As a member of several area car clubs, I always do my best to remain enthused about someone's idea for a road rally or a "motoring tour" in the Ocala National forest (where all the roads are straight and run to perceived compass points) or on this or that local road around the sinkholes developers and Chambers of Commerce call "lakes." The truth is, that Florida roads totally lack any soul, ups, downs, twists, turns, or potential for "I'm sorry I did that!" thoughts immediately preceded by a bout with massive oversteer or impolite understeer.

My favorite writers, David E. Davis and Peter Egan, are more than monthly acquaintances of mine; we are truly kindred spirits. There's a special place in the hereafter reserved where our dreams of narrow tires, spoked wheels, and external hand brakes...dreams of hats askew, and frost in our graying whiskers with faces wind-tanned while our deerskin gloved hands deliberately focus the 16-inch laminated walnut steering wheel of a "real" roadster ... will all come true! We'll drive roads where no 18-wheeler has
gone before and the only sound you hear is the honesty of a carburated motor and its muffled and catless exhaust. The trouble is, I suspect those fine gentlemen "do" live that life while I am enduring Florida sand blast, love-bugs, and the road noise of the masses who have recently arrived from places with more soulful byways.

It's not as though we have to stay here. The family homestead in Northwestern Connecticut has the best roadster roads in the entire northeast. I belong in a throwback MG or Allard or something with real wood parts. I belong meandering out there on that never-ending back road deemed unsuitable for trailered vehicles and which has never seen a speed limit sign...one where you are as likely to meet up with a horse-drawn hay wagon as any other vehicle. I need to dump the antiseptic security of Japanese and German technology and efficiency and return to the impracticality of something Italian or British made by men who drank beer at lunch in the early '50's. I need to get away from the "coast-to-coast" (of Florida) rallies and go smell the damp woods and wood fires of Hometown, USA. I want a tire with a tube and a hand pump in the boot. I need a renewed dose of heroes...men whose hands and feet drive and not simply focus and aim hydraulically assisted parts, computers, and other gizmos that tell a wiper blade when to
make a pass. I want to be wet and cold as I curse ill-fitting side curtains and try desperately to free up an overtightened knockoff as I wonder what ever possessed me to leave that brass weighted hammer on the work bench. The same hammer that I count on for any necessary fuel line and carb adjustments....

But it's a beautiful day in Orlando, this April 12 of year 2000. And there are roads that are almost fun once you follow an interstate to find them...and the German or Japanese technology will get me there and back in a dependable yet soulless manner on tubeless tires; and yet, if I take a certain backroad that overpasses an interstate...in my dreams it's a hill...and David and Peter are close on my tail!

Bob Hotaling
"drive fast and don't crash!"

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