The “All Aboard and Margarita Fiesta” was a wonderful event and we missed you guys! The weather gods brought us warm temperatures, 85 degrees. The day started at the Jaguar Land Rover Training Center with 38 members, 21 beautiful Jags and a couple of Land Rovers were all queued-up in the parking lot.
The Rally Master, Mark Mayuga, wrote a simple TIMEDISTANCE-SPEED RALLY, just to get people use to such early club type events. Mark planned out some high and low speed sections with tricky long segments through the neighborhood of Mission Viejo and finally joining the much-improved Ortega Highway, SR74. This is where the rally got to be fun, twisty bits, wonderful views, hairpin turns, narrow roads, and a fantastic downhill section that tested your brakes and driving skills.
Oh, there was a mistake in the instructions, so each team got the correction at the drivers meeting, it wasn’t Linda, you were supposed to go to the end of Antonio Drive then make a U Turn then come to SR74, but I made a correction. We arrived about 20 minutes off the planned time with everyone in tow. No lost souls, everyone was accounted for and some IEJC members joined us too.
The Orange Empire Rail Road Museum is a train museum full of memories and history of how this country grew on the tracks of old locomotives, trollies, innovation, blood and sweat of the immigrants, coolies, engineers, bridge builders, steel works, and men with lots of money. Many of these moguls became famous and generous with their monies, they founded universities, banks, trust funds, ship building, steam ship lines and more.
My favorite ride was the one a lot us took, the old RED CAR INTERCITY LINE Trolley, many of the trolley cars were running and on special weekends they bring out the steam locomotives. This is a huge property, over 100 acres of railroad history with unique rolling stock.
After two hours of walking and riding the museum we all went to have lunch at the Tarasco Mexican restaurant.
This is a quaint outdoor restaurant with terrific food and atmosphere. We all ordered off the menu, it took a bit longer this way but most of us spent the time talking and catching up on friends we hadn’t seen in a while. When the food finally came we were not disappointed in the quality or quantity. Everyone ate hearty and there were no doggie bags going home that day.
Mike and Jen Zavos won the time segment and Scott Seban won the mileage segment, a bunch of folks were within 1 minute of the actual time and five teams were separated by 35 seconds, so, great job you guys. Let’s do this again.
Thanks to all who attended! Quale, Cohen,Browdy, Hallums, Burger, Friel, Zavos, Graven, Scheer, Henderson, Hodges, Looten, Wright, Soreson, Foote, and a few more Cheers, Mark Mayuga, 1st VP