Filling the Void

"This is that rare thing, a car that feels right the moment you drive away."

Another birthday comes and goes. The original Porsche plan was perhaps having one by the time I turned 53. Three years after the 'bucket list' of driving on the Nordschleife in the year I hit 50. Seemed reasonable at the time. Now, here's just hoping for a special 55th year.

Last weekend was a chance to do some Porsche chitchatting as The GTS Chronicles had a couple of things on the go. Firstly, we took the cars down to the Adirondacks for some curves and some hiking. Might as well keep working on reducing my sprung weight, right? Felt great to be out in the fresh air and the spectacular fall colours. The weather cooperated and I found my spirits high as we flew our flags from the south summit of Catamount.

Secondly, we spent some time performing a recovery operation for The GTS Chronicles drone in the Ottawa river. Yep, the prior week, while filming some sailing and the flags flying on the boat, the drone made contact with the mast/sail and plummeted into the river. It vanished from sight immediately. Horrors. My heart sank when the drone went down, as those things aren't cheap, and Andrew was waaaaaay over on the bank, powerless to do anything other than mull over in his mind what had happened. Ugh. He'd only recently bought it, primarily for this project and now it was gone. I felt terrible.

Still, we pinpointed its point of entry with GPS coordinates, and scoped out the charts. Would you believe it, a week later, with the help of a diver friend, we recovered it in about 10 feet of murky water, nosed in, two props buried. Talk about against the odds. Not sure it will function again, but still - we kept the river clean, and maybe some bits will be salvageable - even perhaps some footage.

Anyway, if there’s anything like fate, or good omens or anything like that happening, then one could certainly take it as a sign that things are going to turn in our favour now - the river is 3 miles wide, 10-30 feet deep, with a current - I mean, truly, what were the odds?

I’ll take it as a positive portent for the fall/winter - heck, I’ll take anything right now!

~ Luke