Nice racing stripe!

I was wondering where you got that racing stripe?

Oh, yea, the other night, I had a woman friend in the car. She was yakkety yakking away, and I said, "OK, enjoy the ride and the music, and I put on Dire Straights "Brother's in Arms", and did a quick 8 miles of a canyon road I know well. Nothing like a great tune to go with the ride.

Thanks for that great email. I had written about 8 or 9 lines back, and then guess what?

I MUST HAVE HIT THE WRONG F**KING BUTTON BY ACCIDENT, AND IT ERASED EVERYTHING. MUTHERF.....

Anyway, pretty cool stripes in your car.

Looks like you have black wheels like I do.

Some good advice about the canyon driving. I just checked where Lancaster is. I'm near Oceanside, so I'm in a much more congested area than you are. Looks like you could drive for ever on clear roads,...I'm jealous.

You can't be envious of me driving a Vette as a DD in Chgo and area,...one year of canyon driving= 10+ years of straight mid-west driving. However, I guess some of the biggest thrills were driving my 91 around Chicago,...through the traffic, fast turns, zipping along on the side streets, etc. (bought new, and ended up selling it for $8k with 103k hard city miles on it).

You know driving a Vette on the canyon roads is a night and day experience from having a Vette in Chgo, obviously. When I saw your post about the canyon driving, I thought, "OK, this guy understands". You have done a lot more canyon driving than I have, so the advice is great to hear.

I actually feel bad for the other 98% of guys that have Vettes that have no canyon roads!!!

Charles

PS Oh, and your motorcycle driving, that's a pleasure I'll never have. Growing up in the middle of Chicago, I never really had the experience. Not something that any I grew up with did. By the time I was 18, I had been rear ended- all at stop lights- 2 or 3 times. If I was on a bike, I would have been dead. Never trusted the city drivers to not kill me on a bike,...there's too many of them to trust!

Charles

Just saw your post as I was going through the guy asking about DD. I'm putting about 20k on a year (just moved from Chgo to North S.D. county).

THIS CANYON DRIVING IT NUTTS. I saw you listed it as a hobby. There's about 4 miles of canyon roads in and out of where I'm staying.

Talk about addictive. Oh, I just bought my 07 Z51 A6 Coupe in February, and think I just used about 10k mi worth of tires in 5k.

About a month ago, was coming back at night on one of the canyon roads that I'm not that familiar with. The turn was a few more degrees than I anticipated. Was approaching the guard rail too fast, had to hit the brakes, and was just waiting to hit it, thinking, "you dumb bastard, you just wrecked your car". I don't know how, but car recovered from skidding, my tires took me through the turn. I'd love an overhead picture of how close I got.

That was the first time I found the car's limits, so hopefully don't have to test them again.

But, boy, I've been driving a Vette as a DD since '87, but driving it in Illinois, and driving it through the canyons is lightyears away as an experience.

Charles