GoatRun: Day 2

The first official event of the day wasn’t until the afternoon, but there were a few other activities going on in the morning. The first was a breakfast at the Palace Station buffet, but I decided to sleep in. The second event was an Adam’s Polishes detail clinic. I stopped by to pick-up a 1 gallon refill of All Purpose Cleaner to replenish my supply (I used all of mine getting the bugs off the the G8).

After filling-up on gas, I headed to the Palace Station to prepare for the GoatRun cruise! While I was relaxing, several other owners came out and started prepping their cars.

At 1:30pm all of the GTO (and G8) owners gathered in the parking lot and headed out from Las Vegas towards the Lake Mead and The Valley of Fire.

View Larger Map

The cruise route this year was awesome. Last year I was a little disappointed, but that was totally not the case this year. Not only was the scenery incredible, the roads were a bunch of fun too!

The roads was fairly empty of other vehicles, so we were able to move quickly along the route. Because the area requires paying a fee, everyone had to stop at the main gate. As people paid, they set-out on the road… it almost felt like a time trial where they space-out the cars… like they wanted us to drive fast!

Most of the curves on the route were sweepers, and with the space between cars, everyone was able to cruise at a nice pace. It was really great to do some “spirited” driving, but at times I had to hold-back a little due to flexing of my Carbon Fiber Hood (again, I’m not going to speed test this thing).

After the first part of the drive everyone pulled-over to take a breather, regroup, and to take some photos.

For the second section of the cruise I found myself behind another heavily modified G8. Both of our cars have engine mods and completely modified suspensions. I know my car is a well balanced machine, but it really stands out when driving with others who also have fast cars. While I wasn’t pushing as hard on the straights, I was able to carry much more speed through the corners… there were many times where I would let the other G8 “run away” from me, only to dive into a curve (without even touching the brakes) closing right-up on his bumper. I was really impressed how well my G8 was able to take the corners… even at 1/4 mile trap speeds, the turns were no problem!

I have to say that the best compliments I received were when the owners/drivers of the cars I was following told me that they felt they were holding me up. I told them not to feel bad, as I was having a great time (heck, it wasn’t like they were going slow). It was awesome to know that when others were pushing their cars to the limits, I still had a bunch left on the table!

The end point of the cruise put us at the location where the car show, BBQ dinner, and other events would take place. Everyone lined-up and started to check-out all of the cars.

Like always I was really impressed with what I saw others had done to their cars. Many of them I’d seen only a year before… but everyone brings out their best for GoatRun!

The NorCal GOATs really cleaned-up at the car show awards ceremony! We took home “Best in Show”, “Best Exhaust”, “Best Engine Bay”, and I came away with the “Numbest Butt” award (aka. who drove the farthest to GoatRun)…

There was some debate about the “rules” for this award, but no one could come close to the 8,499 miles that I drove from my home to GoatRun. Even just considering the distance from my farthest East location (Virginia) or where I was officially heading to GoatRun (Tennessee), I had the competition beat (the next farthest was from Missouri, via San Diego).

After the car show, one of the GTO owners put on an incredible fireworks show. I’m not talking about a few sparklers and bottle rockets… this was a FIREWORKS SHOW! There were all sorts of things being shot-up into the air, and it rivaled several of the shows I’ve seen put on by cities for the 4th of July. Definitely impressive!

The last activity for the day was the raffle drawing for various GTO related accessories. I wasn’t really paying attention, but it turns out I won something… an “Air Splitter” from West Coast Speed! I guess I’ll need to find a deserving member of the NorCal GOATs to take it off my hands.

I really have to say that I was extremely impressed with the way today went… especially with how I felt after the cruise at last year’s GoatRun. Big props go out to everyone who put in the work to make the day’s events happen!