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Person
Vu Nguyen
Vu Nguyen is the head director of the Porsche Club of America, the world's largest club for Porsche owners. He helps run the club and hosts many of their videos and podcasts.
Concept
Porsche Parade
Porsche Parade is a massive, week-long annual party and convention for Porsche owners. People from all over the country drive their Porsches to a new host city each year to show off their cars, race them in safe parking lot courses, and hang out with other fans.
Place
Lake Placid
Lake Placid is a beautiful mountain town in upstate New York that hosted the Winter Olympics twice. It was chosen as the scenic location where thousands of Porsche club members gathered for their annual convention.
Brand
Pirelli
Pirelli is a famous Italian company that makes high-performance tires, especially for sports cars and race cars. They are a major sponsor of Porsche events and design tires specifically to make Porsches handle as well as possible.
Brand
Porsche Club of America
The Porsche Club of America is a massive club for people who own or love Porsches. They organize fun drives, races, and social gatherings all over North America so members can enjoy their cars together.
Person
Damon Lowney
Damon Lowney is one of the hosts of the podcast who also runs the website and videos for the Porsche Club of America.
Person
Manny Alban
Manny Alban is a Porsche expert who helps run the technical side of the Porsche Club of America. He knows almost everything about how Porsches work, how to fix them, and what they are worth.
Concept
Treffen
Treffens are smaller, more relaxed driving vacations organized by the Porsche club. Instead of competing in races or car shows, members spend a few days driving beautiful roads and eating at nice restaurants together.
Brand
Porsche Panorama
Porsche Panorama is a high-quality monthly magazine sent to all members of the Porsche Club of America, filled with beautiful photos, stories, and news about Porsches.
Car
Jeep Cherokee
The Jeep Cherokee is a sport utility vehicle (SUV) made by the American brand Jeep. It is designed to carry passengers and cargo while also being capable of driving on rough, unpaved roads.
Car
Porsche 911 (991.2)
This is a specific version of the famous Porsche 911 sports car built between 2017 and 2019. It is special because it was the first time the standard 911 models got turbocharged engines to make them faster and more fuel-efficient.
Car
Porsche Cayenne
The Cayenne is Porsche's large, sporty SUV. It is famous for being incredibly fast and fun to drive like a sports car, while still being able to tow heavy trailers and go off-road.
Car
Porsche 356
The 356 was the very first car that Porsche ever sold to the public, starting in 1948. It is a small, lightweight, vintage sports car that is highly prized by collectors today.
Car
Saturn Vue
The Saturn Vue is a compact SUV that was made by Saturn, a former division of General Motors. It was designed as an affordable family vehicle for everyday driving.
Brand
Porsche Design
Porsche Design is a sister company to the carmaker that designs high-end non-car products like watches, sunglasses, jackets, and luggage with a sleek, sporty look.
Term
autocross
Autocross is a safe, low-speed racing event held in large parking lots. Drivers take turns racing through a twisty course marked by orange traffic cones to see who can get the fastest time without hitting any cones.
Car
Volkswagen Golf
The Volkswagen Golf is a small, practical hatchback car made by the German company Volkswagen. It is designed to carry passengers and cargo efficiently, making it popular for daily driving.
Car
Chrysler Saratoga
The Chrysler Saratoga is a sedan made by the American company Chrysler during various periods in the 20th century. It was built to carry families comfortably with a bit more luxury than standard cars.
Car
Porsche 959
The 959 was Porsche's ultimate supercar of the 1980s. It was packed with futuristic technology like adjustable suspension and a smart all-wheel-drive system, making it the fastest street-legal car in the world at the time.
Term
concours d'elegance
A concours is an ultra-detailed car show where judges inspect cars with white gloves and flashlights. Owners spend days cleaning every nook and cranny—even the underside of the car—to make it look brand new.
Car
Ford F-150 Lightning
The Ford F-150 Lightning is a large pickup truck made by Ford that runs entirely on electricity instead of gasoline. It looks very similar to a standard gas-powered truck but does not produce tailpipe emissions.
Term
gimmick rally
A gimmick rally is a fun road trip game. Drivers and passengers follow a scenic route and have to look for clues, solve riddles, or answer questions about things they see along the side of the road.
Car
Porsche Panamera
The Panamera is Porsche's large, luxury four-door sedan. It is designed for people who want the speed and handling of a Porsche sports car but need back seats and a trunk for daily use.
Person
Ferry Porsche
Ferry Porsche was the son of the company's founder. He was the visionary who actually designed the first Porsche sports cars and built the company into the famous brand it is today.
Car
Toyota Prius
The Toyota Prius is a mid-sized hatchback car that uses both a gasoline engine and an electric motor to save fuel. It is made by the Japanese automaker Toyota and is famous for its high gas mileage.
Term
TSD rally
A TSD rally is a driving game where the goal is not to go as fast as possible, but to drive at very specific speeds so you arrive at secret checkpoints at the exact second you are supposed to.
Car
Porsche 968 Club Sport
The 968 Club Sport is a rare, lightweight version of a 1990s Porsche. It was designed specifically for race tracks by removing heavy luxury items like back seats and radio equipment to make it handle incredibly well.
Brand
Mobil 1
Mobil 1 is a famous brand of high-quality synthetic motor oil. Porsche has used and recommended it in all of their cars from the factory for decades because it protects high-performance engines so well.
Car
Mazda 3
The Mazda 3 is a small, reliable everyday hatchback or sedan that is fun to drive and highly practical.
Car
Mazda Speed
The Mazdaspeed3 is a faster, high-performance version of the standard Mazda3 hatchback. It was built to offer sporty acceleration and sharp handling at an affordable price.
Car
4Runner Forerunner
The Toyota 4Runner is a rugged SUV made by Toyota that is built like a truck. It is designed to be highly capable of driving over rough off-road terrain and lasting for a very long time.
Car
Porsche Macan
The Porsche Macan is a small luxury SUV made by Porsche. It is designed to offer the space of an SUV while driving more like a sporty car.
Car
Cayenne Ev
The Porsche Cayenne is a mid-sized luxury SUV made by Porsche. It combines the space and comfort of a family vehicle with the fast performance of a sports car.
Concept
Werks Reunion
Werks Reunion is a massive, fun car show just for Porsches. It takes place during famous car weeks in California and Florida, bringing together everything from multi-million dollar race cars to dirty, well-loved daily drivers.
Concept
Ünstock
Ünstock is a special car show for Porsches that have been modified or customized by their owners, rather than kept in original factory condition.
Person
Frank Jung
Frank Jung is the official historian for Porsche in Germany. He is in charge of the company's massive historical archives, keeping track of old blueprints, photos, and classic cars.
Car
Porsche 928
The 928 was a futuristic-looking luxury sports car from the 70s, 80s, and 90s with a big V8 engine in the front. It was meant to replace the 911 as a more comfortable highway cruiser, though the 911 ultimately outlived it.
Car
Porsche Boxster
The Porsche Boxster is a two-seat convertible sports car made by Porsche. Because its engine is placed in the middle of the car rather than the front or back, it has very balanced handling.
LIVE
Welcome to the Porsche Club Insider, your one stop for all things Porsche and PCA.
Here's your host, Vu Gwin and the Insider crew.
Welcome everyone and we are back from a record setting Porsche Parade, Lake Placid, New York
Today we're going to share what it's really like attending your first Porsche Parade.
Our guests today I'll introduce in a moment.
First I want to thank our presenting sponsor, Pirelli.
Pirelli tires have to achieve the highest levels of performance, safety, noiselessness
and grip on the road surface, innovative tires that can satisfy even the most specific mobility
needs of the in consumer.
Thank you all for listening.
If you aren't currently a PCA member and own a Porsche, what are you waiting for?
Grab that VIN, head over to PCA.org and make yourself a member.
If you're looking for a Porsche, we try out our test drive program.
Again, head over to PCA.org and give us a try.
We'll unlock some resources to find that special Porsche for your driveway and our garage.
At the table it does feel good to be back because it seems like we've been on the road
forever.
Of course I have Manny, Alvin, across from me, Damon's at the controls.
Back to PCA Insider, Marsha Busch, Chesapeake Region Registrar, Steve Busch, Chesapeake
Region President.
I would say, Steve and Marsha, I sort of see them as like the pro-Treffen land folks.
And when we had you on earlier this year, I guess I never really thought about it, but
you hadn't done a Porsche parade.
I didn't realize that either.
I thought, well, they go to so many Treffens, they've been to parade already.
I didn't, because I was thinking, who went to the first time parade I could have on the
podcast?
And then I saw it was your first time.
I thought, perfect.
Perfect, perfect.
Well, before we get into your first time or experience, shout out to Jack Stevenson,
the Porsche Parade Committee, the over 800 plus volunteers at parade, the PCA National
Office staff that worked tirelessly to make sure all the behind the scenes things were
getting done.
We hosted 2,622 entrants.
Let me repeat that.
2,622 entrants.
Well, it's a population of the town of Lake Plass.
2,100.
We doubled the population.
You know, it's one of those things.
You're excited about it, but you're also terrified about it all at the same time.
And we'll get into more of that in a bit.
900 plus Porsches.
We had to make sure we managed the flow tours.
How many, how many people do you think went on tours?
Yeah, I think it was the most popular thing we do.
So yeah, over 1,800 people went on tours.
So we're going to glad our guests were cheap.
It's driving drive him aimlessly.
Yeah.
Yeah, so incredible experience.
You know, for us, the experience is a little bit different, maybe then perhaps
your experience, what I tell people for Manny, Damon, the staff and the volunteers.
We're sort of the wedding party.
Like, yes, we're enjoying and having fun, but we also have like one eye and one ear
kind of listening to all the different fires that are kind of behind the scenes
that we have to take care of.
Great time.
It's great to see everyone.
Great to see all the happy faces, but the experience is different from someone
that is just simply a wedding guest, right?
That you're there enjoying and hopefully having the time of your life.
I personally appreciate, I don't know, this probably happened to you, Manny,
how many people came up to you and I talking about the videos that we do,
the podcast and how much, not only do they appreciate it, but oftentimes
they were reciting very specific things that we were that we've talked about
in the past episodes.
Yeah, it was it's always great to see our listeners and realize that we have
so many people, doesn't seem like we have a lot of people listening to our show.
But evidently, we do.
Yeah, can I can I kick it off with my my very probably the best moment
of the entire parade and it really wasn't car focused.
It really wasn't, you know, a meeting or anything like that.
But it was just a happenstance opportunity.
You know, I think Jana Carnell for capturing this photo as I was walking
down the hall, I see this father and son kind of looking towards my way.
And they caught my attention and the father was encouraging the son
to just come over and say hi.
Like, what's the big deal?
All right, turns out this young boy listens to PC Insider on Mondays
as he goes to school.
Like, to me, that was the best.
Like, I don't care what else happened at Parade, but knowing that this
that we planted this little seed in this kid's head and it's something
that he looks forward to.
And also that should also remind Manny to keep it PG because we have
someone in grade school talking about planting seeds.
But, Damon, I think you even know who these folks are.
Obviously, we won't name the boy's name because they're for privacy reasons,
but we do know the dad.
Yes, we do.
And I'm about to put the picture up here that the dad sent to me
and his name is Benjamin Shahrabani, and he is a panorama contributor.
But in my realm on PCA.org, he is our book reviewer.
So for the past like 10 years, he's been Benjamin's been reviewing our books
almost exclusively for PCA.org.
He restores posters, genuinely, really, really nice guy.
And, you know, we text quite often and have over the years.
I remember when you were talking to his son and I think I was hustling past
with a push cart and a bunch of boxes on it, you know, to the 1932
rink or something, and I'm like, oh, that's cute, you know, whatever it is.
And then I start to hear, wait, who, who's son was that?
Who that was Ben?
Yeah, like so anyway, it was a really cool thing.
And then when Ben sent me the photo, I was kind of like, wait, that guy.
So anyway, it was a really cool, really cool thing to see.
And he was so happy about it.
And that made his week as well by far my favorite moment.
But there were a ton of moments.
It's a week long event.
And you'll hopefully share with us your favorite moments.
But let's let's start from the beginning.
So, oh, you're first.
So you never gone to a parade as a non-employed, non-national person.
No, because I had, I had joined PCA right when the 50th anniversary,
the one that was closest to me.
You missed the best one, but you went to the next one.
That's what you tell me is I've missed the best one, but I had to work.
My, my, my previous annual conference, my previous jobs annual
conference was always during short.
It was much more exciting than I mean, talking about commercial vehicle,
law enforcement, street cars and street GT1 race cars.
But I had only been a PCA member for two years, two years or three years
before I became executive director.
And I honestly didn't even know about Porsche Parade until Hershey.
Like I did hear about that one, but then I couldn't go because it was,
you know, it was close and I was like, Oh, you should go, you should go.
I didn't make that one.
But my very first one was in 2006.
This was my, like Placid was my 20th Porsche Parade.
And I'm sounds like a lot to maybe some folks that are listening,
but there are some people that have been to parade much longer.
Oh, by far.
Yeah, I'll never, I'm a young, I'll never catch up.
Yeah, I'm a young.
It's a good butch. Bob Rasses up to 60, 60, 60.
Yeah, you heard that right.
Sixty years, a PCA member has been coming to a Porsche Parade.
Just imagine doing anything, let alone going to a particular event.
Sixty years of your life.
My first one was 96 in Oklahoma, Grand Lake, the Cherokees, I think.
It was unique in that they moved it to the fall because of surveys.
And it turned out to be a one time thing because
a lot of people couldn't go because the kids were in school.
You know, it's one of these things where everyone said it was people
that didn't go to parade that participate in the survey.
And they said, well, I would go if it wasn't hot, I would go if it wasn't this.
And anyways, we went out there to reach a president.
Paul Gilberts convinced several of us to drive out.
And yeah, it was definitely very cool.
Like going to the parade store back then was just called a goodie store.
And I think I bought like just like you see people here at our store,
everything because you've never seen a store that was just nothing but Porsche.
And back then there was a lot of
they hadn't figured out how to become profitable.
So they had a lot of items that were from sponsors,
from vendors, from Porsche and whatnot.
They had lots of non CIA stuff back in the day.
Yes. Oh, yeah.
And it was just great being in a place where you walked out of your
hotel room complex and because this was all one resort.
And you saw nothing but Porsche people and Porsches.
It was hopefully what you'll come away with after listening to this podcast is
wherever it is, however, if you have availability to go, just go.
Like, don't try to say it's going to be too hot.
It's going to be too cold. It's going to be too hilly.
It's going to be what just go because all the things,
honestly, that we were worried about with like Placid in particular
didn't matter because we were one thing we didn't talk about was rain.
Well, we were all about bugs, parking and bugs, right?
Parking and bugs.
Two things that we didn't have happened.
Didn't have happened.
So just go, go.
And there were several PCA members that came up to me,
probably to you, Damon and Manny as well.
They're like, thank you for like convincing me to do this,
because I really I'm not a super social person or I didn't know what to expect.
But this has been incredible.
That's probably the word that I heard the most coming out of people's minds.
I said, incredible. How do you guys do this?
How do you do that?
And it's incredible, incredible, incredible.
So this this Lake Placid isn't really your first opportunity
because we were at Pocono, which was close to you,
but you didn't choose to go to that.
You could have gone to I think French Lick because you were a member of them,
but you didn't go to that.
So what what made you say we're going to Lake Placid?
No one had a baby this year.
Oh, grandchildren, grandchildren.
I didn't realize grandchildren can, you know, they they can they can keep you home.
Keep you home. Oh, OK. OK.
The other one we were in Hawaii, we had actually registered
for the one in Boca Raton or West Palm.
Yeah. And then I had to cancel it.
I even had an Amtrak to bring the reservation.
But that's why I thought you guys had been the parade.
Yeah, yeah, I'm like with all these opportunities.
I'm sure they would.
But then Lake Placid, the location.
I mean, as soon as we heard of us, Lake Placid,
have you been there before?
Not Lake Placid, but the Adirondacks we had.
So we really liked it.
Yeah. Get up there.
How did you prepare?
So you took your cab?
What did you do? You took the cab?
Well, I mean, yeah.
And it's a 991, right?
991.2. Yeah.
So Baba Orange.
And when we got home, we had 70,000 miles on it.
70000 miles on it.
We drive it. Good.
Yeah.
Was it was a tough packing?
Did you have any creative experience with that?
Yeah, I guess.
But this is longer than Treffen.
So well, when we went across country
for one of the Treffens, we bought a car in California.
Oh, right, right, right back for five weeks.
Yeah.
And so we had learned how to pack.
I was very happy on this trip
because I didn't have limitations on packing
because I was driving.
So and it was just me and the Cayenne plus a trailer.
That's a lot of room.
So I had tons of room.
I brought I brought half of my toolbox
because I didn't know what was going to break.
I wasn't sure which was going to break the 356 or the Cayenne.
And Cayenne's got 157,000 miles on a flat tire and a trailer.
A flat tire.
Oh, yeah, I brought all sorts of stuff
for flat tires on trailers.
But yeah, I was not constrained by space.
In fact, I had extra in case I found
something to buy at Parade and bring back.
But I was very good.
I did buy it.
We bought and got like a week prior for 17 bucks at Walmart.
Was one of his closing racks.
You hook onto the back handles.
And I'm like, we have 17 bucks.
You know, I can't keep your clothes straight.
Well, like that.
But I thought, suppose they don't have a iron
or ironing board in the room, which turned out they didn't.
Oh, and plus I just don't iron your shirts at that point.
I didn't I didn't want to have to iron the shirts every night or what not.
And I knew I was going to wear a long sleep shirt
because I saw the weather and yes, that was awesome
because we just took it out, took it in and no ironing of the shirts.
And when I put them back on and it was so easy to pack.
But we took just my con to the max.
Oh, really?
Oh, yeah.
It was I was a bit of a ding dong.
I knew about the weather.
We also, like you said, we didn't really talk about rain.
I knew it was cold.
But when I left, it was like 93 degrees here in Maryland, right?
So one of the last things I was going to do is grab a jacket
as I walk out the door.
But for whatever reason, you know, I hopped in the car.
I think I'm to like the Baltimore Tunnel.
I'm like, I forgot something.
I forgot something.
I'm like, dang it.
I forgot like a casual, hopefully,
waterproof jacket that I was planning to grab.
The only jacket I brought was like a like a
a non like a regular jacket.
That's not really waterproof.
So I warped I had.
But with all that rain, yeah, I did the same thing.
I brought a sport coat.
But and I brought, you know, my, you know, the rain ponchos, the plastic things
for because it's always in my my my bucket for for road trips.
But I completely forgot to check it.
I had to go buy one at the parade store.
So I should have gone to the Treffenet Bend, Oregon,
because they gave out raincoats.
Oh, nice.
That's what Steve.
Well, we should.
That problem would have been cheaper going to the store.
So we went to the store on the first day.
It was overwhelming.
It was just so much stuff there.
And the thing is the first day, you don't even see all the merchandise.
Like the way Charlotte and the staff set it up is the first day is
a lot, but you come back the next day there.
They refill it with different merchandise.
So it's genius.
So it's like you don't you don't have to make a decision on all the stuff.
And then you have to come back to make sure you didn't miss out on things.
And yeah, many in Roxanne shout out to Roxanne, because I know she was helping out
Charlotte and the crew, I think almost every day, many of the counters.
But they had here's the thing.
Here's one of those behind the scenes things that you guys don't know.
The store was originally in the conference center in like a small room.
And, you know, not not every place is ideal in terms of where you can place each event.
But we knew that room was way too small, especially with the crowd
that was coming and all the merchandise and all that kind of stuff.
Thankfully, there was like this little house
not too far from the Concorde Field, not too far from the Convention Center,
but it was like a standalone building that Charlotte could sort of transform
into the parade store.
It's a lot of work because this was in that building.
I think it was like a learning center, a learning center.
But it looks like kind of house because the Olympic Center looks so modern.
It looks like the kind of house where the old man refused to sell.
Yeah, exactly.
And so they built everything around this house
because it's really out of place.
And when you look out, I agree, architecture, the Olympic Center,
but it turned out to be perfect location was perfect.
It was right there.
It looks so much like a permanent store
that they actually had someone come in midweek and apply for a job.
No way, really.
That's hilarious. That's great.
You should have hired them just for a couple of hours to see how they did.
Well, there was so much stuff I'm going, all right, I'm sorry,
but we'll come back later and we'll pick and choose what, you know,
what we want to bring between the events that we did and the volunteering
that we did to support the events.
We didn't really get to the store until after the parade of Porsches.
And it was pretty much all picked by there.
I mean, oh, bummer. Yeah.
And that's a good point, too.
And some people might say, man, I can't believe I came through on Thursday
and Friday and there wasn't much left.
Like we should have way more inventory to last that.
Here's here's here's again, behind the scenes here, folks.
After parade, anything from that store literally becomes dead inventory.
Right. And so, you know, there's, there's,
we don't have to make tons of money off of the sales,
but we also try not to lose money on behalf of the club.
And so if there's 10 shirts left,
then how many shirts do you have to sell to make up that difference?
Right. And there's, and we don't have a high markup.
If you notice how much like Porsche dealer merchandise, like a t-shirt,
they wouldn't even let us put pricing on stuff.
Yeah. Like a Porsche dealer t-shirt for like, what, 60 bucks?
Right. A PCA or a parade shirt is probably with 35.
So we don't think it was in the $30.
Yeah. Like we don't even have a big markup.
So one, we don't have a big markup.
But if we have lots of dead inventory after parade,
like it kills the whole program.
So the goal, honestly, is to sell out and sell out most of it by Thursday or Friday.
And they use a previous sales.
They have an equation that'll just roll dice and figure it out.
But I mean, Charlotte's in the top position who runs the store
because she asked to, like Vue said, order just enough
so we don't have a lot to take back with us and lose money.
But hopefully have enough to satisfy the people.
Yeah. And you're doing this months in advance.
And yes, we knew we were going to have a couple of thousands of people.
Right. 2600 people.
And then weather also determines what people buy, thankfully,
because it was cold.
I think she probably moved a lot of coats and a lot of long sleeve.
But what if it was 90 degrees?
Like she had to make this.
She had to order the short sleeves and long sleeve shirts months ago.
She doesn't know. So it's like we don't have an exact crystal ball, right?
So Bacuda sir, I think most most everyone was very happy with the selection.
Porsche design.
She has a relationship with Porsche design to get official Porsche where they
created what's called a capsule collection for PCA that highlights
the the sprint trophy that we have a program we have in club racing.
The shoes, I think we sold out of every single we had one pair.
One pair. I tried them on.
Yeah, it was like a half size.
Two. Oh, yeah.
I did not think we're going to sell them any shoes.
But yeah, one pair, one box left.
That was well, but we got there because everybody was a whole wall full of shoes.
So I'm going like, that's a lot of shoes.
You know why it's because they went they all went to the Thursday autocross or
something and it took it took like two days to dry my shoes out.
So yeah, well, yeah, well, yeah.
And so that was that was really cool.
Again, just behind the scenes.
No, it takes a lot for it to happen.
One of the other things that we were super concerned with.
And here's where. How do I say this?
Like, I wish maybe the city was more active in helping us figure this out.
But we figured out on our own when when did you guys land?
You you guys got some you got there Sunday.
OK, so Sunday was the day that probably was my biggest concern
because we had all of our members coming in to check in.
But at the same time, we have a marathon going on in the middle of the city of Lake Placid.
So it's like, we don't want not that we don't want to mix in with them,
but you take these two crowds and not enough parking this, that and the other.
And so the solution was an offsite registration area,
which turned out to be the Saranac Lake High School,
about 15 minutes or so away from Lake Placid,
but having people go directly there.
So you got the I think you probably got the email saying check in there.
Yep. Depending on your number, there's a time that you had to check in.
What was your experience landing at the high school?
It was very smooth. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, in the short time that you all had to reconfigure everything
and replant everything, it was it was very smooth.
No, you take advantage of the I think they had a program called.
Porsche Parade Experience or something.
They had like ambassadors, right?
Yeah, for first timers, and they had like docents to help.
Well, I saw them walk.
They were wearing aprons.
I think it's a docent on it.
And they were get there was a woman that handholding
first timers through registration.
I got to say
what's her name, Dobson, Cathy, Cathy Dobson, Robson, Robson, Cathy, Robson.
Genius.
Like I've seen these before, but I don't know why we haven't applied it.
And she really are a hydration.
She's our hydration chair, right?
But she came up with the idea of putting these green tags
on first time attendees badges
because it allowed me to make sure that I
sought people out to say, how's your experience?
And I think a lot of us like doing that.
And I would say, oh, 46 percent of this parade record record,
46 percent, 30 percent.
Yeah, 46 percent of the parade attendees were first time attendee goers.
It's amazing.
So it's it's super important that we make sure that we touch base,
because some people are just kind of quiet.
You don't know, but it's absolutely overwhelming.
I mean, there's so much to do and to check in for.
And for everyone else, become second nature, you know, go to registration,
you know, where to stop to or not to stop.
And the first time going there, it's it can be absolutely overwhelming.
When we had to kind of double up on a number of things
to be able to make this happen, because all the registration materials
were at the convention center.
Then we had to schlep it all to the high school, set it all up.
Not only set up registration, but because we didn't have a typical
vendor hall like we used to or normally do.
We set up vendors at the high school check in.
I think it was in the hallway and then we a little gauntlet.
It's like it's at the end of a museum tour.
Like you have to walk through that aisle
and buy a gift from the gift store.
Golf was very, very well represented there.
Yeah. And then Pirelli brought their truck out in the parking lot.
Turns out that worked out very well for our vendors.
A very good pizza.
Oh, pizza truck, pizza truck.
I think they had a DJ or something.
I didn't get to go during the day of activation, but I was there for setup.
Laura got pizza for me.
I never left. Yeah.
But even before they did the registration to high school
the day before, they did registration for staff.
So all 60 people get the register the day before.
So like to your point, they had said everything set up at the Olympic center.
Yeah. And then we had to.
Well, shut it down, bring everything over. Exactly.
What a lot of effort.
Yeah. And then after Sunday was done, they had to box it all up.
Take it to the registration to late registration.
But I will say one, thank you to everyone who made that happen.
But I would say it was 100 and fifty percent well worth it to keep our
folks sort of isolated from the possible congestion of the marathon runners.
And once you once you got registered at the high school,
then you could take your time to get to you, check out Saranac Lake,
or you could go into Lake Plassa, get into your hotel.
I don't think I, me personally, I didn't hear of anyone
having trouble figuring out what to do after they got registered.
They were so happy that registration went so quick and easy.
Yeah, we'd registered about one o'clock and we were hungry.
You're hungry.
So we went to Lake Saranac for lunch.
Shout out to Lake Plassa and Saranac.
I thought with us doubling the population that food might be an issue
in terms of places being open, a variety of foods being.
They crushed it like you had you had everything.
And actually, like I have one of the best Italian meals at like some local place.
There was Greek food.
There was a lot of Eastern European students.
Yes, I did notice that, which was a little bit different
at the Italian restaurant when you're taking orders felt like Ocean City in the summer.
I did. That's exactly what I was going to say.
It felt like the beach because every every weight staff was from a different country.
But yeah, no, we, you know,
sometimes you went in reservations at key times and you did it that day.
You may have to look for a couple of restaurants,
but never did we say there's no place to eat.
There's always.
Yeah, that was that was a concern of mine, which is why
when we start talking about rookie mistakes.
Yeah, we so we signed up for the banquets.
Yeah, all the bank, all the banquets.
And it turned out there was it was a good thing because we got to meet people
and you got to see what's going on with the and who the winners were for the
all the different events and stuff.
So enjoyed it.
But we thought that we wouldn't get reservations.
There's so many people coming in.
There's only a few restaurants about.
So we so we booked all of those, which we didn't need to probably.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, that's, you know, especially if you're competing in a particular
like if it's the autocross or concours or across like that,
you want to be there.
So speaking of registering for things, you know, face,
we for those of you that don't know parade, you register in two phases.
The first phase is just basically, yes, I'm going.
Here's the base rate.
And then I get the link to make my hotel reservations.
And there's a phase two, you know, which you choose everything.
So during phase two, did you all get everything that you wanted?
And then, and then, oh, OK, you've had, you made a spreadsheet.
I made a spreadsheet.
You made a spreadsheet.
And then once you got once you were at the high school and you have to check
in at all the different places, how did that go for you?
Oh, that was easy.
That part was easy.
That was like in the old days when you were registering for college classes.
Yes.
And you went into like a big room and had to go from one department
to the other department.
Yeah, and that's also kind of like the manual.
Would you agree that's part of like the social side of registration?
Like you run into people and exactly.
Oh, you're going to go on this too?
The longer you go to parade, the longer you stay in registration,
talking to people.
Yeah. Yeah.
Because it's the first time you see them.
Oh, without a doubt.
Yeah.
Well, that afternoon was the first time that at least 10 people came up to us
and said, this is your first parade.
I can't believe it because we had the green thing on our badges and said,
we're first timers.
And yeah, like I said, once again, I thought you guys had several parades.
Now, we were lucky that we could.
I think for staff, it was sort of a toss up if you want to fly versus if you want to drive.
For me, towing door to door was nine hours.
I think you guys being in a 9-11 was probably a little bit shorter.
No, we took the next day.
Oh, back roads.
OK. Yeah.
Was it like once you get up to Albany, I mean, even through Pennsylvania,
it's, you know, OK, but once you get to Albany and on,
like it feels like the vacation starts there, like the roads are really beautiful.
You start losing cell signals so you're not paying attention to the phone.
You do have to pay attention to ways.
And when there were so many police officers out, oh, my gosh,
Manny, Manny gave me a heads up.
He's like, yeah, yeah, when you come up through 88, you know, watch your speed.
I'm like, well, first of all, I'm towing someone and probably be doing the speed limit.
But there was one time when I was driving and I had like eight alerts.
I'm like, I was like, this must be like people reporting eight times.
No, there were eight cops, eight cops pulling cars over.
I must have seen 20 different cop cars in different locations
in about a 10 minute span.
Yeah, like a thing, Albany, our chat.
Oh, really?
People saying, take the back roads.
It isn't nearly as many police.
I'm like, who the heck?
I saw maybe two policemen.
Oh, really?
Now, the good news is of all the cars and police officers
that I saw that were pulled over.
None of them were Porsches.
They were all other cars.
So it wasn't us.
You must have.
Oh, yes, the road up was super easy for you guys.
Oh, and we went to Saratoga Springs.
We love that town.
Yeah.
Manny got to do something special.
I was sort of a bucket list.
Yeah, we were heading up and I see a sign for Cooperstown.
Oh, yeah, that's right.
I'm thinking, oh crap, it's got to be the same Cooperstown
with the baseball Hall of Fame.
So I was driving.
I told my wife, I'm like, Google.
Uh, baseball Hall of Fame and see what time that if you can buy
tickets or you got to reserve ahead of time and she was like,
no, you can just go up there and get him.
So we're taking a detour.
I was surprised that was the first time I figured you go.
You've been up the Northeast so many times.
And that was your first time?
Not not that part of New York.
Really?
And walking to Glen is like the most upstate, I think,
that I've ever gone to.
So, yeah, we took a nice leisurely detour into
the baseball Hall of Fame.
Yeah, it's a great place to say this.
It would have been a lot more better, a lot better if the kids weren't there.
But oh, you're hilarious.
I told my wife, I'm like, I would have been the same way.
But it's a lot of history, very well done.
It's a very small town.
Obviously, they rely heavy on this Hall of Fame museum.
But it was a nice detour.
I saw a sign for Woodstock and like the original Woodstock.
So I'm like, but I knew the concert wasn't held in Woodstock.
Right.
It was held in the farm, a town further away.
But that was going to be a really long detour.
So we settled for the baseball Hall of Fame.
Very good.
So what did you how did you feel when you got to Lake Saranac?
Lake Saranac was is a cute little town as well.
But what were your first impressions of Lake Placid as you pulled in?
You know, similar to Woodstock, Vermont, when we did the treffin up there.
It's a small little town.
We kind of take it over.
Feels like Mayberry.
A little bit, I guess.
But the one main street with a lot of parking meters.
Yeah, they pay for parking everywhere.
Man, and do they enforce?
Whoo, they probably made some serious money
though week we were up there, right?
That flowbird app was very convenient.
Flowbird app, I just used.
What did I use? Was it flowbird?
Yeah, well, all the barrages, yeah, all the machines,
parking machines were flowbird machines.
I didn't use the app because I was going to.
I'm like, I've got to put my information into another app.
And I got a ticket.
Oh, I was going to say the second and third time that we part.
That's so deep.
Oh, you got a ticket.
So I did I did park once, but then I just put my license plate number
into the machine and it got the little piece of paper.
I didn't use the app because what I did, some of you may have seen
me fly through Main Street because I was on the opposite end
of Main Street to the convention center.
And I knew parking one would be costly.
But then it was like I brought my little scooter,
my little Honda Moto Compacto.
And so I was just cruising Main Street back and forth.
It was so much easier and I could just ride right up to
right up to the convention center.
Well, then you had to carry around plenty of room in your cayenne for that.
Yeah, I did.
But no, I just parked it in the what he called registration room
when I was in my time.
I thought about getting the electric thing.
But it was super kind of got to carry it around.
We had a better thing.
We had the Willy Wonka card.
We had the handicap tag.
Oh, yes, you do.
You don't have to pay for parking
and you don't have to necessarily park just in a handicapped spot.
You can park in any spot and not pay.
Yeah, as long as you have your tag up.
So, well, I mean, granted, my poor wife has a limp with her knee problem.
But not for me, but for my wife.
But that was very convenient.
But, you know, the parking what we had feared
was going to be like people just circling like sharks looking for parking.
And it was not like that at all.
No, and it was really cool to see
how many Porsches were just parked on the curb on Main Street.
In fact, I think I don't know if you have a picture of this, Damon,
but the gentleman that brought the red 959
it was parked on the curb.
That's pretty cool.
3000000 dollars just sitting on the curb.
Sitting on the curb behind a midi van.
So we were getting ready to
travel and it's Friday afternoon lunchtime.
We're ready. Yeah.
And we said, let's go because we were planning on leaving Saturday
to spend the night in Saratoga Springs
and then arrive in Sunday at Lake Placid.
So we left and went to Scranton that first night on Friday night.
And then we had an easy day to Saratoga Springs.
The next day we stayed in these bend
breakfasts, really, really old, beautiful places.
And then arrived up in Lake Placid at the high school, actually,
in Saranac and got our registration done.
And we were finished by two o'clock.
Stay in Lake Placid.
We were at the mirror in Lake.
Merlin Lake, Merlin Lake at the other end.
And that's why we drove a few times, especially because of the rain.
We did get poured on on Sunday night.
So the sports jacket that Steve brought, that was not weather water.
It was pretty wet.
It was wet. It really was wet.
But we had breaks in the weather a number of times.
I think that were kind of perfect.
Like the Concord was not pouring rain.
It was kind of misty.
But then there was a little bit of sunshine
parts of it during the award ceremony.
So that worked out.
The Concord could have been a lot.
Weather could have been a lot worse.
It could have been way worse.
Really, really good.
Way worse.
Relatively safe.
The autocrosses.
They had like one morning that maybe was decent.
The rest of it was torrential.
But I think probably the best thing was
the window of opportunity that we had for cars and community.
That would have been terrible if that was rainy.
But cars and community had a nice.
Literally blue sky.
Blue sky.
And what I think they're going to make this a regular feature.
Hopefully instead of a banquet that night,
you just go into the town, take over the town and park a hundred and
think of a cars and coffee in the afternoon, early evening.
So cool.
And I found this.
I found the best pizza in the air.
It was called Owl's Nest.
I could smell it.
Yeah.
And before hanging out right.
Yeah.
And I was like, is there like before everyone,
the crowd got in that like I placed my order for a large,
then crust pizza and I asked them to make it well done.
And I'm surprised you didn't hit the Chinese place.
Because many there was no Mexican place that I saw that there was.
And it was it was terrible.
Somebody was telling me it was really.
Yeah, I think Megan from I don't think I've had rice yet.
Since I got back, you know, I was literally shaking the Sunday.
The Sunday I came home.
I was literally shaking.
I haven't had Asian food for so long.
But so when we came on, came on, the Chinese restaurant was cooking
heavy and it just smell like we had reservations.
I'm like, oh, maybe we should get a snack until.
But that the town of Serenac Lake hosted us and that was great.
Yeah.
And the locals came out learning about the cars.
And that was really cool.
See all the kids.
Well, we had dinner there at Hotel Serenac Hotel Serenac.
And the Storms Cave as we are in having dinner and it was really
coming down when we left.
It was just it was a scary little drive back to Lake Placid.
Yeah, we were the last two cars on the street.
Oh, really?
The woods and the buses at nine at 920 at night.
Yeah, it opened up, but we were done by then.
So we might as well show a little bit of the autocross, actually,
since this this happened a few times when we were up there.
So if you're on YouTube.
Yeah, so we were at the Plattsburg Airport and it and we we ran on Thursday.
Yeah, and it was torrential.
Like I I had an umbrella, but I held it in front of me as opposed to above me.
It was coming sideways.
You know, my famous yellow boots that are absolutely that have always worked
no matter where I went this time it failed because usually I'm stepping into water.
But this time the rain was coming in from the top.
Dripping in.
But my boots are waterproof.
So guess what?
It made like a nice little pool inside my boots.
You mean when Puff Daddy designed those shoes, he didn't design it for that?
Not for it to come up come in from the top.
But still we there wasn't lightning.
So we still ran all the cars.
We we ran in the rain of kudos to people who were volunteering.
Oh, God, there was miserable.
We were miserable.
We were volunteering at the gimmick rally, getting Thursday,
getting it set up, getting all the codes, lanes,
getting everything organized and ready to go.
And I forget how many 200 and fifty cars or so.
I think went off on the gimmick rally and it was torrential like that.
And then it would stop and you'd have 15, 20 minutes.
Oh, this is nice.
And all of a sudden it just started up again.
Yeah, it's just way down.
While we were while we were volunteering in the torrential rain is all across.
I'm like, maybe maybe if we get through all this and and it pours now by time we run,
it's going to, you know, you hope it's going to clear up.
No, it didn't.
It was nice was so Main Street for those who weren't there.
It was one mile and a half long, maybe.
So to go from the Olympic Center to the other end of Main Street,
where our hotels were was a very easy walk and I did it several times
and you're walking along if you can imagine Main Street with businesses.
So it's not like you're along a major highway.
Cars are going maybe 20 miles an hour at the most.
So yeah, it was a very small town America type feel to it and everyone's friendly.
And, you know, it was a nice pleasant walk back to the hotels,
which for some reason I wasn't expecting that.
So I think like Plasti, that was absolutely beautiful place to have it.
And when you hear the population is so low
and you got so many people coming to Steve's point, you know, we thought,
oh, are they going to be able to handle the most basic of stuff?
But they did.
And if you're watching on YouTube now, this picture that I have up now
on our Porsche Parade recap article that Bogdan took, this is this is Lake Placid.
Yeah, that's how beautiful it is.
It's just this picturesque American town Main Street right there.
I've said it before, it felt like we were on a movie set of a Porsche commercial
where every car was a Porsche.
I think there's only one non-Porsche in that photo.
And as you were on Main Street, cars were parked.
Cars were coming ahead of you.
There's a Porsche behind you.
What everybody's friendly.
Wave it, flash the lights.
What a cool feeling.
And again, the rain didn't even really matter.
I can't imagine unless you're early hardcore, people went to the car wash every day.
So I never even saw the car.
I went once, I think on Saturday and that was at that point, I was saying, why?
It's going to rain tomorrow.
We dried our car off a couple of times.
I went to the first Friday because it was it was hot and cars was gross from the drive up.
But yeah, I only went once.
The biggest thing was not the rain.
The biggest thing was, wasn't it crazy how much pollen was still like my car was yellow?
In the mornings, most days, there's tons of sand.
Yes. Where was the sand coming from?
I'm guessing they use it in the ice or snow.
But so in the Concord field, or Concord was the speed skating oval.
And that's where he parked the cars.
The great location, the grass in the inside.
You like to boost point about his shoes.
I thought I brought a second pair of shoes, too.
Because in the morning when we're setting up, it's always morning.
Do we get our feet really wet so we swap shoes?
But the soil, they said, was all sand under there.
And so the grass was dry, whereas the speed skating oval, which I guess they used
some kind of surface that doesn't drain, obviously, they wanted to freeze.
So for the longest time, that water just sat there.
The sun was out and it wasn't what you would.
And since it's not asphalt, it's not absorbing the heat like asphalt whatsoever.
Made for some good pictures because of the reflection.
But it stayed wet for quite a long time.
But the grass was surprisingly dry.
I didn't have to change shoes.
Every person in that photo has wet socks, but they're still smiling.
They're still smiling because it was a very.
You had your raincoat or your umbrella as soon as it started to spit.
It never rained hard.
It would just be that annoying mist that would come.
But I would say the majority of it was dry.
And Porsche brought their Pixar.
The Toy Story Cars, but that was a surprise because I feel like it was just
a week prior they were out in California being debuted.
And so the fact that for the movie opening, yeah, so they literally
they literally put those cars in the trucks.
And after the premiere, they were headed towards like the Bogdan, who's in
California, he took pictures of them and then it's felt like four days later
they're in Lake Placid.
So that was a nice that and the pins.
Oh, yes. Porsche brought.
Shout out, shout out to Haley Bowers and the crew at Porsche Cars North America.
We are not hoarders.
We are collectors.
And when Porsche brings, well, I think 23 limited edition pins made
for parade and parade goers and they were giving them away for us at various
events where you kind of have to hunt them down and trade them.
And they made different amounts of each pin.
And I think there's if you're watching on YouTube, there is a one of one pin.
Manny, what's that car?
So I asked Haley, I said, there's a rumor going around.
There's a one on one pin.
And she said, it's true.
I said, is it really a Pat Americana or is it a Panamera?
And he goes, it's a Panamera.
I said, so it's the gift car.
They gave to a fairy Porsche.
I think it was a 70 or 75th birthday.
And she said, that's the one.
I'm like, really?
It's like a concept looking car.
Well, it's kind of interesting because fairy Porsche didn't like this car.
It's what a car to pick.
But yeah, that was the car.
And at the time she was like, she's like, we got it somewhere,
but I can't find it right now.
But obviously she found that and you took a picture of it.
And they gave it away at the fittingly at the volunteer party,
which I thought was great because that meant one of the.
Do you know who won it?
Do you remember who won it?
I don't.
Hopefully that person realized what they got.
Pretty sure they do.
OK, OK.
It was talked about at the volunteer.
There was a and they had everything from 914s to 356.
They have a moon, I think they did.
They had a 935.
I love the card and 919.
I would have liked to have gotten that, but I didn't get that home.
I'm with, I think, eight.
I came home with a lot.
I every time I kept asking, what else do you have?
What else do you have?
So, yeah.
Now, I have been looking because we were joking.
You're a hoarder.
I am.
Collector, sir, collector.
So we were joking.
Say, how quickly do you think these will end up on eBay?
I'm happy to say I haven't seen any on eBay as of this morning.
Bob Goote, you're always picking some out.
I threatened him.
I said, these better not end up in Carlisle and Haley,
who didn't even know Bob Goote.
Bob, if these aren't at Carlisle, you're going to be banned.
The best part of it were the juniors.
The juniors wore these as badges of honor.
Like, they pinned it around their lanyard.
It probably made their lanyard five pounds.
But they wore it.
The stack of them, the stack of them.
Somebody said in one of the towns, waiters,
traded one of his Olympic pins for one of the horseship pins,
which is the whole idea of these pins,
was to be able to trade them.
So that was a very cool thought that Porsche had as a giveaway.
But I think it started to conquer it.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, I actually started the welcome party
because that's where you first saw the like Placid pin.
Right.
With the Makani V.
And then it we saw it again and again and again.
So speaking of the welcome party,
I knew you were confused with what to wear, but.
But it was a fantastic welcome party.
Again, the aura of the facility when you walk in 1980.
Yeah.
Miracle and I said, thank goodness.
Thank goodness I watched the movie.
Yeah. Right.
So not the game, but you watch your movie.
I watched the movie.
But for those for those that attended,
that didn't even know of the story and or didn't even watch the movie.
They played like the last few moments.
Just a matter of last minute.
They should have played the entire game while we were in.
Well, yeah.
Or, you know, clips from.
And that wasn't the gold medal game.
That was that was not that was the play into the gold medal.
Yeah, exactly.
But they knew that their hurdle was Russia.
So it was the next game was a gold medal.
But they knew they didn't be Russia.
Yeah. That's who their their if you will, their rival was.
And yeah, it was it was very cool to be.
First thing you think about about you all,
but I thought this is small, a seating wise.
Yeah.
Then you would have thought of it because when you watch it on TV.
So grand on TV, it looked really big.
It looked like a 100000 people in this.
And then you're standing there and you're like, this isn't really big.
You know what I love about having our banquets?
And yes, you have to dress, you know, bring a jacket.
Yes, you should probably wear socks because the ice is still frozen under.
They put a layer in between the ice and your feet, but it got kind of chilly,
especially even there for a couple hours.
Yeah, I started to feel it, but it was a cool feeling.
And also, I love the fact that the A V that the screens,
the ability to put our logos kind of around the arena.
Like that was that was cool.
And that's all built in.
If you were to do it in a ballroom, like all of that would have to be brought in.
And it wouldn't be as special, right?
So that was kind of cool.
Yeah, I mean, it seemed like the facility was very easy to work with.
The fact that we could bring cars on ice that when we did
what's my Porsche worth and tech tactics that let us bring cars in.
And we've had hotels where we had to lay out
like a paper red carpet so not to get any oil stains.
We're here. They were just like, just let us know when you want to.
So the door let him out.
Yeah, cool.
What was your favorite event?
Oh, Curly. Yeah, I thought he would say Curly.
Really? It was I love that.
I love that event in the Winter Olympics.
I always try to watch as much as I can.
How was your form? Was it?
It was not that good.
But I did land one in the bullseye.
You did. I did.
He did. He did.
They use a regulation stone.
Yeah, they're like 45 pounds.
Did you do the sweeping thing?
Yeah, the whole bit.
Wow.
So is the goal of the sweeping thing to put stuff in front of the stone
to slow it down or to clean it up so that it goes faster?
So both if you don't
sand the ice isn't perfectly level like like mirror.
There's little bumps in it.
And so your your brush thing is heating up those little bumps.
So the stone slides further.
So if you think that stone is going to end up right in the center,
you're cleaning your defense.
You're scrubbing like mad to get to get it to slide all the way through
the home they call it the home.
Anyway, that that was a lot of fun.
That's cool. So how about for you?
What was your favorite?
I'd say curling too.
But we also did the revolution rails.
OK, is that the one you ride in the carts?
And you're on a bike type of thing on the railroad.
That's like a lot.
There we go. Oh, cool.
I have to say we were probably the slowest one.
When we got to the turnaround point,
we looked behind us and everybody was there behind us.
In front of us, there was no one.
We said we're not going fast enough because the people that were in front of us,
we couldn't see them anymore.
I said, we're not going fast enough, but it didn't matter.
So we get to the end to turn around and we look back at everybody.
You were slow.
You were the Prius in the fast line.
Exactly.
That's a cool thing about parade is they always have events
that kind of like on a cruise when they have excursions,
where you can get a flavor of what a local tourist would be doing
that wasn't an important stuff.
Well, it looked like you had a beautiful day.
The scenery is absolutely stunning.
And that's the Hudson River that we're crossing at that point.
Your little wheelie cart had some awesome rims on it, so that's pretty cool.
All right, any advice for someone that's going to future parade?
Well, what would you say was your rookie mistake?
I mean, you mentioned a little bit about, you know, going to all the banquets
and you'd be taking saving one for yourself.
Probably not necessary.
Well, we avoided a rookie mistake by listening to the podcast.
Oh, yeah.
I listened to that part, that phase two podcast twice.
OK. And it gave me some really great tips.
And one of the tips was to have your to register the car
as you get into the phase two.
Yeah. Because other people that didn't do that
then had to go back and do that to finish the registration.
The other key thing is that I paid for an event as I selected it.
OK, gotcha.
So Porsche Parade was my number one pick.
So I did that, paid for it, got out, came back in.
And then I think I did the tours.
And then after that, the banquets.
And then I tried to volunteer and that's when things went haywire.
But at three o'clock, I went back in and finished my registration.
Yeah, good, good.
Well, again, congratulations on getting your first
Porsche Parade under your belt.
Hopefully it won't be your last.
And for those of you that are listening, hopefully
their experience and the various podcasts that we've done
before to help you prepare for a parade again for next year,
we'll probably do the same.
But yeah, what in?
Well, there's just so much to do, so much.
It's overwhelming.
Yeah. And then you want to do your activities that you signed up for,
like curling, when am I going to get a chance curling?
Right. And then you volunteer because you really want to be supportive
of the events.
And so you look at what times left.
There's there's not a whole lot of time left in the week.
We fill up the dance part.
We definitely fill up the dance part.
The art show was spectacular.
Yes, really enjoyed that talent.
Really enjoyed that.
So and now we're still talking about how are we going to get to Boise?
We get a drive, we're going to fly.
Oh, you guys drive.
Frozen cons.
It's much more relaxing when you don't have to worry about your Porsche.
Obviously, you're not going to do the TSD rally,
but you can do the gimmick rally, you can do tours, I believe.
So it's different.
Different.
We brought the Makana because my wife wanted to have a car
to drive around during the week.
So six hours between by the time you get on the plane, get to the airport,
everything was almost even washed for us.
But for Moise, it'll definitely be a fly out.
And a number of people do this option where they have reliable carriers
bring their cars home.
You can drive it out, drive it out and then or you can do the reverse.
You could have them bring it there.
You land and do parade and then take your time driving at home.
So great, great, great suggestion.
Yeah.
So the folks at Reliable Carries shout out to John, John G.
and Bob Sellers didn't want to try for the last name, huh?
Huh?
Golan Bowsky.
It's Golan Bowsky.
Golan Bowsky, Bowsky.
Lord of the Rings character, Bowsky.
Yeah.
Well, they took care of getting and shout out to the Audrey Museum,
where they brought out stunning cars for us.
They actually stopped by and scooped up Prescott Kelly's 50th anniversary club
coop.
Actually, they didn't bring that because he ended up driving it.
He was bringing a 9-6-8 club support to parade, but we knew he had a 50th,
but we wanted all three club coops.
So we scooped up the 9-6-8 club support for him, and he drove the 50th.
And yeah, John and Bob took care of everyone.
And they also brought the truck out at the parade of Porsches.
So shout out to them.
Anyone who thinks their car is going to melt in the rain.
We proved that, Rob.
We had supercars were out there in the Concorde, and they got wet,
and I didn't see anybody panicking.
Richard Schroho to walk up to me, do you hear that?
I'm like, what?
Like, do you hear that?
What?
He's like, I think your 356 is rusting.
I'm like, really?
That's my life.
I'm like, thanks, man.
But my car sat in the rain all week long, and we got home just fine.
So it rained, and the weather wasn't obviously perfect.
But there was only a few times where the rain really got in the way.
The rest of the time, it was more like a nuisance.
Here's what I told people the whole time.
I will take that rain over heat, humidity, and black flies.
And we had no black flies.
No black flies.
I think somebody went somewhere in the woods,
and one person got bit by a black fly.
But I thought that was really going to be an issue.
Aren't all flies black, too?
I don't think so.
Some are bigger than others.
Some are a bit harder than others.
They were telling us these would bite you and carry you way further into the forest.
Some of them are that big.
And finish with the Jurassic Park flies.
But yeah, so, otherwise, it worked.
So we had a great time.
Great time.
All right, folks, I want to remind you to be sure to head over to PCA.org
to sign up for PCA's newsletters, performance news, e-brake news,
and mart fresh all free.
We have a couple of news items.
Manny.
Which one do we have first, Damon?
Seventy-five years.
Yep, race-born.
So that was the collection that was, I guess,
we had the whole collection at the parade store.
The capsule collection.
Yes.
And I saw a lot of people wearing race-born jackets.
Yes.
Either because they didn't bring their jacket
and were willing to shell out a lot,
or they wanted to show off their, the latest collection.
It was very cool.
They portioned it something with PCA because it has a PCA logo on one side.
And the fact that they created a whole collection just for PCA.
Yeah, and that was the debut of the collection at parade.
I saw a lot of them.
Yeah.
They were nice.
But now, people, all of you that are listening from all other areas,
you can actually order it from the Porsche Design website.
Yeah, and they had a whole room to themselves of all Porsche Design
thing that we had for sale.
So that was very impressive.
It impresses me how our members are willing to spend
because it was a premium item, but they wore it with pride.
And Charlotte sold a lot of it.
And I heard, which is kind of funny,
the mobile one ran out of gas.
The what?
The mobile one station one day ran out of gas.
Really?
Because it was them and the other one, stewards.
Oh, the one right across from the store?
Yeah.
And I don't think stewards had top tier where mobile one did.
So I told my wife when we came into town,
and I said, if you can, before Saturday,
can you just top off the McCann with mobile one?
I said, because I have a feeling these are the only two gas stations.
So I found on the way to the high school, there was a shell.
Yes, a shell.
The shell, that's the one that I took advantage of.
I filled up both cars.
I will say, on my one trip to a mobile one, 87 was in stock.
But I will leave names out of this.
But my poor old Mazda 3 was confused for a bad rental car.
That was hilarious.
That was awesome.
By a national staff member, not one of the authors.
You can't just drop that and not tell the whole story.
You can tell the whole story.
You don't have to name names.
Yeah, it's kind of embarrassing for that person, I think.
But I think it's hilarious.
So I rolled up to the mobile one in my Mazda, little Mazda 3.
And it's got Mazda speed, second gen wheels.
It's lowered.
I love this thing.
I'm proud of it.
I think I love this thing.
It's got 195,000 miles on it.
It doesn't look like it.
It doesn't look like it.
OK, well, this person rolled up with their family.
And I just saw the car, or the SUV, a rental car.
And I hear them say, hey, Damon, I
see you got stuck with a bad rental, too.
And I just was like, wait, which Damon are they talking to?
You talking to me?
I'm like, oh, actually, this is my car.
But weren't they in a forerunner?
Like, they were in a forerunner or something.
I thought it was nice.
She would have died if she'd seen me in the BMW.
Oh my god.
It was too funny.
It was tape-holding it together.
Yeah, wow, that's hilarious.
It's all in good fun, so you know who you are.
I'm telling the story for life, so it's great.
All right, the next news item isn't so fun,
but it's the reality that we're facing, or Porsche
is facing more specifically.
Manny?
So we'll know in October exactly what the final cuts
and whatnot, but it appears that Porsche is going to be.
So my understanding is they have to go through labor unions
before they negotiate job cuts in Germany.
And they figure probably by October it'll be a finalize,
but there's going to be more job cuts at Porsche.
They've already announced different divisions
that are being eliminated.
And this is part of the bigger picture
to make Porsche more profitable.
They're focusing in on making cars more profitable
with less production, so you know.
And closer ties to VW.
Yeah, well obviously the SUV variants
are going to be straight from Audi.
Hopefully they did do what they did with the Macan,
where they make it a Porsche touch.
A whole new car.
Yeah, and they have a short time window.
Obviously they got to get these cars out as quick as possible,
especially the Macan replacement price point wise.
Although I read yesterday in some news one official
that it may be a Q5 they're basing the Macan,
which would be what the Cayenne was.
It used to be, yeah.
It used to be, yeah.
Cayenne is currently, I think, and has always been Q7,
and the Q5 has been Macan.
Oh, it should be.
Yeah, you're right.
So it'll be interesting to see if it's going to be hybrid or what,
but they're going to use the same formula as they did in the past.
And like you said, there's stuff to have to be done.
He did announce that the 911 will not go electric,
which wasn't really a surprise because they've never said
the 911 would be electric.
Hybrid, yes we know that, but full electric.
Although I got to say.
I was going to refer back to Tech Tactics.
Yeah, Tech Tactics, we had one of the presentations.
Abe, who's a four door.
Abe Bias.
Yeah, Abe Bias, who's a four door manager.
He joked that there would hardly anybody be interested in the Cayenne EV,
and it was the complete opposite.
He almost had 200 people in the room,
and the questions they were asking were like someone ready to buy.
Consumer questions, so we were just, Porsche was beyond happy
and took a lot of pictures.
And I think it was the first time many of us got to be up close and personal
with the new Cayenne, and he opened it up, he shared it.
He took a couple of people out to go in the right.
This was a 1100 horsepower Cayenne.
If that doesn't get you interested.
The most powerful street Porsche you can make right now.
Yeah, zero to 16, like what, 2223
Yeah, he gave me a ride, and I was really blown away.
I think all you have to do is get behind the wheel and push the pedal.
It flies.
And it looks really good.
And you know you're driving a Porsche.
And it looks good, looks good.
Room, it's roomy.
Man, you could, it's almost like, you know what I say,
you know what, have your cake and eat it too, like it does everything.
So, we'll see.
I had beefy tires, and I kept on thinking it's going to be like a little mortgage
to get your tires every time.
But anyways, hopefully all of that's going to contribute to Porsche
getting back financially on solid ground.
Yeah, my biggest thing is my heart goes out to all of our friends and partners
that work at AG and work at Porsche Cars North America.
I'm sure, you know, when a company goes through this,
it brings about uncertainty, and I think some people have left the company
because of that.
And those that remain kind of have more duties and more responsibilities
and expectations.
So, just know we're rooting for you guys.
And we're here for you if you need anything.
Yeah.
All right, so let's talk about a couple of events that are coming up
that we're excited for.
Works Reunion Monterey is August 14th.
The judge field is in fact sold out.
Corral spots are still open.
Registration closes July 24th.
We have a big crowd of vendors that are going to be there.
So if you're hoping to be a vendor at Monterey Pines and the Works Reunion Monterey,
let me know as soon as possible.
Oonstock, super excited about this.
We will be the first organization to bring cars onto the Huntington Beach Pier.
That is November 8th.
Registration opens up September 2nd.
Only 83 or so cars actually on the pier and then maybe 25 to 30 in the plaza.
Roughly that number.
So it's going to be limited.
And I think in the past, we've had plenty of space to accept everybody in all types of cars,
but many might be a little bit more selective this time.
So if you're interested, not only...
Putting an aftermarket cup holder is not a modification.
And please share with him your modifications, because a lot of times people register and they say it's...
And send a picture of them.
Not a picture of your car in the dark in the garage.
This is where I will say it is.
This is the only time it's appropriate for you to send pictures to Manny to try to convince him.
Pertain your cars on a dating site.
Give me the best pictures you have.
Exactly.
And then hopefully he'll choose you to be represented on the Huntington Beach Pier.
Treffenet Sea, the 2026 Pacific Wine Country Cruise, is September 19th through 25th.
Going out of Vancouver, down to San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and down to LA.
I was recently at the induction of Jay Leno to FIVA.
We'll talk about that later.
But a number of the folks, Bruce Meyer, Donald Osborn, both of them will be on the cruise.
Nathan Merz will be on the cruise.
Exceptional pricing, because this is a ship relocation, meaning it's sort of a one-way trip for the ship.
It doesn't mean the cruise is any less.
It just means they're moving.
Yeah, it just means it costs less for you.
And the cruise business knows that's the best bargain.
Exactly.
We've got our room though.
You've got your room.
It's a little perfect.
We'll see you there.
You've been to Treffenet Sea though, right?
All of them.
Wow.
And a future one after that.
So there is one.
We can't announce it yet, but we do.
But if you're a parade, you know that.
But we will let you in on 2027.
And this one, I can guarantee you it's a bucket list cruise.
And we're super excited about that.
So yeah, videos.
We dropped the, I think by the time you listen to this, we dropped the Concord video with you and Chris Jacobs.
Which it was very well received.
And thank you to Damon for knocking that out.
I think in 24 hours to get that up.
A couple of other videos from Tech Tactics East went up.
Anything else you want to add to that, Damon?
If I'm going to gather my thoughts, let's see here.
Actually, there are two really good ones.
One of them is on e-break day.
So this was not maybe the best day to film it, but I got the core video.
Nathan Merz interviewed Frank Young, Porsche's archivist and historian.
While he was driving Nathan's 928 and he had never driven a 928 before.
Did he interview him about the 928?
His thoughts on it?
What did he do?
I have no clue.
I haven't watched the footage yet.
I haven't gotten there.
So I just jumped in the, or they jumped in the car.
I knew it was happening.
I threw the action cams in there, took two shots of them driving off,
and then waited for them.
So by the time this drops, that'll be out?
I'm hoping that'll be out.
If not, look for it.
We also, Connor, the club racing business manager,
and I also did a fun little video at the Autocross.
If you want to see a spec boxster on semi-slicks in the rain.
It should be a fun one.
It wasn't as much of a competition because I got to,
there were two runs, maybe, where it was raining barely at all and I got them.
Do you think that would have helped Connor at all?
No.
So I was a volunteer, volunteer shagging cones while this was going down.
You can tell when it's a club racer versus it's an Autocrosser.
It's very different driving styles.
And I could tell when Damon was in the car.
I'm like, it's, we'll talk more about it later, but you could tell.
I think we're having a more in-depth discussion.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I will use that moment to brag about my time versus Connor's time.
Oh, man.
You already saw the run in his cayenne on this podcast.
So anyways, those are two that I can think of right now.
Of course, plenty of Tech Tactics Parade videos,
and even one or two from Tech Tactics East to finish off that event.
And yeah, stay tuned.
PCA Sim Racing was another feature at Porsche Parade that was completely consumed
and busy the whole time.
If you didn't go to parade, but you still want to check out PCA Sim Racing,
head over to PCASimRacing.com.
Insider swag, very cool to see some cars with the decals at parade.
But if you're looking for some bottles, mugs, T-shirts,
head over to the PCA Web Store.
Also, if you're looking for the decals,
you can send us your physical address information to podcastsatpca.org
and we'll send you some decals.
One thing I want to add, I think this can be an insider.
One of the items that dropped at the store that is super limited,
and if you're a big fan of the 70th Anniversary Club Coop,
we made a limited run of 70, 118 scale clubcoops
that are unique from the 118 scale clubcoops that are offered by the dealer.
We made these only to sell them at parade and have some left over
to be sold on the PCA Web Store.
I'll remind Charlotte to, I think we have a few left to put it on the store.
What's the difference between...
The base plates are different.
Ours are white base plates and theirs are black.
Any collector, that means you've got to have both.
Again, we know the difference to some people that don't collect.
Okay, so one's black and one's white.
There's a difference.
I think you can also announce that the 2028 parade will be in...
Michigan.
In Traverse City, Michigan.
We're going back this, I believe, will be the third time.
The first two times, I was there for the second one,
not for the first one, but people are super excited to be back there.
The venue, we're going back to the same hotel.
The venue's beautiful.
Was it Cherry Festivals?
What's the Cherry Capital?
Cherry Capital of the World.
It's also Capital of Creepy Restaurants that Manny took me to.
Is that the one where the lady in the elevator went?
You guys picked it out.
Is that the elevator one?
We definitely got to go back to that.
Maybe we'll do a podcast from that hallway.
July 2028?
Yes.
Alright, folks, thank you for listening.
Be sure to like, comment, and subscribe.
Consider sharing our show with fellow Porsche enthusiasts.
Thank you both for coming back.
Congratulations on getting your first parade under your belt.
And like I said, hopefully it won't be your last,
because I know I'll see you up, Boise.
Folks, until next time, stay safe, and we'll catch you down the road.
About this episode
Experience the massive scale and unique community of the Porsche Parade through the eyes of first-time attendees Steve and Marsha Busch. Fresh off a record-breaking gathering in Lake Placid, New York, the hosts and guests share what it is actually like to navigate this week-long event with over 2,600 entrants and 900 Porsches. From packing tips for a 991.2 Cabriolet to heartwarming stories of meeting young fans, this discussion demystifies the event's logistics and highlights why every Porsche owner should experience a Parade at least once.
Original notes
Discover what it is like to experience your very first Porsche Parade through the eyes of long-time Treffen attendees Steve and Marsha Buss. After years of PCA events, the couple finally made the trip to Lake Placid for their first-ever Parade. In this episode, they share their candid first impressions on everything from the scenic drive up and the registration process to driving in events and exploring non-Porsche local attractions. We also dive deep into what it takes to open a Parade store for a week, the Cars and Community event, and the exclusive Porsche Parade Collection Pins. Plus, they share the unique thrill of dining at banquets hosted on the exact hockey rink where the legendary "Miracle on Ice" took place. Stick around until the end as we wrap up with the latest Porsche news and exciting updates on our upcoming videos.
Porsche Club Insider
Porsche Club of America
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