Since I was presenting our update for the New England convention next summer at this year’s AROC national convention, I took the family along with me to Fort Lauderdale in July, as it seemed like a good way to spend some time with my daughters. Aside from some fighting over the latest Harry Potter book, they got along surprisingly well during what turned out to be almost 4,000 miles of driving over a two-week period.

I’d decided to trailer my GTV6 down for use in whatever events I had gotten into. Earlier this spring, right after the Lime Rock Alfa track weekend, I finally got around to yanking the bumpers and trim off the car to get it painted. Well, I ran out of time for that, so the day before I left found me putting all the trim back on the car.

We left on the Sunday before the convention. The plan was to get down there, get settled, attend the convention, and then spend the following week in the Orlando area. The family promised me that they were not interested in theme parks this time around, so the plan seemed like a reasonable one.

The first Sunday of driving was one of the worst driving days I’ve ever experienced! Every 30 minutes or so, we’d get stuck in some major traffic jam. Let me tell you—there’s nothing worse than sitting in traffic when you’re 50 miles into a 1500-mile drive! After 15 hours of driving, we had barely covered 600 miles, so we stopped short of North Carolina and called it a day. I stopped along the way to pick up a set of race tires for fellow conventioneer Frank Smith from the Maryland chapter. He was driving his GTV down the following day with a passenger, and with luggage they wouldn’t have had room for their track tires. Since I was driving right past them, with a trailer...

Monday in North Carolina started with much of the same congestion. After just 15 minutes of driving, we were again sitting in traffic. They had blocked off the entire right lane of Route I-95 for a disabled bus in the breakdown lane. Sigh.

However, after that, we got clear sailing, and found ourselves near Cape Canaveral toward the end of the day. With an extra day before the convention, and having never been to Cape Canaveral before, we decided to stop there, visit the space center the next day, and finish the drive Tuesday evening. As expected, the space center was a great place to spend a day. We wrapped up and finished the ride to Fort Lauderdale, where the real machinery was beginning to assemble.

Wednesday was kind of a lazy day for us. We settled in, did some shopping, and then I left the kids by the pool while I went to get the GTV6 tech inspected and register myself for the convention.

Now when you’re about to host a convention, attending one takes on a whole different meaning. Every experience becomes a mental note; you think about what went right and what went wrong with everything. The convention in Fort Lauderdale started quite well, with the exception of the heat. And the humidity. It is hot and humid in Miami in July! Sometimes you break out into a sweat just standing around! 

At any rate, we passed tech inspection with flying colors. I then hung around trying to fail every car that fell into my class so as to reduce the competition. I need to pay more attention to the rule book—every year I seem to run with cars that ought to be classed much higher than me (in my opinion, of course!). This year, my basically stock GTV6 (stock engine, some suspension/wheel tweaks) ran with a bunch of prepared ITB race cars. I think what happens is this: I kind of set my car up with some suspension mods for my own personal taste, which just barely bumped me into the C class. Others pay close attention to the rules, so they modify their cars right up to the limits of the class. I could have pulled off the soft compound tires and put the stock ones back on, but in D class was John Hoard in his GTA. I didn’t think I’d fare any better down there, and I was at the convention to have fun, so I left things as they were.

Thursday was the track day at Moroso. First, let me tell you: the time trial is usually the hottest event at any convention (no pun intended). If you don’t register immediately, you typically don’t get in. In this case, there were only 17 cars registered! Can you say "unlimited track time"?  Can you say "too much track time"?

95-degree heat, high humidity, a full Nomex racing suit—yikes! Actually, it wasn’t as bad as it seemed; however, the cars didn’t fare as well—many were showing signs of overheating. My inboard rear brakes would start to cook around 15 minutes into every session, so I’d just go out, play with the lines, get a few hot laps with the brakes, and then park it when they went away. The time trials were run just after lunch, which was a good thing, as it allowed me to get the car loaded back into the trailer just before the afternoon’s downpour began.

Friday was the AROC National Board of Directors meeting and the rally. The BOD meeting went fine. Lucky for me, the hotel had wireless access, so I was able to get some work done while the Board was arguing over trivial matters. The AONE 2004 update went very well; the Board is satisfied that we’re doing our best to provide the best, most cost-effective convention possible. If you want to know more, or want to participate in our convention, contact me at bshorey@cisco.com and I’ll add you to the convention mailing list.

After that, I attended the rally, with my older daughter as navigator. If I had to draw a line at where this convention went from crisply planned and executed to, well, somewhat lax, it would be drawn right at the beginning of the rally.

Things started off well enough. We got our instructions, and were the first car off. This rally was your basic gimmick rally, with a poker hand being used to break any ties, one card drawn at every check point. Or so we thought.

It turns out that the poker hand was being used to determine the winner. Other than showing up at the finish line, there was no skill involved in running this rally at all! No questions to be answered, no timing, nothing! But we didn’t know that when we started and, since we didn’t see any questions scattered throughout the instructions, we took careful note of anything and everything Italian along the way. Where is Monza? Where is Portello? We noted the cities and counties along the way where we saw these obvious rally clues; however, they were all ignored.

Anyway, we reached checkpoint #1 easily enough, and drew a card that resulted in two pairs. I won last year’s rally with a tie-breaking hand that consisted of a single queen, so I felt that we were in pretty good shape. We were also writing down all the clues, remember. Little did we know what calamities awaited us…