[335dFan]

Yesterday there was an Oregon Chapter of BMW CCA event, a driving tour southeast of Salem to hustle through the countryside and see six covered bridges, stopping at two of them. A total of 94.9 miles. I didn't see any other oil burners there, so I guess I just needed to represent to good guys.

I often use, whether for hiking or driving, an IOS app called Gaia GPS. Among other things it will record my “tracks”. It does other things but you can look them up for yourself. When you finish a track it gives you various stats such as total distance, average speed, average moving speed (in case you forget to pause it when you are stopping for 10 minutes), your highest speed, your changes in elevation, your total climb (I guess the sum of all the upward segments), and a nice map of the track. The total distance as measured by the app was right on the money as far as the pre-race handout and checkpoints.

There were a lot of people who showed up, around 100, and 60 cars. So they split us up into four 15-car groups and sent us off at 15 minute intervals. To avoid congestion and trouble. I drew the last group and tucked in behind a clean looking and nice sounding 2002 M3. We were on the highway for about 35 or so miles of the 94.9 total, and the rest was country roads and some small towns. The guy behind me was in a 1976 2002, fun little car but he did have trouble keeping up; he was quite good in the twisties though.

I did not think we were going all that fast. The total average speed was 37.5 mph, moving average speed was 42.9 mph. I stopped the app about two miles from the end, but the total time was 2:28:30, of which 18:50 was stop time.

What really surprised me was my highest speed, which was 123.4 mph. I don’t remember going anywhere near that fast, although I would have guessed over 100 mph on some of the longer straights when I was trying to catch the M3. Yikes. Way too fast without really trying to be a hot rod.

Here are some pictures.