Chapter Six - Hershey
Once a year the Hershey PA Porsche club hosts a weekend swap meet, concours, and autocross. The event has grown exponentially over the years and is now considered the largest Porsche event on the east coast. The swap meet is the main feature and spans most of the parking lot normally dedicated to Hershey's Giant Center. Word on the street is that you could buy enough parts at the swap meet to assemble a 911 from scratch and drive it home. After seeing the sheer scale of the event, I'm a believer.
My day started much earlier, with a coffee meet and PCA cruise to Hershey. It was cool to see so much variety in local Porsche enthusiasts, but I was a little disappointed with how clicky it was. The old cars and new cars might as well have been in different parking lots. The other thing that really caught me off guard, was when a guy asked me to stop taking pictures of his car. You'll NEVER hear that at a Volkswagen meet!
After some quick instructions, we fired up the cars and assembled to jump onto the turnpike. This part was awesome. Hearing all those flat sixes blasting through the crisp morning air was euphoric.
Then I got my second big surprise of the day. Holy hell these crazies drive so fast. Let me preface the story, the cruises I'm used to are organized trains of low & slow cars following the speed limit and changing lanes only for the occasional rolling photo.
This was not a dubber cruise. As soon as the lead cars were through the toll booth they were off, accelerating hard into the triple digits. Weaving in and out of morning traffic was the norm. My little old Porsche was struggling to keep up! Eventually I had enough, and with a growing anxiety about cruising at such high RPMs, I backed off and let the group go. No one seemed to mind, and one by one they flew by off into the distance.
This wife was not impressed:
Traffic did what it does best though, and by the time we reached the exit, I had caught up with the group. We entered the park, and joined the other thousands upon thousands of Porsche cars in the reserved parking area.
Some quick sunscreen, and it was off to the swap meet! Give me all the sweet deals!!
Whew! I ended spending $23 on a flag and a hot wheels car lol.
With that out of the way, I met up with some friends and cruised the parking lot.
All in all, a very cool event that I'd recommend to anyone. The best part was I ended up clocking around 300 miles in the car between Hershey and Cars & Coffee this weekend. After filling the tank again, I ran some quick math: Fuel economy was 18.4mpg!!!