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South Region Drive and Vero Beach Lunch

It all began like any other drive as we gathered on September 27th at Porsche of Melbourne. Over 50 attending Space coasters were greeted with a catered selection of coffee, juices, fresh fruit, and pastries, arranged by
Donna Edwards, customer relations manager for the dealership. As the group grew (and the plate of pastries dwindled), we left handprints on the cars as we surrounded Horst Seibert, peppering him with questions about the new 911 and the PDK.

Eventually, Ralph called us to order and discussed the drive ahead. We would leave the dealership and head south on US-1, through Malabar, past the Valkaria airport and then down the Dixie Highway through Grant, Micco, and
Sebastian before ending up at Shutter's Restaurant at Disney's Vero Beach Resort for lunch.

Yada, yada, yada. I guess that's where things started to go wrong. You see, there are only so many ways to go south from here and we had taken a similar drive with the club just a year before, so I'll have to admit I may not have been giving Ralph my full attention.

I was pretty confident in my ability to navigate the route Ralph had carefully "googled" for us on MapQuest. After all, since we had sold our Boxter in August and had yet to replace it, I would be the passenger/navigator in Lois' (other German car) which is equipped with GPS.  Additionally, I had my I-phone, which also has navigation software. How
could we go wrong?

Of Ralph's 25-step directions, we were good through Step 5, then we missed a turn and it all went to hell!

Our group of more than 30 cars had taken a right onto the Dixie Highway while we, following at a discrete distance as we were driving that other German car, failed to take notice, believing the Dixie Highway to be one in
the same with US-1. I know, I know, only sometimes. But, as you might guess, throughout my life, I've continually exhibited a predisposition to learn the hard way.

Eventually, we figured out our, or to be more correct, my error and determined that we were travelling on a (more or less) parallel course to that of the group and in the same direction. This was good. We also noted
that we had picked up a tail-Dave and Barbara Struck of Merritt Island were right behind us in their Guards Red 944. It seems that they, too had become momentarily distracted, spotted us and incorrectly assumed that we knew
where we were going-wrong.

In fact, rather than rejoining the group, we led them even further astray as since it was 5 o'clock somewhere, we pulled into to Captain Hiram's in Sebastian, where we were cutting the dust of the trail (as we used to say
out west) with a drink Barbara introduced us all to called a "Pain Killer" when we heard the unmistakable sound of a herd of Porsches passing. We looked up at a (mostly) grey streak, paid our tab and hurried to catch up..

As you can see, there are several valuable life lessons to be learned here:

The food is good at Porsche of Melbourne hosted events

Pay attention to the directions

Don't follow Roberts

Recipe for a "Painkiller"-Mix equal amounts of Pusser's Rum, Coco Lopez Cream of Coconut, and pineapple/orange juice, shake it all up, and insert straw.

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