drivetofive

Odometer:  484,070

For the first time in about a week, I had a chance to stretch my legs and enjoy life outside the car!  I spent the day in the company of many folks who are as car-crazy as I am, so I felt right at home.

After a scavenger hunt in which my friend Alan and I re-routed multiple times and STILL missed some of the turns, we ended up at Bill Vince Bridgewater Acura dealership on Highway 22 in Bridgewater Township, New Jersey.  The dealership rolled out the red carpet for a BBQ.  It was hot and muggy out — a record 103 degree day — but the A/C of the showroom was a nice retreat.  The staff were all incredibly friendly.  Earlier in the day I’d had an oil change done in the service department there and gotten lots of nice comments on the condition & mileage of the car.

Legend traffic jam.  These are just some of the cars that attended today’s event at the dealership.

Here’s my new friend Chris who works as a Product Specialist at Acura.  I learned that he’s seen a few of my YouTube videos and has been following my progress to 500k, so I threw him the keys to the car and he took it for a spin around the block.

Here’s a (partial) lineup of the cars.  I threw my Student Driver magnets on for novelty’s sake.

My friend Marc arrived with his mint condition 1995 Legend LS coupe 6-speed in Granada Black Pearl on Ivory leather.  It has 35,000 miles on it and drew a huge crowd of onlookers.  Marc got to park his car inside the showroom for the afternoon.  He’s also offered me a place to stay tonight so I’m posting from his nice home.  Thanks for the hospitality, Marc!

I have to give some credit to one of my favorite people in the world.  This is Peggy.  She’s put up with her car-crazed son (and all his car-crazed friends) for more meets than I can count.  And today, she slaved over a BBQ grill (again, in record 103-degree NJ heat) to prepare burgers and hot dogs for our entire crew.  What a trooper.  Thanks Peggy!  It was great to see you again.

I had the chance to meet a celebrity of sorts.  This is Matt, owner/operator of Gateway Automotive in Bristol, CT.  This guy is very well known in the Acura Legend enthusiast community as “the doctor.”  Ask him anything.  He knows these cars like nobody’s business.

Another highlight of the day was taking a ride in an extremely rare Acura NSX Zanardi Edition.  This particular car, with 29000 miles on the odometer, is #24 of only 50 ever produced.  It belongs to Mike, the service manager, and he was happy to allow Ben to take it for a spin and me to ride as a passenger.  It was the experience of a lifetime and further solidified my motivation to pick up an NSX soon.

This was a drive I won’t soon forget!

Group of people talking cars.  What better way to spend a Friday afternoon!

Here I’m posing with Juan from New York.  Showing some serious Legend Love.  I copied the idea from a picture I’d seen him post recently on the acuralegend.org forums.  It doesn’t look bad from the pic, but those hoods & fenders were hot enough to cook steaks on after baking in the sun!

Rich’s extremely clean 1995 Legend Special Edition.  I want his floor mats!

And finally, my favorite picture from the day:

Me, Tom, Ken, Rich, and Chad.  Legend fanatics and great friends of mine.  Thanks guys for a great event and for showing a west coast guy some incredible east coast hospitality.

Tomorrow I’m off to Virginia to visit family and then starting the trek back to Arizona.  Over and out!

This entry was posted on July 23, 2011 at 2:46 am and is filed under Legend, NALM, Road Trip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.