by John Deenihan

We gathered on an overcast Saturday morning in Irvine CA for the inaugural “New OC (Orange County) Drive,” constructed by SoCal Club secretary Phil Cowan.  A nice turnout of about 20 drivers slowly gathered, signed in, with many then drifting over to Starbucks for their morning coffee.  On schedule, Phil welcomed the group and ran through the pre-drive instructions, handing out the course instructions with mileage references.

In short order the registration material was repacked into president Deeno Deenihan’s car, three run groups assembled and we were off with member Derek Powell leading the first group.The drive’s first section took us through some of south county’s tree-lined canyon roads.  It was during this run that we found ourselves able to stretch our legs a bit and enjoy the cars and be reminded why we like our Audis so much.  A pit stop midway allowed us to take care of the residual effects of the morning coffee, then we were off again through areas that proved to be a little more congested as locals were now making their Saturday morning runs to gather groceries and such for the weekend.

Our second group momentarily found themselves “lost,” but soon recovered and were back in the flow, having now become the third group.  This part of the drive will be revamped for the next such run to better work around this activity, and keep us on open roads instead of the busy intersections we found ourselves in.

We finished at a local restaurant nested in a mall parking lot where we enjoyed lunch, shared a few thoughts about the drive, and raffled off two tickets for the ACNA Stasis A4 drawing to be held later this year.  Gilbert Fluetsch and Irving Norwood were the hopeful winners, leaving the restaurant with hearty smiles.