So, the event of the season has come and gone, and here's my take on the trip. It all started for me when I got my car, and found the BMW Z3 message board There, you can find a lot of people who are rather fanatical about their roadsters, but in a good way. After reading the board for a while, I kept hearing about this event that BMW sponsors at their factory in Greer, South Carolina (between Greenville, SC and Spartanburg, SC). Anyway, it's an annual event that they run where they invite Z3 owners down to the plant for parties, tours, and so on. Basically, it's an excuse for us to spend a lot of time in our cars going to and from the plant.
The challenge is to make it interesting enough for us to go. Not a problem, really. Half the fun is getting there, along with getting the chance to meet with a lot of fellow owners is more than enough of an incentive to be there! So, how to get there? I'm friends with Rachel Corey, who decided that she'd organize a convoy to get us there. Not your ordinary go-straight-there convoy, mind you, but one that took us way out of the way so that we could link up with other convoy groups from various places in the Midwest, and other points further west as well. As luck would have it, two BMW dealers (the BMW Store in Cincinnati, and BMW of Nashville) hosted receptions for us convoyers. Great, says Rachel, and having just seen Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me, she decided to call it The Shagadelic Convoy. She did it up nicely, and managed to get about a dozen of us to go along. While it was a lot more driving (1300 miles versus 900), and it took an extra day, it was broken up nicely, with several interesting stops along the way. See the link for the convoy page above for the exact details.
Anyway, some of us started in Connecticut, others from New York City and vicinity, and me, who started in SouthEast PA. Rachel had arranged our first full gathering point at a brewpub in Harrisburg, PA. Convenient to all of us on Tuesday evening for a late dinner.
Tuesday afternoon, I got packed. It's a good thing I didn't have a passenger, because they wouldn't have a place to sit, let alone bring anything of their own!
Rachel had arranged a bunch of goodies for the groups meeting in Harrisburg, including these cool Shag Mags, which were in the shape of the Yellow Submarine from the Beatles movie of the 1960s. I decided to add to that, and had T shirts embroidered with the words "Shagadelic Convoy: 1999) in multicolored letters. If you look closely in the first pic, you'll see one.
Funny thing was that we all linked up, right around the appointed hour. I was gassing up down the street when I saw the other Shaggers pulling into the brewpub. We were allowed to park next to the brewpub, thanks again to Rachel organizing it in advance. I'd heard that the owner was going to have some other classic cars for a group photo shoot, but that didn't materialize.
Here we see Chris Strock's appripriately decorated Shaguar.
We had a lot of admiring looks from passersby, who were full of questions.
Our stomachs filled, we went on our way west on the PA Turnpike
We went through a lot of tunnels through some of the mountains. More than I would have expected, actually. Anyway, we got stuck in traffic that night due to accidents and construction, and finally got to our firrst stop in Washington, PA, somewhere around midnite.
Drive on over to:
13: Home again, Home again, Jiggedy Jig
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