I will be posting meets for the HCD (Hill Country Drives). These meets include several car clubs inlcuding Lotus clubs, Ferrari clubs, Lamborghini Clubs as well as a dozen others. Mark(Silver Bullet), Grayon, (ATXCLS), Kurt, (Kurt Bradley) and myself Jordan are trying to get more Acuras down there.

A little about the drives. We meet in the morningm, 9-10am and get maps. We stop several times to let everyone catch up, we stop once for lunch and usually end up at a massive car show. *** Cliff Notes*** Join us for a white-knuckle driving experience through beautiful hill country in Austin, Texas. WE NEED MORE ACURAS!!! 2 WILL NOT CUT IT, we try and rep AZ as much as possible. We cant describe how amazing the experience is! I will keep this thread alive and make sure and update new routes and dates for upcoming drives, YOU WANT TO DO THIS!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the second meet, I drove the CL downt here to play and REP AZ some more, we need more Acura's from the site, I knwo there are a ton from Austin and surrounding areas. I had a blast on this one as well, and so did Mark.

 

 

 

 

 

 

.....can't go wrong with exotics & Acuras in the Texas heat! We could always use more cars from the site tough, it would be soooooooo cool to have a good turnout of Acuras. **These drives are very fast and very tight turns, we do not encourage dangerous driving, drivers are always curteous and always know their surroundings. We all attend these to have a good time yet not to endanger peoples lives. The roads are, for the most parts, back roads with very few cars.**

 

Damn Jordan, great job!!! I will definitely try and make the next one!!

 

wowwww just wow great pics,,,

 

 

yea, thats a superamerica......$400,000+

 

Wow what do these people do? Are they CEOs? So much money....

 

This sorta reminds me of the TX2K6 Supra Nationals cruise I went on a month ago. Too bad the weather sucked and everyone just made the smaller circle back.

 

Holy 56K batman!!

 

it rangs from dell people to guys that own there own companies to your average joe.

It is a lot of fun!

 

wow....looks badass

 

That guy and that car look familiar.

 

For those that want more details. HCD home.

 

 

Thirsty?

 

thats what i was getting at. thats the funniest shit ive ever seen

 

A Spider Shake is not only tasty, but it's also full of vitamins and minerals...and a little hair from the tarantula.

 

ok stop, the people at work are wondering why im laughing. did it smell gross?

 

It smelled like a banana smoothie. No hints of anything. It didn't appear to taste any different either.

 

Kurt, is the home page down??

 

Try this: www.hillcountrydrives.com

 

Got it!! and joined!!!

 

I'm posting my write up from last the drive last Marchs. April right up will follow:

I've now had a chance to get some sleep and collect my thoughts.

Let me also thank Ryan and Grayson for extending a welcome to us and being the phenomenal hosts for this event. There are others out of the Viper club in Austin that should also be recognized for their contributions. The way this drive was managed was clearly well done. Nothing like having Vipers “show you around town”.

I would also like to thank Kurt. Kurt, along with Grayson, met with us at the beginning and helped Jordan and myself feel more at ease since we are not local to Austin and were first timers in this event.

I can honestly say I felt like the odd car out being the only Acura there. Albeit we represented Acura well. Having a few more Acuras there will help since we could driver together as a club.

That being said, let me give you a first hand account of what you can expect. I hooked up with Jordan at his place to start our 175 mile “run” to Austin. The trip to Austin was quick! It took us 2.5 hours to get to the meeting place. Start time was 10am, cars started collecting around 9:30am. Since neither Jordan nor I had made that run recently we left a wee bit early, 6am, and got there at 8:30a. Thank God we were meeting at Starbucks. Gave us a chance to catch our breath and load up on some liquids before we started. Worked out well and maybe next time we could coordinate making it a time to eat breakfast.

The cars collected quickly, people had a chance to visit and admire the other cars, Ryan collected the group for some quick instructions and directions. The rule was: Have fun, drive safe, drive within your limits, it’s your cars you know what they are worth so don’t wreck them or others, this is not a race, if you don’t know where you are going then keep a viper in sight as your leader.

After those simple instructions it sounded like the start of the Indy 500 and Daytona 500 combined. Everyone left in as orderly a fashion as they could and filed out of the parking lot in a single row. After that the first 30 minutes was a blurrrrrr!!!! We curved and weaved through the local roads to head out to the Hill Country. At first I was a little concerned trying to maintain a safe distance but yet keep up with Grayson so I wouldn’t get lost. Jordan rode with Grayson at first so it actually worked out good for me in the TL. I had the navi on and zoomed out so I could keep a good reference to where we were the whole time. I also had some good techno music blaring in the background to help keep my driving rhythm in check and my nerves in check.

The drive was about 150 miles from start to finish. I can’t validate if that is what we really did but in 2 hours we finally had stopped at a place out in the middle of nowhere called the Salt Lick. Barbeque, Texas style. So if that was the case we covered 150 miles of the most intense open straights, up hills, down hills, curves, drives through a couple small towns, excellent Texas Hill Country scenery you could imagine. AND the weather was EXCELLENT!!!! It started out at about 65 degrees and sunny and ended up at about 75 degrees.

All the drivers drove their cars hard but within their capabilities. Everyone was courteous to each other, there was non one being stupid but yet everyone had a chance to show what their cars could do. It was amazing we passed 1, maybe 2, police the whole time. I’d say 80% of the cars had radar detectors and I know that the only time you heard them go off is when we started our cars.

We made about 3-5 stops in route to makes sure to collect any stragglers or people that got caught behind traffic. The roads were in great shape, we had 2 lane roads (no passing was done on these except for the occasional pickup who saw what probably look like a menacing sight of about 30-50 very fast cars on his bumper), we had 4 lane country highways where people to jockey positions in the parade of cars. These were the times that Jordon did many of his photo ops.

We also did lots of winding, hilly roads!

About the TL:

Being that I was between either a Viper and S-2000 or a corvette most of the time I had to make sure I didn’t get left behind or slow down what was behind me. I can honestly say there were several times I hit the rev-limiter keep the TL nicely in line with the others. I did several “drive bys” on the 4 lane sections to give people an opportunity to see what the TL was capable of. 3rd gear romps from 60mph really showed how well the TL could pull. I hit 110mph several times and faster one or two other times. Performance wise the TL was able to hold its own with all the other cars. Braking was excellent with assistance of down shifting. Cornering was thrilling and I was able to fine tune my driving during this time. I was able to downshift into the corners and run 2nd and 3rd gear to their limits. These were times I hit the rev-limiter the most. I probably ran the car at 90% of its ability one or two times 95% of its ability. Like Jordan said the lady driving the corvette behind me made me feel good about the TL when she said she had not seen a TL perform that way.

The main drive ended at the Salt Lick around noon. A group of us, the Vipers primarily, went to a high school to help with a car show there. We then went to hang with the AC Cobra club meet/show. After that we went to a Home Depot parking lot where the regular Saturday night get together occurs.

When it was all said and done we had left Austin at 6:30pm and made it back to Jordan’s at 9:05pm. That was 15hrs of the best car time you could have in a day. I ended up driving 655 miles, 11 hours and 2 tanks of gas. I averaged 26mpg from start to finish. The Hill Country drive was about 150 miles covered in 2 hours with several “get out of the car” stops along the way. You do the math: that’s an AVERAGE 75mph, with stops, winding roads, stop and go places. Hmmm, pretty impressive!!!!

 

WOW! We didn't get back till 6pm on Sunday. Janet and I had a blast the whole weekend. I have to give Janet big kuttos for hanging in on that drive. She enjoyed the twisty hilly roads by the lake but didn't like the 120mph highway runs.

We ended up going to the BEST "interior" Mexican food restaurant. Interior Mexican, I learned, is authentic Mexican food made with recipes from the interior states of Mexico. Not your standard mexican, tex-mex place. http://www.fondasanmiguel.com/

We never made it down to 6th Street. We went out to Fredericksburg on Sunday and looked through a few shops, wine tasted a few wines, got a signed bottle from one of the vineyard owners. We drove back halfway to Dallas on back country roads to "experience" a hill country drive of our own. Ended up on I-35 around Temple and then did 100mph most of the way back on I-35.

WOW-- You guys need to take advantage of a drive and make at least a 1 night stay out of it. I stayed 1 exit down from the starting point at an Embassy Suites. Couldn't recommend anything better to make your drive more enjoyable. Wish I could have hung out with o2 and his buddies Friday night but it was way past our bedtime to party till 4am like o2 did.

I can't add anymore than the writeup that I did from last time other than to say there were a couple hilly roads that were better than any rollercoaster! I actually experienced a partial blacking out effect on one of the bottoms of the hills. Must have been pulling a 5g+ push at the bottom. The corvette chicks in front of us, license plate read "4ply in" (double meaning on that one if you can figure it out), were holding their hands up (topless car) like a roller coaster ride on a couple of those hills.

 

To save some space here is a link to some additional pictures from the March drive.
http://ssam.homeip.net/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=7354

Feel free to page through the shots, click on any for a larger shot and then you can get the full size picture by selecting the "Full Size" link in the upper right.

You can also select the Photo Works.com and Shutterfly.com links on the left and have any picture printed on everything from paper to mouse pads.

 

Did someone say Salt Lick? I am feeling hungry already hehehe

So whens the next one?

BTW I am pretty familiar with Austin other than the hill country because I rarely get out of the city because I was in school at UT.

 

mmmmmmmm Salt Lick!! Go register at the website for up to date meet dates.