Friday:
Nice drive up, the Atlanta crew stayed dry until we had lunch in Murphy, NC where it poured down while we were eating. The heavy stuff moved off as we got closer to Deal's gap. 129 was pretty wet so everyone did one run and headed for the hotel. I wanted to run it a few more times since there wasn't much traffic and didn't see any law enforcement but also wanted to stay with the group.

Friday night was fun, the Hilton has a nice bar in the atrium that was shoulder-to-shoulder with S2000 owners. Too bad the bar closes at midnight but that didn't stop some people from not knowing how they got back to their rooms some hours later (heard something about TimS2k breaking a toilet seat, not sure what that's about).

Saturday:
Driver's meeting at 8:30AM, Raul had a megaphone. My thoughts were, "hey Raul, you need to mount that to the roof of your car so you can tell people to pull over on The Dragon." The police "escort" consisted of a cop parked on the shoulder of 129 with his lights flashing. Most cars didn't pay much attention to him but the group all got out and was able to catch up with each other by the time we hit the Foothills parkway.

Once we made the left turn back onto 129 at the end of the Foothills Pkwy we all lined up for the "Monster Roll" which was an amazing sight. The group was a bit slow to get going when I heard someone in a Silver '04 rev up their engine and drop the clutch, unfortunately for him there is a such thing as a clutch delay valve and all the people in the back could smell was toasted clutch .

After we all rolled through to Deal's Gap we continued to the base of Fontana Dam for the damn picture. As usual it took everyone a while to get the cars situated. After that people either chose to eat lunch or make another Dragon run since 129 seemed to be pretty empty. After lunch many did the usual Cherahola Skyway run but this time it included rain, sleet AND snow!

Dinner was at one of the hotel meeting rooms, very nice since everyone was tired of driving. The food and the service was very good (another big thumbs up for Raul and the Hilton). Drawing for the door prizes seemed to take forever as most everyone got something to take home with them. We also got all the info about the "The Bear" which had been damaged during shipment.

A recap of the rest of Saturday Night and Sunday morning will need to be added by somebody else as I drove back home to Atlanta after dinner. Ran into more snow in the North Georgia mountains.

Despite the weather (and no chocolate syrup slip-n-slide) it was the best Dragon Run yet. Nobody got hurt, no car damage, and no tickets (that I know of).

 

There was a few people who had minor car damage on the trip to/from Alcoa.


And my view of the Hilton isn't all that great...

 

We missed you two! Pretty much what everyone else said above. My car has never been so dirty. We saw rain, snow, sleet, hail, driving rain, strong winds, cold, sunny, cloudy, and sever thunderstorms. We had it all, even in combination.

I got to meet JerseyGirl. It was a pleasure to meet you Kim.

Hopefully, we will all return for WTD and more fun.

Raul and company put on another great event!

 

Hi Ron
Check my pics, ther is a pic of the bear at his new "home"