Serendipity

Did you ever have a trip where absolutely everything went right?

Kent Howard (editor, The English Channel), Joe Alexander (Mr. Vintage Racer), Uncle Jack (racer and engine builder), and Aunt Frances Drews (gourmet cook, bon vivant, housemother) really had one-the early April trip to the South Central VTR convention in Wagoner, Oklahoma.

Kent arrived at Jack's house Thursday with the TR4A singing its sweet tune, but when Joe arrived in his temporary transportation 300 ZX, he had a locking rear brake. We found that it was temporarily fixable with a screwdriver, so he would eventually be able to drive it home.

We had a great dinner fixed by Geneseo's foremost gourmet cook Frances Drews. Yum.

We left for Union, Missouri, on Friday morning, stopping briefly at Bob Sterling's house in Andover, Illinois, to inspect his historic MGs and his latest restoration jobs. We stopped again at Nauvoo, Illinois, a very historic town on the Mississippi, the last Mormon settlement before the trek to Salt Lake City. Great visitor center and extensively restored town, but none of us converted to a new religion. The TR4A and the TR6 purred contentedly on two-lane roads all the way to Union, Missouri, our first overnight stop, where Jack and brother-in-law Arnie beat Frances and Ruth at a hot game of pinochle.

The next morning, we stopped in St. Claire, Missouri, to see if TR junk purveyor Jack Shelley was still in business, since we had heard that his place had suffered a fire. This was the place where Uncle Jack purchased the rear half of a car to make his vintage racer complete. Sure enough, the shop is still there. It has smoke stains on the ceiling above about a dozen restorable Triumphs, a few MGs, and a basement full of rare and undesirable parts. There was a note on the door with a couple of telephone numbers that we did not call, but we left nose prints on the window.

Kent looked at the map and recommended a little yellow line that turned out to be a whoop-de-do road that did everything but loop-the-loops. We howled over it, finally stopping to let Joe take care of a bodily function, a stop for which Joe blamed Kent's driving enthusiasm on that road. Joe was ready to go back to Nauvoo and start getting serious.

In the little town of Sparta, Missouri, we stopped at a random gas station so Kent could put some air in his tires. The gas station attendant was particularly helpful, and then said, "I've got a Triumph in the station." And proprietor Bill Preston certainly did-a TR6 SCCA racer that had won several national races. Bill is currently restoring it after his trailer came loose from his tow vehicle and flipped over. Bad luck for him, of course, and an astonishing find for us.

The convention was the usual success, with seventy-two TR's at the concourse on the beautiful shoreline of a big lake in Sequoyah State Park, in Oklahoma's Green Country. Prior to this trip, none of us knew there was anything green or wet in Oklahoma. Festivities at the lodge on the lake included the usual concourse, funkhana, gymkhana, and banquet with about a hundred prizes that lasted until midnight.

Sunday we opted for an interstate route home, since Kent had some editing to do on Monday. We made it to Geneseo, Illinois, My Home Town, with no problems from the plentiful Smokey Bears on the interstates. It was 670 miles in ten hours, so you can do the math for average speed. We both got 30 miles per gallon, too.

Other good parts of the trip:

Wisconsin lost the basketball game, but liquid medicine in the motel room blunted the pain.

Kent's TR4A had a vibration at 65 mph that forced us to drive over 70 mph all the way home. Jack's overdrive quit two hours from home, and we found later that it was just a disconnected wire. Jack's car dropped a cylinder just as we entered Geneseo, a perfect place to break a valve spring. Jack's newly overhauled TR6 HAS NO OIL LEAKS!!! ( . . . yet)

Kent's old junker performed flawlessly, so I guess I'll have to quit calling his car an old junker. Finally, we're now even better friends than when we started.

Was this a perfect trip, or what?

By "Uncle Jack" Drews