2016Hill Country Rallye Recap.
Fifteen Years. Wow. It has been that long that what is now the Hill Country Rallye (HCR) has been bringing Porsches together. There were so many great things that happened over the weekend it is hard to know where to begin.
The Fifteenth Anniversary is usually associated with crystal. Using a definition from chemistry, Crystals are ordered groupings of atoms where the order extends in all directions. There is some elements (pardon the pun) of crystals that show up in our latest edition of the Hill Country Rally held from March 31 to April, 3 2016. In fact, the entire weekend reminded me of crystal growth where a small grouping of parts comes together, settles into an ordered arrangement and then is joined by similar parts continuing to add size and shape while maintaining the initial arrangement. Of course, the antithesis of a crystal is an amorphous mixture where defects interrupt the order. There is always a constant battle between the crystal and its defects, the order and the chaos and this is, of course, reflected in the perfect Porsche weekend we call the HCR.
Crystals usually have a very pretty shape. That is to say that the specific orientation and organization creates a level of order in the grouping that does not exist in the surroundings. I was first reminded of this as I pulled into the parking lot in Kerrville, TX. There was a level of order that was not present elsewhere. What I saw when I pulled into the YO Ranch Hotel was a corner of the parking lot that was specifically reserved for the HCR parking. More specifically Porsche parking.
The order had already started. There was a group of early 911s lined up, with the type of ordered parking precision we often see when a few of these cars gets together. Parked with even spacing and alignment at the front hood termination forming a regimented seed for a crystal weekend. By the end of the first evening the seed had grown and the parking lot was nearly covered with 356s, 914s, early 911s, and impact bumper 911s demonstrating nearly four decades of Porsche performance and beauty. Despite the relative chaos created by the "defects" of differences in individual models, colors and preparation the overall crystal lattice structure had already taken shape. It was a theme that would repeat over the entire weekend; The push and pull of order and chaos threatening to prevent all the hard work preparing for HCR 2016 from ending up as a 15th year Crystal weekend.
Parking Lot seeds...
Parking Lot seeds have grown...
The event did not start off with the level of order that I found in the parking lot. Months of preparation, decision making, and last minute changes threatening to add defects into our event. The first major defect was registration. The HCR planning committee is comprised of many local enthusiasts that take responsibility of individual tasks of hotels, website, registration, event swag, organized drives and every other detail we can cover to pull off this gathering. It starts months in advance. So when you are all trying to converge on a Thursday afternoon, each bringing knowledge and materials for individual parts so that registration packets can be distributed to 150 attendees life can be a little chaotic. However, when the traffic clears and you have solo access to some of the best driving roads in Texas you know that order is there. This thought is reinforced when registration goes smoothly and attendees check-in to the event bringing smiles, laughter and conversation amongst them.
Friday morning started the first day of driving. I woke early to massive thunderstorms in the area. The threat of storms in Texas is real. Lightning, thunder and heavy rains were ruling the order of the morning. As locals we take this seriously. The best roads have low water crossings where makeshift creeks are created from heaving precipitation runoff. We were extra cautious in the morning and delayed our start times to make sure road conditions were improved compared to pre-dawn indications. The weather was trying to induce chaos and defects into our organized weekend. Thankfully, as the sun was rising the storms were moving out of the area. Audible route changes to some of the organized driving groups took us around flood prone areas but did not diminish access to our favorite routes.
Incoming weather warnings...
Dark and Rainy start to Friday...
Roads are wet but clouds are moving out to let sun shine through...
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by richemj
