On November 8, 1997, 16 cars worth of Taurus SHO owners gathered in the Texas Hill Country just outside Austin.

Five of us left from Houston at 7:30am to caravan to Austin to meet with the others.  Between the 5 of us, we had 2 working CBs, and one amatur radio operator.  The amatur radio would prove important to us later, since we were meeting another SHO in Columbus.

Here are a few pics of several of the cars in action in the Houston to Austin caravan.

Once we got to Austin, we found the park the group was to meet at with only a little trouble..  Was was really funny was while the six of us were driving towards the park on the twisty roads along Lake Travis, we saw most of a similar group that had caravanned from the  Dallas area.  Only problem was they were headed in the opposite direction!  The CBs immediately crackled to life with "Hey!  Where are you going?!?" and "It's the other way!".  The Dallasites had already been near the park, but a small error in the directions to the park had sent them back the way we had come.  A bit of discussion on the radio and a few consults of the maps got them (and us) all headed to the same place.

Once the Houston and Dallas groups arrived at the park, the small group of 3-4 that were waiting for us there suddenly swelled to around 14.  We were all fairly amazed at the turnout, as previous meetings like this had usually only attracted 6-10 cars.  We waited awhile for a few of the stragglers to show up while we checked out the modifications the others had made to their cars, and everyone took a look at the one third generation SHO that had made it.  We also discovered that one of my rear brake rotors was quickly dying.  This would give me a few "interesting" moments later when we were in the twisty back roads!  Hint: if you hear a the sound like a passenger jet overhead every time you come to a stop, and you DON'T spend a lot of your time around airports, check out your rear rotors! :-)

When everyone we were waiting for had arrived (we were currently up to 15 cars), we left for our first photo op of the day, another small park near Mansfield Dam on Lake Travis.  We had to make a small water crossing right as we left the park.

Here are several pictures of the cars at the dam.

After about 15 minutes of much photo taking, and some adventure climbing what appeared to be a 10 foot high valve on display (to get those good "elevated" shots) we went our first priority of the day - lunch!  We ate at the Iguana Grill (where, as it turns out, our waiter drove a SHO! Too bad we could get him to come along with us!) with a beautiful view over Lake Travis.  After a great meal, lots of good talk, and everyone looking over Nancy and Chris Klaus' picture album (what WAS going on in the first couple photos in there?!? ;-)) we doubled back the way we came to stop (and took over the parking lot) at the Slaughter Leftwich winery (where the one third gen owner among us discovered the opinion of a first gen SHO owner) to sample some Texas grown wine.

Once we left the winery, we made a quick stop at a convienence store (where most of us balked a bit at fueling up, but there wasen't many other choices around there!) before heading out to explore the twisty back roads of the hill country.

This had to be, for most of us, one of the more memorable events of the day.  We explored some of the back roads of the area, discovering the joys of crossing cattle guards at speed, loose livestock, and the usual assortment of hairpin turns, sharp curves, changes in elevation, and occasional creek crossing.  A lot of cattle were spooked this day, not to mention a few people in SHOs as well.  Personally I managed to break the rear end loose for just a second a couple of times (hint, brake before the turn - I learned a lot on how the SHO handles this day - makes me want to join the ranks of the autocrossers!), and know a few others knocked some dust clouds into the air during a few hard turns.  The only real casualty of the day came when Sergio, our fearless (and boy do I mean fearless) leader (during most of the back road driving) was the first to find a creek crossing that the SHO could (and in most of our cases DID) easily bottom out in.  His problem was that the was the first to get there, and probably hit it at 2x or 3x the speed the rest of us.  The rest of us had slowed down to once we got there - especially after Angela (Sergio's wife and CB operator) gave us the excellent warning of "OK, slow down for a [sound of car bottoming out hard in the creekbed] OUCH! uhm, slow down lots for the creekbed!".  For this honor, Sergio and his wife will probably be visiting the dentist next week to replace any fillings they may of jarred loose in the landing.  I also sacrificed myself (since I got covered with burrs) by taking a picture of the nice dent in their SHO's front subframe (better than then a cracked oilpan, I suppose!).

We made several stops during the back roads drive.  One in Sandy, Texas -  a place that consisted of nothing more (I'm not making this up) than a small store (named, appropriately enough, "The Sandy Store").  The rather elderly storekeeper was somewhat baffled by what had to be the most business Sandy has seen since the settlers came thru.  She didn't even complain when we inspected (and got a demonstration of) Jason Stef's (?) "Stereo from Hell!" (tm). ;-)

We also stopped in one other "town" - I don't even have a name for this one.

Here are some pictures from there.

Our final stop for the day was in Luckenbach, where we saw the post office. ;-)

Here are the SHO pictures from there.

Four of us drive back into Austin, and had dinner at the Hula Hut before the remains of the Houston SHO caravan (only two of us left!) drove back to Houston - leaving at Austin at ~9:20 pm, getting back around midnight (we drove back in a MUCH more "relaxed" manner than we drove "up" there in!). ;-)  When I turned off the engine at home, my trip odometer (reset that morning) read 565 miles!

All in all - I think everyone had an excellent time!  The weather couldn't of been better (well, we DID get sprinkled a little just as night fell in Austin, but that dosen't really count), nobody got a ticket (at least not when we were out as a group, can't vouch for others' drive there and back!), none of us ran into a cow (although Jason and I had a close encounter with a deer driving from Lukenbach to Austin after dark - good thing Jason had a little "extra lighting" on his SHO, or we might not of seen it), and amazingly enough (especially on my part) - no major breakdowns!

I'm already looking forward to the next LSSHOC group meeting!

- Dave Bonds
- dbonds@insync.net