population 200) town of Davenport,
which is north of Santa Cruz and south of San Francisco.  What wasn't
obvious to the participants, however, was my companion -- my wife Kim
was able to join me this time.  We had flown her mother in from southern
California to watch our three children for the weekend, then Kim and I
spent the night at the charming little bed and breakfast inn there
which, along with a really first-rate restaurant, make up much of
Davenport's "industrial base."  (The Odwalla Juice Factory is also
there, for those who know that brand name.)

On Friday, then, we packed the Alfa's trunk with an overnight bag, a
well-stocked picnic basket which fit as though crafted specifically for
the Alfa's trunk, and a bottle of champagne with a 5-lb bag of crushed
ice.  The drive to Davenport Friday night was, for the most part,
glorious; a tour bus marred the last few miles of Alpine Road by spewing
diesel fumes and driving through loose piles of dirt, showering us with
a fine spray of noxious grit.  Ah, the joys of the open road.

Fortunately, the tour bus went right when we went left, and the last 22
miles to Davenport took only about 15 minutes, with the cold wind
whipping over the windshield and tingling the sides of my neck; 6000 RPM
in 4th is very rewarding in this car, given a clear road ahead.  We
checked in at the Davenport Inn, carried our luggage up to the corner
room, put the champagne in the sink and dumped the ice over it, and then
freshened up for dinner. 

Kim ordered what was described as a "salmon souffle" but which was
actually a timbale of thinly-sliced roasted vegetables (yellow squash
and red pepper, primarily) into which slices of fresh salmon had then
been layered; a mild but tangy goat cheese and rice made up the
stuffing.  The timbale was unmolded onto a sun-dried tomato coulis, tart
and satisfying, and surrounded by steamed fresh asparagus.  I had a
filet mignon with tarragon bearnaise, topped with a steamed artichoke
heart filled with more of the bearnaise and surrounded by the leaves
(much of the surrounding country is given over to the raising of
artichokes, and they figure prominently in the local cuisine).  

In the morning, we started watching the cars arrive -- a blue Sunbeam
Alpine, a mid-Sixties Austin Healey 3000 in British Racing Green (with
the top down, even on the cold and foggy morning), my friend Berry in
his 1966 Bentley T Type, and more and more.  We ended up with no fewer
than 7 Sunbeams, split between Alpines and Tigers, a Triumph TR-8, the
Big Healey already mentioned, a late-model M.G. Midget, a Triumph
Spitfire, our own Alfa Romeo Spider, and two support vehicles for family
members who wanted to attend but couldn't all fit in the family
two-seaters.

We finished breakfast, packed the Alfa, checked out of the inn, and then
set out on the first leg of the tour -- north on highway 1 to Gazos
Creek Road, which drops you off just northeast of the town of Pescadero,
our first destination.  Gazos Creek Road is little more than an
asphalt-covered goat path, a trail that has the car moving in three
dimensions, often all at once.  There's a little hill on Gazos Creek
that caught us unawares -- I was in the middle of describing some highly
entertaining bit of Alfa history to Kim when suddenly the road simply
wasn't there any more, choosing to drop off sharply.  We whooped as the
tarmac disappeared, the Alfa whumped down on its Bilsteins, and we
hooked back up and I kept my attention on *this* Alfa rather than on the
exploits of past Alfas.

Out in the hilly chaparral country that surrounds Gazos Creek Road, we
passed a string of eight or ten Miatas, all of whose drivers and
passengers waved enthusiastically at our Alfa and then at all the
British sports cars behind us as they disappeared in the opposite
direction.  Nice to see that there are owners of modern roadsters who
appreciate them for some of the same reasons we do our older ones (even
if one of the Miata owners had painted shark teeth around his car's air
intake).

Pescadero is one of the non-negotiable stops on this route: it's the
home of Norm's Market, aka "The Hot Bread Store."  We arrived at the
stroke of 11, right when they begin bringing out fresh, hot
artichoke-garlic sourdough bread from the bakery at the rear of the
store.  The bin was empty when we arrived, but within moments the baker
filled it, and the aroma started pulling people in off the street. 
There are other baked goods there as well, but the artichoke-garlic
sourdough is their star product, in my copious experience of this
store.  Some fresh local goat cheese rolled in dillweed, bottles of iced
tea and mineral water for the picnic, and baked treats to take home to
the kids (who have made the tour with me in the past) and we were back
under way.

The drive from Pescadero to the Pigeon Point Lighthouse is leisurely,
compared to the Targa Florio-like undulations of Gazos Creek Road.  It's
all on Highway 1, the legendary ribbon of asphalt that rims the Pacific
up and down most of the California coastline.  Here it's more scenic
than challenging, taking drivers through pine forests, past farmland,
and finally out to the rocky promontory on which Pigeon Point Lighthouse
is situated.  After lunch, we headed back south down highway 1, waved at
the town of Davenport as we passed, and then turned left up Bonny Doon
Road, heading back into the mountains and the reason for the trip:
magnificent roads that put every aspect of these cars to the test.

(More to come...)

- --Scott Fisher
  Sunnyvale, CA

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