First, apologies for this being a bit delayed, but a server issue at the ISP prevented me from posting earlier, you can read about that in another topic.
So day 2 (Tuesday) starts off with us letting the kids sleep in a little and then finding a place to get breakfast near our hotel in Nashville. My wife chose "O'Charleys" because here sister-in-law said kids eat free.
Turns out they don't anymore. The food was OK though. The BP station down the street from the restaurant had gas and no lines, another good sign. During day 1 I realized that I left my Sony Memory Stick for my Sony camera back at home in the computer after I had moved off all my old pictures to make room for new ones. Ugh. Ok let's go to Circuit City or Best Buy and get one. Well just one problem, they don't make regular Memory Sticks anymore, everything is Memory stick Duo (smaller) which even with an adapter don't work in my older Sony camera. Ugh again, if anyone has an older memory stick I can borrow please bring it to Croctoberfest!
I did pick up some blank video tapes to use in the camcorder for the exhaust shoot-out, so not a complete loss, and I can shoot pics with my wife's camera, it just doesn't have as good of a lens as mine does.
On the road on the way to
Atlanta we don't see any signs of gas issues but we decide to stop at exit 127 on highway 24 east which is about 40 miles outside of Chattanooga, TN. There are several stations, all have gas, and the one we stop at has 93 octane premium too so I fill up with that. Given my gas mileage of over 25 miles per gallon the distance to empty now reads over 400 miles and it is only a hundred or so to
Atlanta so we should arrive with plenty of gas. Our first problem did arise though, an airbag system warning light came on in the minivan and wouldn't go out. So as we set off for
Atlanta I called ahead and found the Honda dealer closest to the Westin hotel and made an appointment for the morning to have it checked out.
Although we could have easily driven direct to the hotel we decided to stop about 45 miles outside of
Atlanta at exit 296 on Highway 75 and take a bathroom break and check on gas. There were 5 or 7 stations at the exit I don't remember which. All of them seemed to have gas, and all of them had cars getting gas, but the lines were at most 3 or 4 cars in length, my wife got gas right away, I waited behind 2 cars due to the fuel door being on the right side, and topped off. The only issue was that they didn't have premium, but considering that I had 7/8ths of a tank of premium still, topping off with 1/8th of a tank was no big deal. We drove the rest of the way to the Westin and arrived on virtually full tanks so I don't suspect that gas will be an issue for us this weekend. Local news reports here say that shortages will be spotty for the next 2-3 weeks.
We arrived at the hotel to be followed in by a Porsche Cayenne delivering some Porsche executives from Germany who were pointing at my car and speaking in German, no idea what they were saying. This reminds me that EVERYWHERE we have stopped on this trip, someone has approached me about my car. I don't get this at home and it has become a running joke with my wife. Even going to Best Buy I had guys in a pickup truck follow us into the parking lot and when I got out they got out and asked me questions. I thought maybe I was getting car jacked or something. At the hotel it was no different, the cousing of Jimmy
Ellis Sr. stopped me in the parking garage, as did one of our members here who doesn't own a Cayman but who had his buddy on the line who did who was thinking of coming to Croctoberfest at the last minute. I'm always happy to talk to people and try to be friendly, I'm just not used to this happening at every stop like this, maybe the Croctoberfest news is out!
The hotel staff was very nice and hauled our 300,000lbs of luggage to our room, after which we decided to get some dinner in the hotel restaurant downstairs. What we had was good, but the restaurant doesn't have a wide selection, those seeking a more varied menu may want to check out some of the restaurants listed in our Croctoberfest guide, although meals Thurs and Friday are all taken care of. This reminds me, Porsche IS supplying breakfast on Friday morning, something I forgot to put into the program guide. I was, of course, on the phone to the ISP trying to get them to reset the server as quickly as possible to aid anyone coming to Croctoberfest. Tomorrow (or later today actually given the time of this message) we'll do some fun family items, get the Honda checked out, find a place to wash my car, and of course be over at
Jim Ellis Honda so I can drive the RS Spyder
later this evening. Hope to see some of the early arrivals there!
I'll post some more pics soon!
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