A Ferrari Road Trip- 1969
I had a trip planned from Charlottesville, VA, where I lived at the time,to Wyoming for a mountain climbing expedition into the Wind River Range. The previous year, I had flown to Denver and met friends for a similar foray into the wilderness, but my sister, Kathy, was visiting my parents in Buckhannon, WV, and was going to be going back to Boulder, CO, so I proposed to drive her back home in my 250 GTE 2+2.
I packed all my climbing gear into the trunk, filled up with Sunoco 260 (35 cents/gallon) and hit the road, heading west into the Allegheny Mountains on Rt 250. I had driven this many times before and it was a joy- beautiful mountain roads with fall colors just beginning to turn the leaves into color. I enjoyed the remainder of the day with Mother, Dad, and Kathy in Buckhannon, and early the next morning we said Goodbye and started our cross- country trip.
I drove through very light traffic down through WV into northern KY, the Hatfields & McCoys territory. A brief stop for lunch and we were again on the road. Just outside Olive Hill, KY, a car ahead of a line of traffic slammed on his brakes to make a sudden left turn into a driveway. All of us behind him managed to stop- barely. Then, behind me, there was a loud screeching of tires and bang, I was hit from behind and knocked forward into the car in front of me.
What happened was that two joyriders in a late-model Dodge had been driving way too fast, had just crested the hill, and found a line of cars stopped there on the road. They hit me in the rear, putting a dent in the aluminum trunk lid and breaking the left tail light. In the front, the driving light and headlight was damaged along with the left fender. Fortunately, nobody was hurt.
The local sheriff came to investigate and wrote up his report after interviewing those of us involved. One woman loudly proclaimed that we were all lucky- the car that got the most damage was “...that old gray car”. First, my car was SILVER, and second, it made me really mad. I was so angry, I swung my fist into a mailbox hard enough to flatter its side. “Old gray car”? I said to her... do you know how much that car cost? $12,000!” (The cost of a new Pontiac GTO at that time was about $3500). She snapped back ”Whoee, they sure seen you a-commin'”. OK, no point in arguing further. Rednecks.
The car was derivable so we continued on westward across Illinois, Indiana, and Missouri. Crossing the big bridge across the Mississippi River was a milestone event and then we were in Kansas. There were no Interstate Highways in most states at this time, so I swung onto the Kansas Turnpike and settled back for a long drive. The Turnpike speed limit at that time was 80 mph but I was being passed by everyone, even police cars! I gradually increased my speed as traffic thinned out and ended up averaging 100+ mph across the state of Kansas.
Kansas, and now Colorado, was as flat as a pancake, and it was hot. Driving with the windows down helped (no air conditioning), but the sun was still scorching hot. Fortunately, my European green sunglasses blocked the glare effectively. Nearing Denver, I was watching my gas gauge and considered stopping for gas, but I decided to wait until the red “reserve” warning light came on. Then I would have 25 miles to find a gas station.
I continued on into the outskirts of Denver when my engine began to run rough, sputtered and finally died. What? The reserve fuel light never came on! I tried to think of an explanation while I removed my sunglasses...and there was the reserve light staring me in the face. It then dawned on me that the green lenses in my sunglasses had filtered out the bright red warning light. I've always used neutral density glasses after that little lesson.
Luckily, a gas station was only a few blocks away so we were soon on our way to Boulder. Kathy lived in Boulder Canyon, just outside the town proper. The road into the canyon was dirt and gravel with cabins and tents dotting the landscape. It was hippy community, full of musicians, poets, and many- drug related activities. I pulled in beside a small log cabin where Kathy directed me to park. This was where she lived with her room mate “Crazy Dottie”. We unloaded the car and relaxed in front of her big cast-iron stove, the only source of heat in the cabin and it also served double-duty as a cook stove.
Later, Dottie came home from work and Kathy introduced us. She was pleasant and we enjoyed her company. After a bite to eat for dinner, we relaxed in front of the fire with a glass of wine until bedtime. Early in the evening, it was dark at this latitude and it became colder in the cabin, besides we had not re-fueled the stove so the fire was slowly dying. We hadn't given sleeping arrangements any forethought but the situation turned out to be Kathy sleeping in her bed and Dottie and I sleeping together on the couch. We managed to keep each other warm until morning.
The Boulder Canyon community was more or less an informal commune. People helped one another to the extent that there was a “community car”, an old station wagon that was available for whoever needed it. You found it parked along the road, got in, started it with a large screwdriver and took off on your errand. When you were finished, you just left the car along the side of the road somewhere in the canyon. No license, no registration, no insurance.
The sight of a hand-built log cabin with a 1963 Ferrari parked alongside was ludicrous but somehow fit into the eclectic nature of Boulder Canyon.
Dottie didn't own a car but she worked in Boulder at a biker bar, I drove in the next evening to give her a ride home. The next morning we all said our goodbyes and I headed north toward Cheyenne and then west toward the Great Rocky Mountains. Towns are few and far between in this area of Wyoming, so I was surprised to see a pickup truck off the shoulder of the highway, stuck in the mud. I stopped to see if I could help but it was firmly mired up to its axles.
I offered the driver, an older man in bib overalls, a ride to the nearest telephone so that he could get help. He climbed into the passenger seat and explained that he was with the Wyoming Highway Department and he had stopped to put up a road sign when he got stuck. We talked a bit and I noticed that he was looking over my dashboard at the speedometer 100 mph) and tachometer. Apparently this reading meant nothing to him as the speedometer was in kilometers rather than miles per hour.
Finally, he asked “What kind of car is this?”. “It's a Ferrari” I replied. He pondered my answer for a minute and then asked “Where was it made?”. “In Italy” I answered. He thought about this for a while and finally pronounced his judgment, “Sure is a good ridin' little devil!”. This probably the most honest, unvarnished review of my car that I ever heard!
After dropping off the pickup driver at a gas station to call his Department for help, I drove on into the town of Pinedale, WY, where I was to meet the others in our expedition party. Details of our climbing adventure are in a separate story:
“Wind River Expedition 1969”
After a meeting with the Attorney General, I retraced my route down to Denver but between Coyote Springs and Red Desert, I noticed a slow leak in one tire, but by stopping frequently to refill it with air, I made it to a tire shop in Denver. The tire was a Pirelli P-Zero and the replacement was $60, rather expensive in those days.
The trip home was relatively uneventful until I reached Indiana, where my engine began to lose power and run rough. In the Midwest, foreign cars were rare in those days and, besides, it was Sunday, so no repair shops were open for business. I drove through Vincennes but found nothing until just outside town, I noticed an Auto Repair sign. In a rural neighborhood, there was a house with a detached garage advertising repair service so I stopped and knocked on the door. A young man answered and I explained the problem to him. “Bring it around to the garage and I'll have a look at it” was his reply.
After a couple of hours of very thorough troubleshooting, he found that one set of points in my right hand distributor was loose and was not opening. A Ferrari V-12 has two dual-point distributors, so I had been actually running on six cylinders for a while. A quick adjustment of the points and I was ready to drive on. “What do I owe you?” I asked him. Surprisingly, he would not accept payment for his meticulous work, even though I insisted. “We don't see many cars like this around here.” was his answer.
The remainder of the drive to Charlottesville was uneventful. All in all, it was a memorable trip.
I had a trip planned from Charlottesville, VA, where I lived at the time,to Wyoming for a mountain climbing expedition into the Wind River Range. The previous year, I had flown to Denver and met friends for a similar foray into the wilderness, but my sister, Kathy, was visiting my parents in Buckhannon, WV, and was going to be going back to Boulder, CO, so I proposed to drive her back home in my 250 GTE 2+2.
I packed all my climbing gear into the trunk, filled up with Sunoco 260 (35 cents/gallon) and hit the road, heading west into the Allegheny Mountains on Rt 250. I had driven this many times before and it was a joy- beautiful mountain roads with fall colors just beginning to turn the leaves into color. I enjoyed the remainder of the day with Mother, Dad, and Kathy in Buckhannon, and early the next morning we said Goodbye and started our cross- country trip.
I drove through very light traffic down through WV into northern KY, the Hatfields & McCoys territory. A brief stop for lunch and we were again on the road. Just outside Olive Hill, KY, a car ahead of a line of traffic slammed on his brakes to make a sudden left turn into a driveway. All of us behind him managed to stop- barely. Then, behind me, there was a loud screeching of tires and bang, I was hit from behind and knocked forward into the car in front of me.
What happened was that two joyriders in a late-model Dodge had been driving way too fast, had just crested the hill, and found a line of cars stopped there on the road. They hit me in the rear, putting a dent in the aluminum trunk lid and breaking the left tail light. In the front, the driving light and headlight was damaged along with the left fender. Fortunately, nobody was hurt.
The local sheriff came to investigate and wrote up his report after interviewing those of us involved. One woman loudly proclaimed that we were all lucky- the car that got the most damage was “...that old gray car”. First, my car was SILVER, and second, it made me really mad. I was so angry, I swung my fist into a mailbox hard enough to flatter its side. “Old gray car”? I said to her... do you know how much that car cost? $12,000!” (The cost of a new Pontiac GTO at that time was about $3500). She snapped back ”Whoee, they sure seen you a-commin'”. OK, no point in arguing further. Rednecks.
The car was derivable so we continued on westward across Illinois, Indiana, and Missouri. Crossing the big bridge across the Mississippi River was a milestone event and then we were in Kansas. There were no Interstate Highways in most states at this time, so I swung onto the Kansas Turnpike and settled back for a long drive. The Turnpike speed limit at that time was 80 mph but I was being passed by everyone, even police cars! I gradually increased my speed as traffic thinned out and ended up averaging 100+ mph across the state of Kansas.
Kansas, and now Colorado, was as flat as a pancake, and it was hot. Driving with the windows down helped (no air conditioning), but the sun was still scorching hot. Fortunately, my European green sunglasses blocked the glare effectively. Nearing Denver, I was watching my gas gauge and considered stopping for gas, but I decided to wait until the red “reserve” warning light came on. Then I would have 25 miles to find a gas station.
I continued on into the outskirts of Denver when my engine began to run rough, sputtered and finally died. What? The reserve fuel light never came on! I tried to think of an explanation while I removed my sunglasses...and there was the reserve light staring me in the face. It then dawned on me that the green lenses in my sunglasses had filtered out the bright red warning light. I've always used neutral density glasses after that little lesson.
Luckily, a gas station was only a few blocks away so we were soon on our way to Boulder. Kathy lived in Boulder Canyon, just outside the town proper. The road into the canyon was dirt and gravel with cabins and tents dotting the landscape. It was hippy community, full of musicians, poets, and many- drug related activities. I pulled in beside a small log cabin where Kathy directed me to park. This was where she lived with her room mate “Crazy Dottie”. We unloaded the car and relaxed in front of her big cast-iron stove, the only source of heat in the cabin and it also served double-duty as a cook stove.
Later, Dottie came home from work and Kathy introduced us. She was pleasant and we enjoyed her company. After a bite to eat for dinner, we relaxed in front of the fire with a glass of wine until bedtime. Early in the evening, it was dark at this latitude and it became colder in the cabin, besides we had not re-fueled the stove so the fire was slowly dying. We hadn't given sleeping arrangements any forethought but the situation turned out to be Kathy sleeping in her bed and Dottie and I sleeping together on the couch. We managed to keep each other warm until morning.
The Boulder Canyon community was more or less an informal commune. People helped one another to the extent that there was a “community car”, an old station wagon that was available for whoever needed it. You found it parked along the road, got in, started it with a large screwdriver and took off on your errand. When you were finished, you just left the car along the side of the road somewhere in the canyon. No license, no registration, no insurance.
The sight of a hand-built log cabin with a 1963 Ferrari parked alongside was ludicrous but somehow fit into the eclectic nature of Boulder Canyon.
Dottie didn't own a car but she worked in Boulder at a biker bar, I drove in the next evening to give her a ride home. The next morning we all said our goodbyes and I headed north toward Cheyenne and then west toward the Great Rocky Mountains. Towns are few and far between in this area of Wyoming, so I was surprised to see a pickup truck off the shoulder of the highway, stuck in the mud. I stopped to see if I could help but it was firmly mired up to its axles.
I offered the driver, an older man in bib overalls, a ride to the nearest telephone so that he could get help. He climbed into the passenger seat and explained that he was with the Wyoming Highway Department and he had stopped to put up a road sign when he got stuck. We talked a bit and I noticed that he was looking over my dashboard at the speedometer 100 mph) and tachometer. Apparently this reading meant nothing to him as the speedometer was in kilometers rather than miles per hour.
Finally, he asked “What kind of car is this?”. “It's a Ferrari” I replied. He pondered my answer for a minute and then asked “Where was it made?”. “In Italy” I answered. He thought about this for a while and finally pronounced his judgment, “Sure is a good ridin' little devil!”. This probably the most honest, unvarnished review of my car that I ever heard!
After dropping off the pickup driver at a gas station to call his Department for help, I drove on into the town of Pinedale, WY, where I was to meet the others in our expedition party. Details of our climbing adventure are in a separate story:
“Wind River Expedition 1969”
After a meeting with the Attorney General, I retraced my route down to Denver but between Coyote Springs and Red Desert, I noticed a slow leak in one tire, but by stopping frequently to refill it with air, I made it to a tire shop in Denver. The tire was a Pirelli P-Zero and the replacement was $60, rather expensive in those days.
The trip home was relatively uneventful until I reached Indiana, where my engine began to lose power and run rough. In the Midwest, foreign cars were rare in those days and, besides, it was Sunday, so no repair shops were open for business. I drove through Vincennes but found nothing until just outside town, I noticed an Auto Repair sign. In a rural neighborhood, there was a house with a detached garage advertising repair service so I stopped and knocked on the door. A young man answered and I explained the problem to him. “Bring it around to the garage and I'll have a look at it” was his reply.
After a couple of hours of very thorough troubleshooting, he found that one set of points in my right hand distributor was loose and was not opening. A Ferrari V-12 has two dual-point distributors, so I had been actually running on six cylinders for a while. A quick adjustment of the points and I was ready to drive on. “What do I owe you?” I asked him. Surprisingly, he would not accept payment for his meticulous work, even though I insisted. “We don't see many cars like this around here.” was his answer.
The remainder of the drive to Charlottesville was uneventful. All in all, it was a memorable trip.
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