October 17th was our 11th wedding anniversary and we celebrated with a weekend-long excursion to the Kingston/Prince Edward County region that culminated in a day of driving adventures.

Friday, right after work, we took off for Kingston to meet Rob S. and Bill R. for dinner at Rob’s house. It was cool, a few degrees over freezing when we left and it only got colder as the sun went down. Despite this, Ginger’s top was down and we were loving it. This was our first long, highway drive since I installed the Clearwater speakers and those 8″ component speakers revealed themselves to be very capable, both with respect to volume and clarity, even at 130kph.

Dinner at Rob’s was yummy and a ton of fun. We met the kids that we didn’t know as well as Rob’s son, Will, and got to know Rob, Bill, and their partners, Beth and Alicia much better. Great friends… too bad they’re about two hours away. We spent the night at the Best Western Fireside Inn on Princess Street in Kingston. The room was big and comfy, decorated like a lodge, with a nice king size bed and gas fireplace.

The next morning, we had breakfast at Cora’s where Don, this year’s MCO autox director, and his wife, Marylin, met us to start a day of touring Prince Edward County in our miatas. As we left Cora’s, pedwar seemed annoyed that Don’s 1.6L NA was louder than Ginger’s exhaust note. :)

The drive was beautiful! The weather was pretty chilly, but the sun was bright and the sky was virtually cloudless. We took the ferry to Amherst Island where it seemed like every second house was for sale — Don and Marylin were intrigued. We got to Picton a little after noon and had lunch at one of the restaurants on Main Street. The food was delicious and quite reasonably priced.

After lunch, we stopped at a couple of wineries. We would have made more stops, but some wacky GPS direction saw us waste some time, forcing pedwar and I to turn back in order to make our check-in at the Traveller’s Dream B&B on Centre Street in Picton.

The room was clean and nice and the bed was reasonably comfy. We had some challenges with the shower (tons of water at the tap, none at the shower head), but the owners fixed it up while we were out for dinner.

We had a few hours to kill before our dinner reservation at Portabella so we thought we’d walk Main Street and check-out the local shops. Unfortunately, the town had gone into winter mode and everything that hadn’t closed at 4:30, was about to close at 5:30, even the top local coffee shop — we ended up at Timmy’s. We called Don and Marylin, who had left to check-in to their hotel in Belleville after also discovering that everything was closing.

Faced with boredom, we walked back to the B&B, got into Ginger and went exploring again. I showed pedwar the location of the airfield where the next day’s autox would take place and took a look at some Picton’s neighbourhoods. When Don and Marylin got back to Picton, we hooked up with them, and then headed to Portabella to see if they could seat us, an hour early.

They took us in and fed us well as we enjoyed some great conversation, including Don relaying the gory tales of his engine blow-up with his former Mini Cooper. It was good to get to know Don outside of the tension of an autox event, as well as meet his wife, who is not as enthusiastic about autox as pedwar. We wrapped up the evening relatively early as we both had to be up early (besides, everything was closed) the next morning.

Morning started with a yummy breakfast, followed by the drive north to Shannonville Motorsports Park to meet up with the Midnight Runs crew. There was already a large contingent when we got there. We said our hellos and immediately started emptying Ginger and prepping her for lapping. Jeff and Shawn from Eurotrash Motorsports, who were bringing Ginger’s 6UL rims and Hankook rubber, arrived shortly after us. I grabbed the wheels and my jack and went to work, swapping the four wheels over in about 10 minutes, just in time for the drivers’ meeting.

We hit the track right on time and it was a blast. Ginger felt fantastic and the benefits of this season’s modifications were quite clear. Back in June, I was topping out at 145kph, but this time we hit 180kph, while I had a passenger! Interestingly enough, the corner right after that straight was slower this time as the higher approach speed made me brake harder (too hard), decreasing my corner speed below what I know was possible.

Jeff Graves, curious about the performance of the AFCOs, took Ginger out for a few laps, and without pushing, got within three seconds of his best time in a gutted, caged, race-focused miata, set later that day when the track was warmer and grippier. He noted that while Ginger was softer than he was used to, she felt good and well-sorted.

Seeing how Jeff was posting times four to five seconds faster than me, I used my next outing to try and find speed by mimicking his lines and shift points. Unfortunately, traffic and some on-track mechanicals prevented more than one or two clean, fast laps. Still, I know what to shoot for now.

We wrapped up the session, gave Jeff and Shawn the Racing Harts to cart home, and then left for the Picton Airfield with Mike P. in tow. We stopped for a nutritious lunch at McDonald’s and then proceed to the event. Our buddies at St. LAC welcomed us and let us log the full six runs after the appropriate safety briefings, etc.

Being pumped from lapping, autox speeds and the width of the tarmac made me particularly brave so my runs were uber-aggressive — condor888000 and Will couldn’t handle more than two back-to-back ride-alongs. The results aren’t posted yet, but I think I did reasonably well.

On the downside, Rob’s Corvette continued to giving a hard time as it blowed a power steering line, which Luc helped him repair, allowing them to finish the event — good thing someone had some power steering fluid! Alos, despite the whole experience, Marylin still had no interest in trying autox. Don shed a tear.

The MCO crowd (goesfilled, luker, bjackson, culridr, condor888000, DEye, me, Marylin and pedwar) left Picton with East Side Mario’s in Kingston as our dinner target. From there, we took Hwy 15 home. Glad we did as the road was curvy and the stars were beautiful. As we got closer, cars started to leave the convoy eventually leaving culridr alone when goesfilled, luker, condor888000, and I exited the 416 at Bankfield and Brophy.

Pedwar and I were in complete agreement that we couldn’t have had a better anniversary weekend. Great friends, good times, driving fast cars, gorgeous sunshine. Couldn’t be happier.