ED Memories: July 24, 2023

Monday, July 24, 2023

I turn the key and the dash immediately reminds me that I'm low on fuel. Felt like we cut it pretty fine yesterday but things work out as we wind our way down to another small Italian town. We descend from the rifugio and pull in for some much needed go-juice. I initially start filling up at a full-service pump, which costs me more dang it! After noticing, I keep the others waiting for a few more minutes while I top off at the self-serve and we are soon back on our way.

I'm enjoying being extremely 'present' in the car; I'm driving paying full attention to every nuance as I start to learn this amazing piece of machinery. Everything from the multiple little startup sounds when you first unlock the door, to how readily the shifter falls to hand when you drop your right palm down from the steering wheel to select another gear. I make a few more minor adjustments to the seat, finding the sweet spot, and I tweak the side mirrors a little more.

We stop in another little town to look for a bank, but no luck, just a welcome coffee in a nice piazza. Another theme of this trip: the delicious coffees. From there we head off and catch a little bit of rain. Visibility with the top up is definitely not great, and I'm again thankful I selected the lane-change-assist option which works very well. 

We spend some kilometres just tooling through some little Italian towns in a few showers, moving inexorably towards the Maloja pass, to be able to get Jenn to Venice in time to meet her friend, who is coming from Ireland, where they will head off together. We will see if we make it far enough today.

Annoyingly, I have been experiencing difficulty with my SIM card from Orange. Andrew, on the other hand, is having no trouble, luckily for us, as we need Google Maps for road routes, and the internet for searching for places to sleep. The nav systems in our cars are not enabled with European maps - pretty shoddy from Porsche if you ask me. I remember Andrew's M2 was loaded with European maps when we picked it up on that European delivery trip, and then when the car was back in Canada it was refreshed with North American maps. You would think Porsche would do the same but … no. 

Right now I don't have a signal, no data, nothing, just a message that says the Orange network is unavailable. Highly frustrating as I can't even do financial transfers that I want to do in order to get some cash out. I'll have to make sure I do that if there's Wi-Fi at the next rifugio. Andrew thinks it is the hardware in my phone's antennae, something like that. He has a Google Pixel that appears to be working flawlessly with the same SIM card. Grrr. 

Despite the drizzle, there is still lots of fun to be had with these amazing machines. The flat-six sounds so good, even a lower RPM, a really healthy growl that's so different to the S2000. I'm still at 6000 RPM for another hundred kilometres. With the rain, we're not pushing hard at all, but are just cruising to make some mileage. I get to hear the rather strange cylinder deactivation sound which is a bit disconcerting at first. Definitely if it goes on too long it gets a bit 'droney', so dipping in and out of the rev range where it kicks in is something I find myself doing. 

One thing I'll say, for sure is the Boxster is super quiet inside when just cruising along, very pleasant. And I don't know what all the whining about the stereo is, I think it sounds excellent. Need to download some F1 podcasts, though, as I am missing out. Another thing I'll have to wait for Wi-Fi for.

At some point we are on a Nice Winding Mountain Pass Road in the forest, but get stuck behind an extra-wide tractor that I don't think it would be possible to pass unless he pulled over but he doesn't seem to want to do that. I'm sure Andrew is gnashing his teeth. 

We've touched on at least one road that we've been on before, and it's funny how memory works … I keep sort of half-recognizing little bits of road, little particular corners with a house at a certain angle, or a little sequence of switchbacks … I couldn't directly pinpoint the memory from the 2018 trip, but my brain keeps finding things familiar for sure, several different times.

We're on the lookout for a bank. I need to grab some euros to have on hand. As it happens, we pull into the exact spot where we had a shot of the M2 next to a church tower in the rain. Cool. I thought some parts of these roads looked a little familiar, but you know we've driven on so many of them and I am not the one keeping the exhaustive record of which roads we've been on so it was just a feeling in the back of my mind. I definitely recognize the church though, and when Andrew and I discuss it we agree yup, we'd come through this area back in 2018.

We get some money at the bank there, although because of my SIM card thing, I have to hotspot to Andrew's phone in order to e-transfer him some money so that he can take cash out with his bank card. Looks like Simplii Financial just doesn't work internationally. Yay. It's something I really should've checked before I left, but it didn't cross my mind.

OK time for the laugh of the day, we just drove through a little town called Don't Don't! LOL It's raining a bit harder now so I'm just driving peacefully behind other cars with no urgent desire to pass or anything like that, we can't really push it in the rain anyway. I'm playing around with the traction control, driving with it completely off now, and there's no drama. I'm pretty risk-averse at the best of times, but even I will agree that the panicky posts by people online about the deadly danger you are in when you turn off traction control are way too hyperbolic. If you drive intelligently, with the laws of physics in the back of your mind at all times, there's no drama. None. It doesn't take much of a throttle input to break the rear tires loose in the wet, but nothing untoward happens. It really is all about the driver, and understanding that the  smoothness of your inputs is the real key. Well, that, and not being stupid.

One of the nice things that we've determined is that when you turn traction control off completely, you can still be in sport-plus mode, which means you get the dynamic engine mounts, and you can do your own rev-matching, which is something I get a great deal of satisfaction out of getting just right. Amazing how nobody could be definitive about that in the forums or even in the Porsche manual for that matter, although that I get as a safety-nanny kind of thing ... let the lawyers take care of it, etc.

After a little pitstop at a self-service gas station in the rain for some cookies, the rain starts to come down quite a bit harder now, but I am safe in my little Boxster cocoon (I've used that word before, and Andrew has too over the radio) which is very snug, watertight, (obviously), and quiet.

Andrew leads us along a nice little bit of road up and out of the town, which has me getting the tail out a little bit under acceleration. Although it feels like I am in full-opposite-lock-drift-mode, I'm sure the rear has only stepped out a centimetre or two. It always feels like WAY more from the driver seat. Jenn's a trooper for climbing up into the forest to get some footage. Andrew pushes harder than me but I'm not confident enough. Which is fine. It's MY expensive sports car.

Descending down the other side of this pass the rain seems to be getting lighter which is nice. We pull over to get some brilliant moody photos of the valley with immense clouds and contrasts, just awesome. As we enter the town, I have spoken too soon, and a massive thunderstorm opens up, right down the valley. It's not raining on me this second, but the thunder is powerful enough that it actually makes the car vibrate. Wow.

We carry on driving, and it is absolutely chucking it down now. A good test of the Boxster's roof! A brief discussion with Andrew over the radio and we figure we may search for a rifugio early in the hopes that it clears up and we can do some driving / filming a bit later on.

There's no room at the first inn, so we continue up the incredible Passo Giau (which we have been on before). Andrew and Jenn are both getting quite wet jumping out to take photos and video … I have no such problem! I've said it before, I like being on my own in the car. I do, however, have to pee and the sound of all this rain isn't helping!

We manage a nice little coffee and cake (and pee!) break at a travel stop somewhere near the top of the pass, with the rain easing off and almost stopping as we leave. Very nice. The road continues, taking us further on our journey to find a rifugio, but we end up navigating  an extremely narrow track for a couple of kilometres up high, only to find that the last part of the track is a dirt road to the rifugio, which we can see taunting us in the distance way up above.

We don't really wanna tackle wet dirt roads in our fine (and low-slung) machinery, so we bail on that and turn around back down to the main road.

As Andrew describes it, the treasure hunt continues!

~ Luke

p.s. You can read the full, no-holds-barred accounting of this day at gtschronicles.com.