Summary written by Hugh Johnson

On Saturday, March 11th, 2000, the Lone Star SHO Club gathered in Austin for its Spring Run.This route would take them up the Texas Highland Lakes, which are the dammed segments of theColorado River as it descends through the Hill Country. A contingent of Houston folks were makingthe trip over to Austin on the Friday beforehand, so we planned to have a get-together on Fridaynight at the Dog & Duck Pub in downtown Austin to share tall tales. Unfortunately, unforeseencomplications delayed the Houston caravan's arrival in Austin, and they were unable to make itto the pub.

Jared Beck writes:Murphy's Law states that "anything that can go wrong, will go wrong" at the least desired time.Keeping that in mind, the LSSHOC Spring Run 2000 was interesting to say the least.

It all started when I was an hour late to meet David, Jason, Martin, and Michael. I would havebeen much later if it had not been for a Houston police officer that had a good eye for a classiccase of "road rage". He saw that I was getting very disturbed by the bumper to bumper traffic thatI had miscalculated. The officer very sheepishly looked at me, then pointed for me to get behind himas to follow him. I proceeded to do what he was instructing me to do as he had made a gap open intraffic. We made a very speedy getaway. The officer escorted me within a few miles from where Ineeded to exit. I honked my horn, and gave a quick wave and was on my way. I guess we SHOed thattraffic!

Upon finally meeting the guys, I grabbed a quick bite and we headed out. The gang quickly found outthat my CB radio was lacking. Martin and David had mentioned that I sounded like the "teacher" onCharlie Brown when I talked on my CB. They all had a good laugh. It turned out that Jason was having"technical difficulties" of his own, so we all stopped at Wal-Mart in Giddings so that Jason and Icould remedy our problems.

A short while after stopping in Giddings, I had noticed that my front end had started vibratingslightly. I simply thought it might be an out-of-balance tire. We all were moving at a very nice(and safe) rate of speed. We occasionally slowed for traffic or speed zones. Our lane changes werevery "poetic", and the display of flashes and exhilarating lightning displays that nature had laid outfor us was an awesome SHOw. It seemed that we were driving right into a massive electrical storm.Nonetheless, it was awesome.

Just outside Austin (about 10 miles or so) I noticed that as the group proceeded to stop for a red lightthat my slight vibration had now escalated to a lunging of the car from side to side at low speeds. Istarted having CB trouble again a few miles prior to this which made it almost impossible for me to reachthe other guys. I resulted in pulling over in a local gas station to see if we could find the problem.Neither I nor anybody else could find anything wrong. The group kept an eye on everything as I was drivingto see if there was anything wrong. I had done a clutch job a couple of weeks earlier, so I wasexpecting the worst (maybe I had forgotten to tighten something). The "wobbling" proceeded to get worse, soI pulled over and decided it was time to get dirty.

At a gas station just outside Austin, I have my car up on jacks, an I'm in it head first (if only we wouldhave thought to get pictures). I thought that my coaster bearing on the axle had come loose. It hadn't. Ireached to move the tire out of my way when I noticed the problem: there was a knot on the inside of thetread the size of my fist. Relieved, I put the temporary donut on and we continued on our way.

As a result of all the problems on the way, it had gotten too late to meet Hugh and the others at the pub.David had separated from the rest of us to meet up with his wife. Jason, Martin, Michael and I found lodgingat the Mountain Star Lodge on Ranch Road 620. There we all enjoyed a SHOw put on by one of the locals (don'task). The next morning, I ventured out to look for some tires. I ended up at NTB for four hours or more whichcaused me to miss the LSSHOC drive altogether. I'll be there next time, you can be sure!

Saturday came, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. It was a perfect day for a run:nice and cool, the way our engines like it. We were to meet at 11:00am inthe overflow parking lot of The Oasis restaurant on Lake Travis, northwest of Austin. Kerby,Stephen, and David were the first on the scene, beating yours truly by 10 or 15 minutes (doh!).Once I arrived, we bundled up and waited for the others to arrive.Pretty soon, the parking lot started filling up with SHOs, along with onePorsche 928 S4, driven by a friend of mine. Pretty soon, everyone whowas going to be there had arrived. However, we had been communicating withJared over the phone while he tried to get NTB to service his car. While we were waiting, wechatted with each other, checked out the lone 3rd generation SHO thathad arrived. Troy's engine bay was absolutely showroom-spotless, and made some of us with older,dustier cars quite jealous. Meanwhile, others attempted to help Brandon installa CB in his car. (He ended up borrowing a handheld from Derrick Berg.) Still others in the groupnoticed something slightly amiss with the badges on David Bonds' car.After Jared called in and reported that there was no way he was going to be able to get his carserviced in time to meet up with us, we had our drivers' meeting, lined up for a picture, andheaded out.

We headed out at noon and proceeded along the twisty roads that encircle Lake Travis.Unfortunately, we encountered a problem almost immediately. Along RM2769, Jason Keeling had a closeencounter with a Camaro which, coming the opposite direction and straddling the double yellow line,required Jason to swerve to avoid a collision. There was a glancing blow between the two cars,barely enough to cause any visible body damage, but it was enough to cause Jason's red '90 SHO tobegin a spin from which he could not recover. The car rotated 180 degrees and slid off the rightside of the road and into a ditch. After the call came over the CB that someone had "ditched", weall pulled off to the side of the road and walked back to the accidentsite. Fortunately, Jason was physically okay, with only minor whiplash and some bruises, but he wasobviously very upset: while the ditch wasn't particularly deep, it unfortunately contained a largeconcrete storm drain which had made quick work of his SHO's left rearcorner. While Jason attempted to raise his family on the cell phone, the rest of us surveyed the damage. Sergio and others reset the fuel cutoff switch (notan easy task, since the trunk lid was not in the mood to open in its new configuration), started thecar, and pulled it a few feet forward in order to get it off the stormdrain and in a better position to be pulled out of the ditch by a wrecker. This allowed us tofurther survey the damage, and it didn't look good. Meanwhile, apassing park ranger happened upon us and radioed in a call to the EMS, just to make sure Jason wasokay. The EMS from the nearby little lake town of Volente arrived inforce, and it seemed as though this was the event of the year for them. After discovering thatJason was a minor, and therefore was not legally able to refuse medical treatment, they tied him up to a board (er, stretcher) and carried him off to the hospitalfor observation. We cleared Jason's stuff out of his car, packed it up, and headed back to our carsto get back on the road.

We regrouped outside Volente and got back on route, twisting up infamous Lime Creek Road andthen west on FM1431. The left turn from Lime Creek onto FM1431 took forever, thanks to traffic, soour caravan got split up pretty bad. After the lead group (of which I was part) realized the backof the pack was nowhere to be seen and wasn't even in radio range anymore, we pulled off the sideof the road just outside Lago Vista to wait for them to catch up. What we failed to remember wasthat Sergio was leading the lagging group, and once they had caught up to us, they sped by at sucha good clip that now we were hard pressed to catch back up with them. (Had we just kept on,no doubt they would've caught up with us in no time.) Oh, well.

We cruised up FM1431 until we reached Marble Falls, where we decidedwe'd stop for our overdue lunch break. We stopped at the Dairy Queen, where wehogged most of the parking lot. Several patrons leaving the restaurant were seengawking at the long line of shiny Tauruses. After we ate, wegathered in the parking lot where the next leg was discussed and people snappedphotos. Several noticed the amusing caption underneath which David Bonds hadinadvertently parked his super-clean '95.

Our next stop was just outside Marble Falls: Wirtz Dam, whichseparates Lake LBJ from Lake Marble Falls. This spot provided one of the best photo ops of the journey. While some of us set up the cars for theobligatory "fog light shot", others climbed up the dam to get a shotlooking back down on the cars. After everyone had climbed up the dam, weposed for our second group photo.

We stood around, chatting, chillin', and hangin'until it was time to hit the road again. After everyone had climbed back down thedam, we lined up for our next little bit of fun. The road from the highway to the dam viewpoint is very long and straight, with no other access along its length. A perfect spot to stretch our engines'legs, to be sure. We spaced ourselves out and made our runs, while Sergio and Angela set up at the road'smidpoint to capture the moment on videotape. You can view QuickTime clips of Blanton(1.3MB), Kurt, Troy, and Brandon (1.1MB), Kerby and Hugh(1.8MB), Gidish (1MB), Martin (632K), andDerrick (668K) making their runs past the camera.

Shortly after resuming our route on FM1431, part of the group stopped for a restroom break and a coupleof the Houston folks decided to head back to Austin to meet Jason at the hospital and give him hisstuff before he rode home with his family. Whilst David Bonds and I scrambled to exchange phone numbersso that we could get in touch later that evening when the group got back into Austin, everyoneelse had taken off. I had to move along briskly in order to try and catch up with the pack. OnRM2342, south of Inks Lake State Park, I managed to catch the tail end of the club's requisiteloose emu sighting (a county sheriff was attempting to corral it with his squad car. I doubt hemet with much luck). I finally managed to catch up with the back of the pack; unfortunately, Kerby, Giddish and Igot stuck behind an RV as it meandered through Inks Lake State Park at 20mph. We eventuallypulled into the visitors' center parking lot at Buchanan Dam, joining the rest of the crew. We hung out on theobservation deck for a while, discussing the day's events, and deciding on where we were going to do dinneronce we returned to Austin.

We hit the road and made a beeline back to Austin. At one point, with TX29 free of any trafficin our direction, we formed up two wide and four deep, moving at a decent clip. You could almosthear Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries announcingour arrival. :) We decided to have dinner at the day's starting point, The Oasis.Though it was crowded as usual, our relatively large party was seated fairly quickly and enjoyed anice sunset over the gorgeous lake. Yet another great club event underour belts, we all talked about looking forward to the next.