Shop Talk for
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I know that its cold outside here in Northern CA, but ZONC (Z Owners of Northern California) is hard at work preparing fun drives for all of you Nissan enthusiasts. This run down to San Simeon (Hearst Castle) will once again be in held in conjunction with the NSX Club of America and is to take place on the 13th-14th of February 2010, President’s Day weekend (3 day!!).
This year will be slightly different than last year as the tours of the Hearst Castle will be separate from the ZONC event. Meaning that those who wish to tour the castle or partake in any of the other amazing events down that way will need to book an extra night on your own. I’m assuming this is so that no one is tied into something they don’t want to do; freedom to do what you want on the trip!
See the ZONC flyer below for more information and feel free to contact them on their site if you have any questions
I wanted to post this while the everyone was still jazzed from the turn out at last weekend’s Treasure Island caravan. ZONC will be hosting the annual Monterey/Pebble Beach Meet and Ride this year on Saturday, September 19th. As usual we will be meeting at MY Nissan in Salinas, CA to gather most of the group before heading into 17 Mile Drive and then to lunch at Poppy Hill in Pebble Beach.
The event itself is free to join attend but there is a charge for the lunch if you wish to attend, there is also as $10 fee to drive on 17 Mile Drive itself but this is included if you decide to buy lunch. See the ZONC flyer below for further clarification. This is a really fun drive to make as you see tons of Zs and Gs make their way through some of the nicest beachfront neighborhoods on the west coast.
There will be more info to come in the next week or so as we set up a caravan from Z Car Garage to MY Nissan in Salinas so stay tuned for that.
Make sure you check out the post from last year to see all the photos we took.
Link: Pebble Beach Fun Run 2008
Link: ZONC.org (Z Owners of Northern California)
Like I said earlier, this was a great event. Let’s start from the beginning.
I had picked up the ZCG 370z from the shop on Friday night so that I could have it all packed and ready to go in the morning and maybe sneak in a few extra minutes of sleep. Fail. I had forgotten the camera and the spare battery at the shop. I needed to be in Saratoga to pick up my friend Torey by 6:45am so I was at the shop by 6:15ish grabbing the required gear. Off to a good start.
We are on the road to Sacramento by 7:00 and are making amazing time to the meeting point at a Panera bread location near the arena. Even with stopping for gas, and breakfast at Jack-in-the-box, we arrived fifteen minutes early for the suggested 9:00 meeting time. I was happy to see that there were already a few cars there including the two 370Zs of Curtis and Hal who had a major hand in setting up this drive.
Five or ten minutes after we arrived Zs were flowing in steadily and Roy even showed up in his GT-R. Sweet. I was also really excited to see Chris joining the group in his 1973 240z that we recently put new carburetors and an exhaust system on. I love seeing the old cars being driven as much as the new ones. After mingling for a short while were given the usual safety briefing and a rundown of the days schedule. Then it was off to the cars for the fun part, driving.
Being able to drive the ZCG 370z on an event like this is just about as good as it gets. This car has just about everything that you could want from a modern sports car. Go buy one, seriously.
After driving for about an hour and a half we stopped at a small place called the Western Pacific Brewery in Oroville for lunch. It is located directly on the tracks that run through town and it was pretty cool to see the train come through a few times during our meal. We also met up with a few other Z Car owners here, two 240Zs and a Z32 twin turbo bringing our total to around twenty cars.
Once we were back on the in the cars we headed out of Oroville and onto the scenic and winding back roads of Highway 70. We started out high in the hills and made our way down some very steep grades with HUGE drop-offs that lead to the canyons that were carved out by the Feather River. There are all sort of neat bridges and tunnels along this stretch and we made the best of it by stopping for pictures fairly often. By we I mean the two cars of Curtis and I, we would make sure to get ahead of the group on certain parts of the trip so that we could pull over and setup for photo opportunities. I know that he took some amazing shots which I will have for you later this week.
After driving on these great canyon roads for a couple of hours we came out into a quaint little town that I think was Quincy, CA (please correct me if I’m wrong here) to fill up gas tanks and drain others. We pretty much took over the Chevron station that we stopped at, I guess a group like this would make a scene anywhere we would go, haha. Okay back on the road.
Driving through this town really reminded me of when I was younger and driving through the central parts of Wisconsin, it really had that sort of comfortable feel to it. Leaving town we began to notice that the ground was growing increasingly damp but we were all prepared to slow the pace down so there weren’t any real concerns there. After another half-hour of driving we started to enter the open plains between the individual mountain peaks. There were neat little farm houses with cattle all around here and blasting the Zs through here may have given the locals quite the afternoon wake-up call.
Now we are coming up to our final stop before the final push to Truckee and dinner. We made the stop near Blairsden right where HWY 70 and 89 meet. We choose this place because Roy and his beautiful GT-R were going to break off from our group and continue on to Reno instead of heading to Truckee. The place we pulled over there was a cool old barn with a scenic mountain backdrop which made for some great photos.
After we said our goodbyes we continued on to Truckee and when we arrived around 5:00 we were treated with some good local BBQ. It was nice to know that we really didn’t have to do anymore driving, well for me anyways. Some of us had made plans to stay the night it the Truckee/Tahoe area but a good majority of the group was going to drive back home, talk about committed.
I was stuffed full of food and needed to wind down from all the driving so we said our thank yous and good byes and made a break for the door. I was able to convince Chris with the 240z to stay at my place up there because Torey and I had already made plans to go out in the Cal/Neva area of North Lake Tahoe. Good times.
The trip back down the mountain on Sunday was basically uneventful but I did make it all the way back to San Jose on just a half tank of gas. Downhill fuel economy rules. All in all it was an amazing trip and I can’t thank Curtis, Hal, and the entire ZONC organization enough for setting this up for us. I’m looking forward to attending the next event and I hope to see more of you there! Happy Z-ing
If the photos here don’t blow your skirt up then I would suggest that you make this drive, I’ll even go again! Just let me know.
There is a full gallery after the ‘read more.’ Check it!
There was a great turn out at the annual Monterey and Pebble Beach Z and Meet. Even though the weather was less than favorable the turnout was very high with 40 to 50 cars showing up for the drive. The meeting point was held at MY Nissan in Salinas, CA. Zs and Gs packed the parking lot with a few other cars mixed in including an NSX, S2000, Pontiac GTO, Mitsubishi EVO, and a 60’s Ford Mustang.
The drive wound it’s way through the hills of Salinas, Monterey, and Carmel and continued onto 17 Mile Drive with the first leg ending at Bird Rock right along the famed Pebble Beach golf course. From there the caravan conituned on to a buffet style lunch at Poppy Hill. If you live in the Northern California are this is the end of the driving year event that should not be missed. Without further delay here are a few pictures that I took of the drive. Hope to see you all next year!!
