Touring the Glen

Yay, another road trip! This time we went to Watkins Glen in New York for a so called Driver's Ed event. This is what the Porsche Club here calls track days although, to be honest, there is definitely a lot of education going on. While the track days were on Monday and Tuesday we went up on Saturday to have a look around the area and enjoy the wine festival that was being held at the track on Saturday and Sunday. Because of this festival most hotels were already booked for Saturday and we had to settle for an Econolodge. If you think that sounds cheap you're right. However, they had overbooked 14 of their 22 rooms and redirected us to the Relax Inn around the corner. The name might sound a little better, the rooms definitely weren't. I woke up several times to look outside if the car was still there. Another immersion into American culture for me I guess.

The good news is that the days after that we stayed at a winery inn which was overlooking lake Seneca. Very nice indeed. The day you arrive you get a bottle of wine, a glass of champagne and a glass of port. Not really necessary after the wine festival but nice gestures nonetheless. The wine festival was a bit of a disappointment. In the Finger Lakes region in New York there are a lot of wineries, but we really did not find anything that we considered worth buying. It was relatively easy to leave the festival sober, which was a good thing considering they had police officers posted at the exit with breathalyzers. Amazingly enough I appeared sober enough (a miracle after sleeping at the Relax Inn) to be let through without a test.

Next day, track time! Compared to what we're used to at Zandvoort and Spa this was organized in a very relaxed way. Most people knew each other and everyone was friendly. There were lots of instructors and classes for the people who were interested. The other facilities were a bit minimal, but considering there were less then 100 people I guess it did not make sense for lots of catering stands and shops to show up. So we did what we usually do:


We were promised the use of garages, but the people from the wine festival did not put any effort into clearing out their stands. At the end of two days they were still not done. Apart from the rain at the end of the first day everything worked out fine. Maria went about with the new camera shooting over 800 pictures and I went about trying to keep the Porsche in one piece. It's a pretty cool track but you do need to know how to drive it. There are guardrails close to track almost everywhere which doesn't leave much room for errors. Oh, almost forgot, the Porsche rocks! :-)