Conclave 2021 in Southern California

Michael Oritt

Yoda

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• Mar 18, 2020

• #1

Rather than hijacking Ray's excellent topic about what to do during the COVID-19 crisis, and now that I've come to terms with the cancellation of Conclave 2020 I am thinking about a coast-to-coast drive to Conclave 2021 in SoCal.

I did the Open Roads drive from MD to Tahoe and back (via Los Angeles) in 2002 and it stands out as one of the best things I have ever done, at least behind a steering wheel. A large part of the fun was the route planning and dreaming. And the trip's success was also brought about because a lot of organization was done by several generous folks who organized "feeder groups' which brought a good number of us together in St. Louis MO, from where we proceeded in a few loose bunches over alternate routes, and on to Tahoe.

I want to do this trip and I'D LIKE TO DO IT IN COMPANY. So let the dreaming begin!

 

Last edited by a moderator: Mar 18, 2020

J

Jack T

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• Mar 18, 2020

• #2

Re: Conclave 2021 in southern california

If you take US 40 through MD, PA, and OH, let me know. Sounds like a great adventure.

 

AN6-TX

Jedi Hopeful

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• Mar 19, 2020

• #3

I'm in the Denver area and would be interested in joining you along the way if the logistics worked (etc). Please keep me posted on your plans...

 

dajamies

Freshman Member

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• May 8, 2020

• #4

Pam and I are up for it. We reside in Portland Ontario Canada and we are well equiped to take on the epic trip. This past winter we tallied 3,000 miles in two months while spending the winter in Marana AZ. Too bad it ended when the virus forced us home a month early.

We have driven over 9,000 miles since we purchased the car in the fall of 2018. Have they chosen a date for Conclave 2021>
P and D

​

 

J

Jack T

Jedi Trainee

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• May 8, 2020

• #5

You would do the trip from ON to CA in the Healey? Wow!! We would consider it from the Pittsburgh, Pa area staying off interstates as much as possible. I'd like to pick up as much of old 66 that's still there.

 

Editor_Reid

Moderator

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• May 8, 2020

• #6

dajamies said:

Have they chosen a date for Conclave 2021?

Click to expand...

The first of the monthly series of Conclave promos appears in the June issue of Healey Marque magazine (printed this week and going in the mail Monday):

The dates are May 16-21
and check the website for more details.​

 

OP

Michael Oritt

Yoda

Gold

Online

• May 8, 2020

• #7

If you're thinking about doing all or part of Historic Route 66 pick up a copy of Road Trip USA.

Though certainly not the seminal guide on the subject, it describes what driving is like on 66 (as well as several other "Blue Highway" trips across the country, both east-west and north south) in enough detail for you to do some rough route planning and gets your mind going on two-lane travel and what it does and does not offer.

If you do nothing else go to Tinkertown in Sandia, NM--about 10 miles off of the I-40 alignment of what used to be 66. It was hand's down the high point of the return trip to MD following "Open Roads 2002" in Lake Tahoe (via Los Angeles to visit my son and daughter).

 

OP

Michael Oritt

Yoda

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• May 9, 2020

• #8

Reading/writing on this thread got me reminiscing about that 2002 trip. Except for the section following "Open Roads" when my wife joined me from Tahoe to Los Angeles I travelled alone, and not having much else to do I wrote email summaries of each day's travel which I shared to friends as well as posting to the autox.healey site. Looking at my emails for the couple of days when I was travelling on I-40/US 66 from LA to Albuquerque I see that I wrote the following:

Sunday July 7, 2002:

"After spending a few days with my son and daughter who both live in the Los "Angeles area I left this morning around 5:00 AM bound for Kingman, AZ. My "Desert Driving Plan", which served us so well in the Western states on the way out to Tahoe, is to be off the road by 12:00 noon, so I kept my day's drive down to about 330 miles.

"The first hour was spent just getting out of the LA environs, and the sun came up well before I changed from the I-10 to the I-15 and climbed out onto the San Bernardino Mountains. By the time I had reached Hespena the temps were already rising and I had peeled down to a tee-shirt, with my trusty red Austin-Healey visor pulled down low against the morning sun's rays.

"On up to Barstow and onto the I-40 running across the Mohave Desert "Historic Route 66", as it is called, runs intermittently alongside the Interstate and seems just a memory. In a few places near the freeway interchanges some old motels and food joints seem to be holding on, but mostly there are just signs and closed buildings. Given the desolate nature of the are and the high temperatures the wonder is not that businesses have disappeared but rather that they were established at all in the first place. I thought about the saga of the Oakies in Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath.


"BTW I don't know how efficient the cooling systems were in early Corvettes but it is easy to understand why they did not use a Healey as the theme car in the "Route 66" TV series. As the morning wore on my car's water temperature gauge needle crept past 190, then stayed above 212 for the balance of the drive except after a long downgrade, and the inevitable climb that followed drove it up the peg on a few occasions. However, the car ran faultlessly, and provided I kept my speeds down to about 65 I could deal with things.

"The Santa Fe Railroad line paralleled 40/66 for much of the morning's run and as I slowly overtook some eastbound trains I counted the cars--the biggest had about 100 cars and three engines. It is amazing the amount of tire debris on and along the road and in places the shoulder almost seems to be in a state of total disrepair--fist-sized pieces of blacktop littered the road and occasionally were in the travel lanes. I stopped for fuel in Ludlow (the Third "Annual Pistachio Festival is coming up in November) and although an inviting loop of the old road (Here called the "Old National Trail") made off to the Southeast I thought it best to stick to the plan and stay on I-40 to beat the heat.

"The desert desolation was broken occasionally by 1950's-vintage trailers parked under a scrubby tree or two but there was not much to look at until the relative lushness of Needles, CA came shimmering out of the Mohave Valley which gets its green from what water Los Angeles chooses to let through and eventually finds its way to Lake Havasu further downstream, the unlikely home of the old London Bridge. I crossed into ZONA and ran the last 60 miles into Kingman, slowly decreasing my speed up long grades when the water temperature pegged out.

"I'm now ensconced in the local TravelLodge. The clerk told me that today was mild at a mere 95 degrees but she said ominously "Wait until later in the afternoon". That's it for the day--I'm off again tomorrow and perhaps I'll try to get on the road by 4:00 AM."


​I'll write up my notes from the next day's segment--Kingman to Albuquerque--tomorrow. Thanks for bearing with me.

 

J

Jack T

Jedi Trainee

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• May 9, 2020

• #9

Thanks for posting that, Michael. Looking forward to reading about the rest of the trip. First time I drove across country was in 1973 in a 1968 Corvette. Being young & dumb (and cheap), I waited until I had 3 days to get to LA. As a result I did not have a chance to take in the sights. I stuck to the interstates where available, but they weren't completed yet through a lot of NM and AZ so I traveled the old main road of 66. Next opportunity I had to drive a portion of 66 was about 15 years ago when I took a roundabout route from Las Vegas to LA. We spent a night in Kingman, AZ and visited the excellent Powerhouse Museum that traces the history of 66. From there, we took the original alignment over the mountains to Oatman, AZ, which is pretty much unchanged from the 1940s. Don't know how the Healey will handle that route, but if I'm presented with the opportunity I intend to find out.

 

OP

Michael Oritt

Yoda

Gold

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• May 10, 2020

• #10

Monday, July 8, 2002--Kingman AZ to Albuquerque, NM:

"Planning to get on the road early, last night I set the alarm for 4:00 AM. However no alarm was needed and I was awoken at 2:45 AM: Apparently the Eveready Energizer Bunny and his girlfriend were staying in the adjacent room and a loud and continuous thumping on the wall was just too much to sleep through. After (I am not making this up) about 25 minutes of listening to various interesting rhythms I took it as a sign to get underway, and they were still going at it when I vacated the room. I did put the alarm clock on loud buzz and placed it against the common wall before leaving....

"I drove across Western Arizona with the sky slowly lightening ahead of me and was in Flagstaff before 6:00 AM. About an hour later I got off the interstate and onto 66 to check out "The Corner" made famous by The Eagles--it was in front of a drugstore that had not yet opened--a "Seattle's Best" coffee sign hung in the window so I guess fame has brought with it progress of a sort. Through town and back onto the "I"--My destination was Albuquerque, about 475 miles for the day. I had spoken to Dave Porter of "Taos Garage Annex"--a fellow-lister--about the leaking tach drive seal and he believed he had one on hand.* The weather was a lot cooler than in the low desert--it never got over 90--and engine temperature was not a concern today.

"Though the old road exists mainly in small towns along the way lots of the kitchy tourist stuff still stands near the Interstate interchanges: The "Two Arrows Cafe", the "Jackrabbit Trading Post," many many Indian Blanket shops and of course the "Astronaut's Hall of Fame" (right near "The Meteor Crater") called out to me. But I was on a mission and just plugged along, averaging about 65 mph for the day.

"The further east I drove the more attractive the High Desert became. In places I drove through thick Evergreen and was warned that Elk might share the road with me for the next 50 miles--a sobering thought indeed. The last 30 or so miles west of Albuquerque looked like the beginning of range land and the desert began to give way to cultivation, even if the grass was a uniform brown color.

"I rolled into Dave's shop about 12:30 PM (time zone change) and by 2:00 PM I was in good shape. The old tach seal had completely disappeared which accounted for the healthy amount of oil which had been augering up the tach drive cable and dripping onto my right knee. Dave informed me that tonight the local Austin-Healey Club was having a dinner meeting and asked me to be his guest. Over a good Mexican dinner I met four or five fellows who had been at Tahoe, saw some great photos and heard some good stories from the road. Apparently all had made it without too much difficulty--right Dave??

"It's been a long day for me and I'm turning in. I have some old friends from my Bahamas days who live not too far north of here in Questa and I'll be driving that way tomorrow to see them.

"Best to all--Michael

"*Some time before reaching Tahoe an oil leak began to appear on my right knee--at first just a few drops and by the time I reached ALB about 1/2 quart of engine oil per day was coming up the tach driveshaft, into the bottom of the tach head and onto my knee. The fiber seal at the base of the shaft where it attaches to the block had gone south."

 

Last edited: May 10, 2020

tahoe healey

Yoda

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• May 10, 2020

• #11

The GGAHC will probably again get 10 to 15 Healeys in a caravan as we did for the So Cal Association at Moro Bay (great ride down HWY 1 along the coast).

 

steveg

Yoda

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• May 10, 2020

• #12

Michael,
I'm really enjoying your Route 66 diary! Would like to read installments for the entire trip!

Maybe this could get transferred to a separate thread.

 

OP

Michael Oritt

Yoda

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• May 10, 2020

• #13

Steve--

Glad you're enjoying them and I in turn enjoy the reminiscences of the trip.

Except for one or two missing days I have the posts from day 1--when I and several others set out from Ocean City MD for Tahoe--through my post-event travels down the PCH to LA and then back to MD. However I only have paper print-outs of the original emails and since they would not scan well and I do not have a voice-to-text program I have been transcribing the emails into the daily posts you have read.

It looks like a few others are interested and I guess anyone who is not can skip the topic, so I will start a new thread tomorrow beginning with day 1. Stay tuned....

 

dajamies

Freshman Member

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• May 11, 2020

• #14

We are planning to ship the car out to CA and attend the Conclave. Then we plan to drive the Healey back home to Portland, Ontario and see as much of Route 66 as we can. Agree with staying off Interstates and prefer secondary roads.
dave.jamieson@bell.net

 

GregW

Yoda

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• May 11, 2020

• #15

Michael Oritt said:

I do not have a voice-to-text program.

Click to expand...

Hi Michael,
If you have a smart phone, you can speech-to-text on that and email it to yourself.

 

Bob_Spidell

Yoda

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• May 11, 2020

• #16

If you've already driven the Pacific Coast Highway, Highway 395 is the way to go from the north. The eastern side of the Sierras seen from the Owens Valley area is stunning (a stay at Death Valley would be memorable). I know some side routes if you really want to meander, and there's a park/monument of the one of the WWII Japanese internment camps; it's fairly new and I haven't visited, but it's on my list. It does get a bit desolate down south.

 

Last edited: May 11, 2020

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Jack T

Jedi Trainee

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• May 11, 2020

• #17

dajamies said:

We are planning to ship the car out to CA and attend the Conclave. Then we plan to drive the Healey back home to Portland, Ontario and see as much of Route 66 as we can. Agree with staying off Interstates and prefer secondary roads.
dave.jamieson@bell.net

Click to expand...

Maybe it's the result of not being able to go anywhere for the last two months, but I find myself repeatedly opening Google Maps to plan a route from Pittsburgh. Southerly route west, then up the PCH and head home on a northerly route. Or, maybe deciding to ship the car back home if we can't take another week or two for a return. Two 70+ year-olds in a 60+ year-old car for thousands of miles. What could possibly go wrong? :rapture: