A Good Alfa Day

[Scott Fisher <sfisher71@domain.elided>]

We had a Very Good Alfa Day last Sunday.

The day started waaaaay too early when the alarm went
off at 4 AM; I managed a quick shower and cup of
coffee before driving over to Jeff Zurschmeide's
house.  Jeff, the current owner of my '67 GT Junior,
and I were transporting ex-ARA president Henrik
Johansen's GTV6 from Portland, Oregon to San
Francisco, where Henrik was then to have it crated up
for shipping to Copenhagen, along with his '74 Spider
and several hundred cubic feet of personal belongings.

With a few early stops to fine-tune the tow rig for
the GTV6's weight and balance, we made our way down
I-5 through most of Oregon and half of California,
stopping eventually at the Gilman exit of highway 80
in Berkeley.  As we waited in the left-turn lane,
another tow vehicle (a red ramp-truck) crept up on our
right.  A familiar looking shape sat on the ramps: a
105-series Alfa coupe, in AR501 red, this one with a
white #58 on the doors and other evidence of
vintage-race setup.  

"I think a magnet wouldn't stick to that car," Jeff
said, and the doorhandles suggested he was right: they
were the pop-top rings of a GTA, not the lift-up
chrome handles of our steel-bodied Coupe.  The karmic
goodness of two guys towing a red Giugiaro-designed
Alfa coupe stumbling on someone ELSE towing a red
Giugiaro-designed coupe was not lost on us.  Sadly, we
had no way of identifying ourselves as Alfisti to the
other driver, as Jeff's "Alfa Romeo: Racing and
Winning Since 1910" bumper sticker was mounted on the
truck, not the trailer.  But we knew.

A few minutes later we arrived at our destination, and
Jeff found a loooooong parking spot directly across
the street from a tan Berlina, a pine-green Giulia
Super, and another Berlina, this one burgundy: Andrew
Watry's house, where Henrik would come later on to
retrieve the GTV6.  Andrew (after spending the day at
Sears Point) had gone for a short walk with his family
(said a note on his door); after about five minutes of
ogling the various quattroporte Alfas, we saw the
Watry family walking up from the end of the block.  

There followed several minutes of that most pleasant
kind of conversation, a chat between like-minded
people about old cars and the fun they've provided us.
 Jeff and Andrew turned out to have another
unrecognized connection: each of them owns an MGA that
had previously belonged to their respective fathers,
which says something about either heredity or
evolution or both. 

Henrik's GTV6 started immediately (we'd had to
jump-start it the day before in Portland to get it
onto Jeff's trailer), and Jeff parked it in front of
Andrew's house, then gave Andrew the key to hand over
to Henrik when the time came.

And then we got on with the rest of the reason for my
visit... but that's another story. :-)

--Scott Fisher
  Tualatin, Oregon
.
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