It's all over but the shouting, the stories, and the memories.
The eleventh Targa Newfoundland finished up last Friday - results are available on www.targanewfoundland.com, and podcasts about each day's events can be seen on www.targanewfoundlandnews.com.
This (left) was our mount for the week, a Kia Optima Turbo.
Like the picture? You got rock, you got fog, you got fishing boats. Does it get any more Newfoundland than that?
The car was fast, the 276 horsepower 2.0 litre four-cylinder turbo allowing it to nudge (and occcasionally break...) the event speed limit of 200 km/h.
We felt the suspension was too low and too hard - there aren't many competition suspension options for this car yet.
The brakes (stock rotors; competition pads) were tested severely - we were on our third set of front rotors by Friday.
Not a complaint - no road-going car short of something like a Ferrari could withstand the rigours of driving like this.
The automatic transmission's computer wasn't really set up for this sort of thing either. We thought if we could find some 14-year old cell-phone-breaking kid to hack into it and make it shift when I wanted it to instead of when IT wanted to...
But my co-driver Brian Bourbonniere and myself did manage to finish sixth in the Modern Division, which we thought wasn't too bad for a first outing for this car.
We did win two sub-classes - the automatic transmission class, and the Back-Up Camera class.
OK, so we were the only car in Modern which had either feature, and there really weren't awards for this, but we'll take whatever we can get.
The toughest thing about Targa - other than finishing it - is trying to describe to people what it's really like, and to get them to come and participate.
I've been telling people for eleven years that it's the most fun you can have in a car with your clothes on.
The police close the roads and tell you to drive faster; what else does a car freak need to know?
He (or she) also needs to know where to find a lot of money. The entry fee is five grand, give or take, and you're probably looking at a minimum of ten grand more to get the car here, bring crew, etc.
And that of course assumes you've already got a race-ready car.
I'll describe three rookie teams from this year to try and express what this event is like.
Jennifer and Steve Morris from Glencoe Ontario bought an old Toyota Supra, rebuilt the engine, installed a roll cage, and entered the Grand Touring Division.
They couldn't stop talking about what an amazing time they had. The driving, sure - they sort of expected that. But the scenery, the hospitality, the camaraderie? Permanent smiles on both their faces.
They did violate one of rallying's most basic rules - never rally with anyone you're planning on sleeping with. But they celebrated their wedding anniversary on the Sunday after the event ended, so that seemed to work out OK too.
Ben Gill and David Didcock from England built up a beautiful 1979 Ford Escort to be an exact replica of a contemporary World Rally Championship car. They are endurance racers in England, and had only done one rally ever before. They finished second in the Classic Division for older cars, and David said the event was the "best racing days of their entire lives."
If we had been able to take a litre of Ben's blood after the Gander town stage and distilled it, we'd put the cocaine dealers out of business in a heartbeat.
And Tom Martin Jr. and Tom Martin III - pere et fils - from Dallas Texas and Los Angeles respectively, originally prepped their spectacular orange BMW E30 M3 for Targa Tasmania, the granddaddy of Targa events. They had never even heard of Targa Newfoundland; when someone pointed out that Newfoundland is a lot closer to the south-western US than Tasmania, they came up here, and simply couldn't believe it.
They could tell you better than I whether it's worth it.
Obviously, if you don't have this kind of coin to spend on a hobby/vacation, 'worth' is not an issue.
But I know golfers, horseback riders, regional car racers, dog breeders, all sorts of people, who spend way more than that on their hobbies. Or their vacations.
If you have any interest whatsoever in automotive competition, you simply have to try Targa.
Daria Khachi shared a BMW 325 with an M3 engine stuffed in it with Alan Morris. Daria brought his wife and son along for the last couple of days, combining the hobby/vacation thing perfectly. Daria called his organization "Bucket List Racing".
Couldn't have said it better myself...
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