2021 West Coast Cruise Post Event Forum

Can’t wait to see the pictures.

I would like to thank all the SOC folks who worked to put on the event in SLO. Even though I couldn't make the run on Saturday, I enjoyed the drive down Hwy 1 with Paul, Antonio, Troy and Sally. It was great to finally meet the people who post on the SOC site and put a face to their names. The stories and laughter made for a great time and with food and adult beverages, it was a blast. I can't wait to get my speedster I ordered from Greg. Should be ready in 2022 while I will be on Maui again. LOL  But for sure I will be driving it to the next SLO gathering.

I hope Troy made it ok on the rest of the run. Flat tires are no fun especially when the car you're driving has a tire with the cords showing. No fault of Troy's he just bought it and was having a good time. Glad I could help get you back on all fours on rolling.

Here are a few photo's from Saturday morning.

Big thanks to @Robert M for putting another successful cruise together, especially during these crazy times. The only thing better than driving our little car through the California coastal ranges is driving it all with you.

To add to the lore, and to make sure we don't repeat past mistakes...

Robert put together a great route through the coastal ranges. He took us up Rossi's Driveway (CA-229), over glass pavement on Adelaida, and up Turri Rd into Prefumo Canyon.

Unfortunately a couple of locals scared most of the group off of the route at Santa Rosa Creek Rd.

"It's washed away," they said.

"Filled with potholes," they said.

"I'm not going up there," they said.

Sounds scary.

Like the plot of every horror film, my son and I ignored local wisdom and braved the dirt road between Adelaida & Santa Rosa Creek Rd — Klau Mine to Cypress Mountain.

We slid past the, "closed to through traffic" sign on Cypress Mountain Dr, based on earlier research proving the sign inaccurate. And found a beautifully groomed hard-pack gravel fire road weaving through the coastal forest, dumping us out at the summit of Santa Rosa Creek Rd.

Prepared for the worst, we backtracked a bit to make sure we got the whole experience. But the monsters of Santa Rosa Creek never appeared. There were patched battle wounds scattered throughout the pavement, but nothing @MusbJim's slammed ride couldn't handle. 20 miles without seeing another car!

I'm left to conclude the locals are very protective of this diamond of a road, and want to make sure the riff-raff like us never learns of its beauty. Well, representing the riff-raff community, I'm here to report that our little go-karts can handle it. Ignore the local FUD. The dirt road may have been a bit much for the trailer queens, but the paved beauty of Santa Rosa Creek has to be on your bucket list of drives.

For penance, I was going to challenge @gary boyle to make a Santa Rosa Creek trip on our behalf, making sure to document the scariest portions. But instead I suggest they stay off of it until we're back next year to do it as a team.

In the end, my son and I conquered the 2021 WCC Route, allowing for an adventurous shortcut.

Robert's 2021 WCC Route:

Ryan's Stage 2 unpaved shortcut through the mountains.

From the top the hard-packed gravel at Cypress Mountain Drive, with the paved & patched Santa Rosa Creek Road between us and the ocean:

We're still smiling. No goggles necessary.

A few more from the day. (I'll send the full-res to Jim)

Our trip covered many of my favorite roads, but stand-outs include:

• Old Coast Road, behind Bixby Creek Bridge
• Hwy 1, through Big Sur
• Klau Mine & Cypress Mountain Rd, between Adelaida and Santa Rosa Creek. (WCC Route Shortcut)
• Prefumo Canyon / See Canyon (on the WCC Route)
• Lake Nacimiento & Interlake Rd (Credit to @Will Hesch for showing me this one! We took it on the way home.)
• CA-25 through Bitterwater & Pinnacles

Unfortunately Nacimiento-Fergusson Rd was closed at both ends by CalFire, but we saw the gates from both sides. Next time!

Looks great! I hope to join one of these trips someday

Those at the 2021 SLO Cruise, please send me the pics & videos you would like to include in the 2021 SLO video I'm working on.

Please send those pics/videos to me using the file-share platform We Transfer. If you send those pics and videos via messaging, they usually get resized and will be unusable for the video as they will be very small (less than 100kb) and will be pixilated and unfortunately I won't be able to use them on the video.

PM me for my email address, Thanks!

We Transfer is free, you don't need to sign up or provide any personal info, allows you to send (email) 2GB of data. The recipient has 7 days to download your sent files, after which they will be deleted. You will get a notification when the recipient downloads your sent files.

https://wetransfer.com

I know I tease the locals above, but in actuality we need their help… I’d love to get preferred route roads for future WCC trips from the locals. If any one of the routes can be crossed by @SimplifyTALightness in his Lotus, or @gary boyle and his crew, it should be good enough for the group. You’re also more familiar with other local rally routes that come through town.

Can you all share your absolute favorite runs you’d like to see in coming years?

Out of curiosity, @gary boyle, what route did you take home when I saw you In Cambria? I’m interested to compare timing the route since I left you all at Vineyard.

Did you go down Oak Creek with the rest of the crew? (You had to of, right? There’s no way we did Cypress Mountain and Santa Rosa Creek the same time you did Vineyard to 46 to 1, right?)

To all the folks that missed out this year, you were missed. I hope to see you all safely back at the cruise next year. To those who lost their cars due to the insane appreciation, @Terry Nuckels, @Will Hesch, and others, I hope to find you a right seat next time.

2022 WCC is going to be even better, as decided around the campfire…

@Robert M and @OCC even have dates already.

And @Speedster Marc is doing merch design with @OCC.

@Napa Paul is offloading some serious merch at the raffle. (Please keep it up! With my new helmet & goggles, can I join you at one of your Sonoma Raceway adventures? I hope I get to join you, @Kevin - Bay Area and @Rick99GSX on one of your coastal adventures. Let’s do Skaggs one day.)

And locals @gary boyle and @SimplifyTALightness and @curtissb will coordinate with @Robert M on next years route. (And by sharing your favorite roads here! I want to know too!)

2022 is going to be great.

And @curtissb, you have to be on the more adventurous side. Any favorite roads you think I need to drive next time through? Give or take 100 miles? Also, I’d love to see you race sometime. That sounds like a blast to see. I gotta look up videos of this.

I will be at Laguna Seca on Monday, June 28th and they just opened the track back up to the general public.y brother is a semi-professional photographer and he will be there. I hope to post some high quality videos after the event. It was very fun to see everyone this year and I am looking forward to next year

Ryan, it's Old Creek not Oak Creek. Bob and I headed down 46 to 1 and onto Main St. By the way we "locals" don't give a flying ... if you use Santa Rosa Cr road. Just gave advice with what I knew to be true in April. I would have checked it out if I'd known it was that important. On another note, any one going to Laguna Seca Sat morning for cars and coffee? It should be pretty good since they haven't had one for over a year. Leaving Cambria in the speedster at 545 am going 101 returning either coast of inland G14 and G16 to Vinyard and home.

Perfect. Thanks @gary boyle! And I'm already onto new roads... G14 & G16. It looks to me like we took G14 home yesterday. Beautiful drive. I've only been on portions of G16. But it's added to my route list now!

Any other favorites around your neck of the woods? We did Peachy Canyon two years ago. That's another glass road. And the twisties out near Pozo.

It's crazy how we ended up in Cambria at the same time. It's supposed to take twice as long. It is 7 miles shorter!

@Butcher Boy posted:

I would like to thank all the SOC folks who worked to put on the event in SLO. Even though I couldn't make the run on Saturday, I enjoyed the drive down Hwy 1 with Paul, Antonio, Troy and Sally. It was great to finally meet the people who post on the SOC site and put a face to their names. The stories and laughter made for a great time and with food and adult beverages, it was a blast. I can't wait to get my speedster I ordered from Greg. Should be ready in 2022 while I will be on Maui again. LOL  But for sure I will be driving it to the next SLO gathering.

I hope Troy made it ok on the rest of the run. Flat tires are no fun especially when the car you're driving has a tire with the cords showing. No fault of Troy's he just bought it and was having a good time. Glad I could help get you back on all fours on rolling.

Here are a few photo's from Saturday morning.

Thanks to Dave for the quick trip to the tire shop to have my flat repaired.  We caught up with the group at the brewery and the rest of our trip was great.  It was great to finally get back together with everyone and actually be able to hug them!

I have to chuckle a little about the fact that nobody mentioned what it was that we were driving when we had the flat.  With their escalating values, we can't afford to own a Speedster anymore, so we followed in the steps of Terry Knuckles and bought a Black 2010 Mazda Miata MX-5 with a retractable hardtop and an automatic transmission.  Great little car, just doesn't have the coolness of a Speedster, but it has everything else and more!

@Troy Sloan and Sally counted up what the MX-5 has that the Speedster doesn't. They came up with at least 20 things his MX-5 has that our cars don't have. I'm sure there are many more but he didn't want us to feel bad I think. LOL

@Robert M posted:

@Troy Sloan and Sally counted up what the MX-5 has that the Speedster doesn't. They came up with at least 20 things his MX-5 has that our cars don't have. I'm sure there are many more but he didn't want us to feel bad I think. LOL

But who needs air bags and 4 wheel disk brakes with ABS anyway.  It was Nancy who pointed out that it just didn't have the "Speedster coolness" factor.

@Troy Sloan posted:

But who needs air bags and 4 wheel disk brakes with ABS anyway.  It was Nancy who pointed out that it just didn't have the "Speedster coolness" factor.

Ouch. She must have been in a few Sangrias in when she said that.

@Robert M posted:

Ouch. She must have been in a few Sangrias in when she said that.

LOL.  I twisted that a bit.  She said, "but you know what it doesn't have" and I finished the sentence for her with "Speedster coolness" and she nodded her head in agreement.  For all I know, she may have really been thinking it doesn't have CruZin windows! LOL

@Troy Sloan posted:

LOL.  I twisted that a bit.  She said, "but you know what it doesn't have" and I finished the sentence for her with "Speedster coolness" and she nodded her head in agreement.  For all I know, she may have really been thinking it doesn't have CruZin windows! LOL

😂

Sounds like y'all had a great time. I was in Seattle with my two Grandsons that I had not seen in over a year. I hardly recognized them. Amazingly I actually missed you knuckleheads.

I will see y'all next year or sooner. I am trying to brew up a tour d' hoe for late summer or early fall.

More to follow.

@MusbJim posted:

Those at the 2021 SLO Cruise, please send me the pics & videos you would like to include in the 2021 SLO video I'm working on.

Please send those pics/videos to me using the file-share platform We Transfer. If you send those pics and videos via messaging, they usually get resized and will be unusable for the video as they will be very small (less than 100kb) and will be pixilated and unfortunately I won't be able to use them on the video.

PM me for my email address, Thanks!

We Transfer is free, you don't need to sign up or provide any personal info, allows you to send (email) 2GB of data. The recipient has 7 days to download your sent files, after which they will be deleted. You will get a notification when the recipient downloads your sent files.

https://wetransfer.com

Bump

Well, well...this is team Cambria. Just drove the wife (birthday) and Luke the dog up Santa Rosa Creek Road. I wish someone would have asked to have it checked out before the ride. It, as Robert said , great. Best if fifteen years. Hundreds of patches and smooth sections. All must have been done after March. A year from now it could be impassable . So, next time ask and I will scout it. See ya, GB

@gary boyle posted:

Well, well...this is team Cambria. Just drove the wife (birthday) and Luke the dog up Santa Rosa Creek Road. I wish someone would have asked to have it checked out before the ride. It, as Robert said , great. Best if fifteen years. Hundreds of patches and smooth sections. All must have been done after March. A year from now it could be impassable . So, next time ask and I will scout it. See ya, GB

I need to campaign the SLO County supervisors to fix that rod for good. It could double tourism dollars in SLO County.

That entire road is going to be redone in two years after they build a new bridge. My brother is in charge of SLO county roads.

@MusbJim posted his annual cruise video!

https://www.speedsterowners.co...t-coast-cruise-video

—

You’re on the route scouting team from here on out, @gary boyle! It’s beautiful up there, isn’t it?