Supergoat Garage

My gas tank is about to get wrecked. I should have known that coming in, but I didn’t realize how long some of these drives are. I have two planned for today. One is 40 miles and the other is 70. Those are both one way. So double that and I’m near empty rolling back into Fontana this evening.

Should be worth it though. My first planned trip is to Bridal Veil Falls, and then later I’m doing the sunset cruise. I can’t wait. While prepping for the trip this morning though I did uncover an issue. The camera mount I bought is a clamp style. I tested it at home and it seemed fine. But when fitting it this morning it would not stay. I really wanted video of my drive, but unless I can find another place to mount it that may not happen.

Bridal Veil Falls

Meeting time is 9:30am at the General Store. I made sure to be there nice and early. It’s capped at 50 cars due to limited parking so I didn’t want to miss out. Once the run before it left and this one started to line up I moved my car. Not really thinking about it, I was one of the cars closer to the front. That will be important later.

Above are some pictures of the line waiting to head out on the run. That was my first experience with an official Miatas at the Gap event. It was billed as a more relaxed cruise. I quickly found out that it was more “spirited” than I was expecting. With runs like these, the cars in front tend to go faster than the cars in the rear. I don’t know exactly how many we had, but I was fifth in line out of at least 30. The pace was more than I was expecting but I managed to hold my own well enough without issue. That was down more to the car than me though. On some turns I had a few moments where I felt like I was very close to maxing out my meager talent level. But the car had my back. Only once did I actually feel like I may be about to lose it. It was a fast turn that I felt I may be going a bit too fast for and the car needed correcting. I slowly applied some brake and I felt the driver front ABS kick on for a split second. But that was all the car needed. Crisis averted and lesson learned. Braking in a corner is not typically advised, though there are times for it. I’m not good enough to know when those times are. But I went with my gut and got the car back on course. The rest of the journey through the twisty back roads was fairly uneventful for me. Which was fun!

A little over half-way through the run we were diverted due to an accident and went down another very curvy road. We had a small incident with a driver in a red NA Miata spinning out. I don’t know all the details but the whole group pulled over and waited to make sure they were ok. It turns out they were fine, just a bit of a scare. Luckily we were running in a group so people were there to make sure they were fine.

Above are pictures of us all waiting to get word on if the driver was ok.

After a bit more driving with minimal issues we got to the falls. I didn’t know what the falls would look like, but this was definitely smaller than what I had imagined.

Chick-Fil-A? Nah, PIzza.

The leader of the group radioed that he was leaving and if we wanted to go with him we could. I didn’t know where he was going, I assumed back to Fontana. After about 20 minutes we all pulled over for gas. I didn’t really need it, but figured might as well.

We went to pull out and the small group got split up with traffic. Unfortunately for me I was part of the split, stuck behind two SUVs that were going very slow. Needless to say I lost the group. I radioed ahead and they said to meet at “Chick-Fil-A on 64”.

Now not being from here, and having no idea where I was, I knew exactly what to do. Search google maps for “Chick-Fil-A on 64”. Luckily, I had no cell service so that was less than helpful. Even with off-line maps downloaded, Google wanted an internet connection in order to search said map. The future is bright.

Not knowing where Chick-Fil-A was, I set my destination back to Fontana as that was already in the address book. I radioed ahead that I was leaving the group and did not hear back. I’ll assume they got the message.

So I went back to the restaurant at Fontana. But this time I got pizza!

It was pretty good!

The Sunset Cruise that wasn’t.

I hung out in my room until 6:10 and then made my way down for the Sunset Cruise. Gathering time was 6:30 and I’m staying on property so that should be early enough. Well, I get there and it’s packed full. Easily 60+ cars with more coming in. I did manage to squeeze my car in though and then waited around talking to people, mainly to my friend Greg who came down from PA. Also his first MATG.

7:00 came and it was time to head out. It was a great run, covering roads I had not been on yet. I had my GPS set for the destination in case I got separated from the group. It said we should be there in about an hour. No worries.

As it was getting closer to 8:00 I could not help but notice my GPS still said we have 28 miles and 40 minutes to go. Also, we were on some single lane gated private community road. Eventually we pulled over and I realized that the group of 60+ cars I was in was actually 7. When the roads are all single lane and very curvy it is easy to think you are still in some large group.

The leader of this small group put his hands up and said “Obviously I have no idea where I’m going”. Not the most reassuring thing you want to hear from a group leader. So he went down asking if anyone knew the way. My GPS had lost signal so I was no use. One guy said that he did, so we followed him.

Once my GPS signal came back on I saw we still had 40 minutes of driving to get there. The sun was already going down so we were going to miss the sunset anyway. Fontana was only 25 minutes away so I had a choice to make.

I went back to Fontana. I wasn’t upset though. I got to see more small towns on the way back and had a great time on the roads.

As I got closer to Fontana and the roads got more twisty, I closed in on a Rivian R1T. The tag said it was from Florida. It was trying its absolute best to drive fast through the turns. Try as it might, it never came close to losing me. In fact it held me up so much that another Miata friend caught up to us. We now had a nice slow caravan going.

And that takes me to now. Sitting in my hotel room, typing this up. I had a great day. A lot of driving. And some pretty good pizza. Hard to do much better than that.

I’ll see you tomorrow.