We MADE it! Carol & I did five (count 'em, F-I-V-E!) stops & events over 6 states, 21 road-trip days and a thin whisker shy of 3000 miles--I should mention here that Carol and I have not been on a major, long-distance road trip together since before Covid--and I'm both justifiably proud and much relieved to say that we made it without a single call to a marriage counselor or divorce lawyer, no visits to either an Emergency Room or Immediate Care facility and not a single Assault, Battery, Spousal Abuse or Justifiable Homicide charge along the way. Plus we met up with and made a bunch of friends, had a great time and sold & signed a whole passel of books. Not to mention getting a bunch of new sponsors & advertisers for the upcoming "real" Lifelong Lotus Love Affair coffee-table book and saw all sorts of neat stuff & visited all sorts of cool places along the way. Let me give you a brief recap (or as brief as I ever am, anyway, which is normally not very...)

Carol and I hit the road southward following a memorial service and mass for a dear friend and business associate/accomplice from my other, non-car-guy/non-racer life, June Fredlund, who had one of those big, brighten-up-a-room, Dolly Parton-esque personalities and profiles and was great to work with and fun to be around. But she had an enviable run, passed away in her sleep at age 84 and went bowling and played poker with friends the week before she died. Not a bad deal, all things considered. Plus she was in the armed forces before I ever knew her and they sent a bugler and an honor guard to the service, and that was pretty cool.

And then we headed south, direct from the service, and traveled all the way down to Bowling Green, KY, before darkness & fatigue had their way with us, so we stayed there overnight. Got going too early to hit the Corvette Museum & racetrack there the following morning (but we've been before) and headed down to Nashville to make a brief stop at Parnassus Book Store there just after it opened. They're that rarest of commodities, a thriving independent book store, and their staff do an incredible job promoting all sorts of books to their customers and contacts. I've always lamented that the market niche for my books is two miles deep and four inches wide, and so I'm forever looking to raise awareness and acceptance of them in the larger [much!] "real book" and literary (or at least literate) universe. To be honest, my novels are perceived as a wee bit wide of the mark for the bulk of the Parnassus audience, but I'm hopeful that they will someday take a closer look, realize that there is some merit, nostalgia, history, drama, humor and enjoyment to be had and perhaps promote them as Fathers' Day, Valentines' Day or birthday/special-occasion gifts for gearhead-oriented husbands, boyfriends, children or Significant Others. Heck, The Last Open Road has been used in a handful of high school and college-level English classes--really it has--so why the heck not?

Y'always gotta keep tryin' and promotin', right?

Next we took off and drove. And drove. And drove. All the way down to Valdosta, GA, by the time we ran out of daylight and gumption. Carol & I have started to listen to audiobooks as we drive, and I can't recommend it enough! We listened to a few chapters of The Last Open Road audio, even though we know it intimately and we both did parts in it. If you haven't listened to it, please give it a try, as it's both different and exceptional and has even won a couple awards. We also tried a few good mysteries (if I could plot and write like Anthony Horowitz, I'd have a Garage Mahal full of cool & costly classic, sports, racers and GT cars and would drive the living snot out of them every day). But, in the end, all whodunnits are kind of the same story, and my taste for red herring wears thin after too many, n'est ce pas? By the ride back, we switched to the brilliant but lengthy and occasionally laborious historical epic Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin, which is about the career, personal life, doubts, trials, setbacks and political genius of Abraham Lincoln, and how he wisely enlisted his political rivals to be his cabinet members as he worried, worked and guided this nation through its darkest and most difficult period. Five Stars for sure, and quite an insight into how different and even noble people and their attitudes were in those days before technology steamrollered the human spirit and the television screen became our global bathroom mirror...

Worth a read or a listen for sure!

The neatest thing is that Carol and I really got along most of the time (there will always be a few random flare-ups when you've spent more than a half-century together and have to share a front seat that might as well be a jail cell for hours and hours on end) but we've somehow managed to keep our sensibilities (well, Carol has, anyway) and our sense of humor, all while working & pulling for the same things and keeping both oars in the water. See illustrative picture below from a card she once gave me:

Our first major stop was Sebring where, thanks to pere-et-fils longtime friends Mike & Will Swain & their associates, we were once again allowed & even encouraged to organize a book signing at the Sebring Gallery of Legends museum during the famous IMSA 12-Hour race weekend. This is always a big deal to me, as the very first International-Grade Professional Motor Race I ever saw was right here at Sebring in March of 1966. My college-era buddy and best friend Dick Hummel and I drove down from Michigan on Spring Break in his BRG (British Racing Green for the callow young folks out there who never pulled on a choke knob) Triumph. It was a TR4A with the proper and original solid-axle rear end, and of course we headed straight for Fort Lauderdale because, well, that's what you did back then. But we only lasted half a day before we came to the uncomfortable realization that the teeming and transient college-age population was made up of something like a quarter million (or so it seemed) jock/fraternity-type males in various stages of advanced inebreation and maybe a dozen actual, semi-available females...

You can read the entire, sorry-and-soggy saga in my upcoming "POTSIDE II" short-story anthology. Short version is that we took off the same day we arrived in Lauderdale and, for want of anything better to do, decided to drive all the way down to Key West so I could see Hemingway's house there, sniff around for ghosts and perhaps absorb some of its imagined literary magic. I even wrote a version of that story into one of the Steamroller books. Dick and I also went to a strip club frequented by all sorts of multi-lingual NATO sailors & swabbies, lost most of our money in an ad-hoc poker game with some wintering Carny types who knew a couple of fish when they saw them and slept (okay, passed out) on some other guy's hotel-room floor, only to find him vanished in the morning and ourselves stuck with the bill for his entire 2-week stay. Full, sordid details in the upcoming anthology.

It was on our way back north that we realized the 12 Hours of Sebring was both in our path and happening that weekend and, after pooling our meager remaining resources, decided that we could add it to our itinerary so long as we ate nothing but sardines and potato chips for the balance of our journey and got exceptionally good gas mileage for the rest of the trip.

What a time we had!

I was just a kid with his fingers through the chainlink fencing when the moment arrived, the crowd hushed down to a whisper, the gun sounded (okay, so some of the drives were already halfway to their cars!) and the silence erupted into a chorus of raw, stampeding horsepower and squalling tires...

Holy shit!

We walked all the way around the track that day (or as much as you could back then) and I witnessed both the epic duel between the bigblock Ford Mk. IIs of Dan Gurney/Jerry Grant and Ken Miles/Lloyd Ruby (who won after Dan's silver-blue Mk. II with the bump in the roof to clear his helmet broke on the very last lap!) and also witnessed--right in front of us!--the horriffic, freeze-you-solid moment when Canadian driver Bob McLean's Comstock Racing GT40 scythed off the road at the end of the long, sweeping right-hander before the hairpin, bounded through a ditch, bounced high in the air, guillotined a telephone pole and came crashing back down, nose-first into the ground, and exploded into flames.

You knew in that instant the driver had to be dead.

And yet the race rolled on.

There was something horrible and something noble and full of purpose about it at the same time.

I have all sorts of memories of that day--still vivid and indelible after all these years--like the way the Penske/Sunoco Dick Thompson/Dick Guldstrand Corvette Grand Sport roadster rocked back on its haunches like a sprint car or a dragster and rocketed out of the slower corners. I had a chance to drive that very car at Mid-Ohio many decades later when Gene Schiavone owned it and, thanks to The Revs Institute [stay tuned], I've been privileged to track test not just one but TWO of the five Corvette Grand Sports ever built. And they're just as brutal and explosive as you might imagine.

BELOW: THE EX-DELMO JOHNSON CORVETTE GRAND SPORT I TEST DROVE at ROEBLING ROAD RACEWAY

So it was a memorable and also launch-pad experience for me back there at Sebring in March of 1966, and one of the many things of which I (and the rest of the general public) was totally unaware was that, in the dark and with just a couple hours to go, the N.A.R.T. Ferrari 330P2 of Mario Andretti and Pedro Rodriguez--Mario up and which was having gearbox issues at the time--got tangled up with Don Wester's "Batmobile" Porsche 906 through the Webster Turns. The Ferrari had unexpectedly jammed into first gear, locking the rear wheels, and the Porsche tried to sneak past the Ferrari. But the cars hit and the Porsche went sliding and scrabbling off into the barriers, and along the way it careened into four enthusiastic and well-connected locals who were standing & spectating in a restricted area where they shouldn't have been. Among the fatalities were two young boys and also Sebring resident Patricia Heacock, whose husband ran a successful local insurance company and who was on the board of directors of a Sebring bank.

And now here's the irony and also the fascinating part. In spite of the deaths and the obvious danger involved, many Sebring residents were huge boosters and supporters of the race, and were only too aware of what it had done for the local culture and economy. And her son--not to mention my longtime friend--Ford Heacock was not only a huge racing fan and supporter of the event, but also organized the SVRA (then the "Southeast Vintage Racing Association") and raced with them back in the earliest days of American vintage racing. That says something about the lure and allure of racing and racing history, machines and personalities. I know and understand that feeling because I suffer from it myself.

So comes the payoff: Ford Heacock, Mike Swain and his son Will and several other prominent locals are involved with the Gallery of Legends project, and Ford was also in the midst of launching (or re-launching?) the Automobile Racing Club of Florida (ARCF), which was the original organizing body for the Sebring event and is now an organization devoted to remembering and perpetuating the stories and mythology of Sebring and to have a good time doing it. Carol and I were kindly invited to a wonderful and well-subscribed party in the Gallery of Legends on Thursday evening, and attendees included friends/motorsports icons like Amelia Island Concours founder Bill Warner, multiple racing champ Bob Leitzinger, motorsports insurance expert and mogul John Gorsline, timer-and-scorer-to-the-stars Judy Stropus and many, many more. What fun and what lively and fascinating conversation! If you want more information about the resurrected ARCF or wish to join, please click on the logo below:

Our book signing at Sebring went really well. We were joined by serial book-flogging accomplice & nonpareil motorsports personality David Hobbs, famous racer & our great friend Brian Redman, semi-retired Sebring media maven and author Ken Breslauer and Motorsports Hall of Fame president and my onetime editor at AutoWeek George Levy (no relation and pronounced the other way) with his excellent and still pretty new Chaparral book. I actually bought a copy (jeez, don't tell anyone!) and am enjoying it immensely. LOTS of research and spade work, but still entertaining and very readable. Highly recommended (at least once you're done with all of my books...).

Carol and I did well at Sebring (including several new sponsors & advertisers for the Lotus Love Affair book), but we packed up and headed out late afternoon, as we could hear and watch the final laps en route and I've already had more than a lifetime supply of massive, apres-race nighttime traffic jams full of people who have been partying for several days straight.

I used to think that was part of the fun, but Carol and Old Father Time have talked me out of it.

From Sebring we headed over to Naples, FL, where I was scheduled to give a wee presentation to the docents and volunteers who do such a wonderful job at The Revs Institute, which is one of the best damn motorsports museums on the planet and recently were honored with an award to that effect--in England, of all places!--and you know you've really accomplished something when a British flock of expert judges gives an award or recognition to an effort, collection or institution that is not also British.

Just sayin.'

But the point is that it was well deserved, and if you have NOT visited The Revs Institute in Naples, you are truly missing an incredible and unforgettable experience. The quality, historical import and rarity of the cars on display is matched by the excellence and accuracy of their presentation. Better yet, the large group of docents and volunteers can help explain each car's technical details and place in motorsports history.

And it was this exact group of volunteers and docents I'd been engaged to speak to, mostly thanks to my dear friend and onetime track nemesis Bill Vincent and his wife Karen and also Chip Halverson...both seasonally-relocated midwesterners. Bill and Chip run the organizing and programs for the Revs volunteer/docent group and for some reason thought they might want to hear what I have to say. Go figure. But it worked out pretty well. We had a good crowd--close to 100 I think--and they were the most informed & knowledgeable bunch I've ever presented to.

And they seemed to like it okay, too.

Better than okay, even...

BELOW: THE EX-DELMO JOHNSON CORVETTE GRAND SPORT AND THE FORD GT40 AND BIG BLOCK FORD MK. IIB I ALSO GOT TO TEST DRIVE--AT SPEED!--THANKS TO THE REVS INSTITUTE:

RED ALERT!

Carol & I need to pack our books, logo clothing & stuff for the Chicago MG Car Club's big annual so-called "Swap Meet" (just an opportunity to get together & jaw with local knockoff-hub types) at the DuPage County Fairgrounds tomorrow morning (it runs from 8:00 to 1:00pm but we gotta get there early to set up). That means I have to cut this short for now. But I'll give you the skinny (and the fat and gristle) on our epic road trip tomorrow. Or maybe Monday if I'm bushed. See you then!