About to embark on a "Tour de USA"

[Garry Bopp]

Rick joined John Tongish and I in the summer of 2018 to do the "Lake Superior Circle Tour". We had a blast and only got stopped by the Mounties once in Ontario ... they wanted to look at the cars!

BTW, Rick recently sold his Mk4 and moved on to motorcycles and BMW cars.

Garry

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[rick8928]

Wow, this thread came back after 7 years!
1. As I had mentioned earlier in this thread, the entire trip in far more detail is hosted on ffcars.com with the same thread title.

2. I sold my cobra because after 47,000 miles in 6 years, and multiple trips to FFR for the summer homecoming, multiple trips to the London cobrafest, the "tour de USA", "tour de Florida", "Tour de Midwest" , "Tour de Lake Superior", multiple trips to Wisconsin, upstate NY, Rehoboth Beach for the annual capital area cobra club get togethers, the annual new years day run around DC, multiple car shows and cars and coffee, yada yada yada.....I had basically done all I was ever going to do with the car. For several years, everything was just a repeat of stuff I'd already done. If I had a bigger garage, I'd have kept the car. However, my three car garage was filled with 3 cars (one of which was the cobra), and 3 motorcycles. Every time I wanted to ride a motorcycle, I had to "rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic" to get a bike out the door.

3. So, sold the cobra at a semi give away price to a nice young man from Staten Island (drove him up there in the car, took my license plate off the car, and he dropped me off in the city one early summer Saturday, where I spent several hours walking uptown from the Brooklyn Bridge, eating off food trucks, observing the feminine eye candy, and just having a lovely hike. Got on a prepaid [by the buyer] big bus and had a relaxing ride back to Baltimore where my wife picked me up; a very enjoyable fitting last day of Cobra ownership).

4. Garry is slightly confused (hey, he's past his "sell by" date and retired, so what do you expect?). :+) I've had my BMW 330i since 2002, and it has about 210,000 miles on it. I also have a 2016 Porsche Cayman S flat 6 six speed manual, which had become my newly favorite 4 wheeled conveyance. It and the cobra are two completely different sides of the fast car coin: brutal iron sledgehammer vs. poised titanium scalpel. Both great, but I'd done so much with the cobra I wanted to spend my time in the Porsche. So, after selling the cobra was able to migrate all the motorcycles to the 3rd garage bay, allowing easy access. I ended up selling two older bikes and replacing them with a brand new Triumph Speed Twin. Basically, I de-vintaged my fun fleet and have been enjoying myself ever since.

No doubt more info than you needed or desired, but I wanted to complete the saga and explain why I sold the cobra, cuz I never fell out of love with the experience. I miss the fun of the research, the build, time on the forum, and all the great folks I met as part of my cobra build and travel experience.

Keep on truckin' folks,
Rick

[Garry Bopp]

Rick,

I was pretty surprised to see this post come up again, as well.

Only "slightly confused"! That's a pretty big compliment! If I remember correctly, you were the one that taught me the phrase "retirement does NOT suck"! I've been living the dream!

Garry

[Jeff Kleiner]

Good to see you around here again Rick, and get an update on what life has been bringing you! I've told many people about your "Tour de fill in the blank" adventures

Be well,
Jeff