Mini-BoxsterFest - Marin

"Mini"? Hardly!

Docta Boxsta, Patrick Dam, and Walt Bilofsky, among others, were kind enough to arrange a great BoxsterFest gathering in Marin County. The signup roster had over 40 Boxsters, and although not everyone on the list made it, it was probably close to, if not larger than, the first TBHL gathering in Las Vegas. It was a blast.

We met at a Chinese restaurant in Sausalito and spent a good hour or so hanging out in the parking lot, schmoozing and admiring all the beautiful cars. There were three Boxster S there, including a speed yellow, an ocean blue, and an arctic silver. The silver was the local dealer's demo car, and the salesman who brought it said they've actually decided to make it for sale. At MSRP + $7000! Bad, very bad.

Eventually we went into the restaurant and had some really good food. At the end of lunch we held the drawing for the goodies Patrick had brought -- a pair of his aluminum door sills, a set of the "meshter" front grille screens, and a big stack of original Boxster posters. Someone mentioned seeing this poster selling for $10 on ebay. Actually, I have one I got from FELKER still rolled up in its cardboard tube, waiting for me to stumble onto a frame or mount that doesn't turn my free poster into a $100 endeavor. So I didn't need another!

Next stop after lunch was a sort of tech session at S-Car-Go in San Rafael. I'd heard of S-Car-Go in many ways, but never actually been there. It's basically a Porsche modification/race shop. And there was some cool stuff out on display. In front of the store was a....well, I'm not really sure what it was. It was labeled Speedster 3.8 on the back, and it was 911-derived. Apparently it has graced the cover of Excellence or been a feature article or something. Quite a project! Check the photos and see for yourself.

Inside were several Porsches in varying states of bare-bones-ness. A 914 with a chassis, new dark green paint, and new roof upholstery, but no engine. An orange 911 with Jägermeister and other logos plastered all over it. A 911 body shell with roll cage frame, with newly painted speed yellow; on a stand next to it a clean, freshly painted engine. An older 911 waiting for its nearby engine, a twin turbo. I don't know how they're going to get the rear hood closed over those big ol' intake towers! And finally, a certain silver Boxster up on a rack being used to demonstrate a couple of new exhaust parts from S-Car-Go, which I think were a header and a race exhaust. One went inline between the exhaust manifold and the catalytic converter; the other went on the exhaust manifold and then straight out -- obviously not street legal!

Next we drove up 101 a couple of exits and regrouped to start the drive. We drove out towards Nicasio on Lucas Valley Road (which I've ridden on my bicycle before, part of a nice ride). There's an unobtrusive little rock wall gated entrance about 2/3 of the way out, on the right side, which I'll bet nobody noticed. I happen to know it's the entrance to Skywalker Ranch, George Lucas' beautiful production facility that, from the outside, looks completely like an old winery, right down to the stone-and-wood buildings nested back in the valley. Totally invisible from the road. A friend of mine used to be a sound engineer in one of the Ranch's facilities and we got to use the big recording studio on a vacant weekend a few years ago. (Of course we didn't actually need the gymnasium-sized space with motorized gigantic wall and ceiling sound reflection/dampening panels, where they sit orchestras for film scores.) In one of the buildings they have a full size movie theater decked out in lush Art Deco style, used for screening works in progress, specifically designed to test the Dolby Surround (or whatever) audio mix. In one of the scoring rooms the recording console has a switch dedicated to adding fake "air conditioner noise" to the monitors, so that the person doing the mix can hear what it will sound like in a real theater as opposed to in a perfectly sound-insulated studio.

But I digress, that's not Boxsterfest stuff!

We continued westward, eventually to Highway 1, and then south towards Stinson Beach. Really fun roads to drive in a well-behaved pack of 30 or so cars! The pace was nice, around the speed limit, not bogged down like you might expect from that many cars. Past Stinson Beach the road climbs up into the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, with stunning views that might scare one if one were riding passenger with an untrustworthy driver or car. You're literally on the edge of the continent at the edge of the pavement.

Our last stop was atop the cliffs at a good sized turnout about 10 or 15 minutes south of Stinson Beach. We parked the cars, hung around for a while, took some more pictures, and as the sun set people peeled off towards home. The last ones out were myself, Michael and Elicia, Walt and Nancy, Brian and Marilyn.

Thanks to Michael, Patrick, Walt, et al for a fun fest!

PS - These photos were taken with my Sony TRV-900 digital camcorder in still photo mode, many with a wide-angle lens attached. The photo mode only captures 640x480 pixels, but that's what I shrink all my web posted digital photos to anyway, so it's actually OK for web stuff. It saves the photos to a flash card which I then pop into my PowerBook, and the flash card appears as a disk mounted on the desktop, containing the JPEG files.