Fly n Drive and Meet & Greet Huntersville, NC

My wife and I are coming to Huntersville, NC for a Fly n Drive on August 23rd. We are scheduled to pick up a gorgeous 2019 Mustang Bullitt around noontime. After picking up the car, we would love to meet any GRM locals for lunch around 1 PM at Duckworth's Grill & Taphouse. They are at 16609 Statesville Rd, Huntersville, NC. We can hang around for a couple of hours before we need to start heading north to our destination in WV for the night. Thanks to stafford1500 for confirming the car and owner are real, looking forward to meeting you and the car! Hope to be able to meet a few of you for lunch in a couple of weeks. Chuck

Looking forward to it. The car is indeed gorgeous.

Dusterbd13, you around for this?

Metty you are local from your profile.

Racing Computers you are also local from your profile.

possibly. i wont know till the week of but Duckworths is pretty close to my house

See what I can do!

First, thanks to the member who emailed me this morning about this thread!

So Im not sure if I can do this or not, next week is when I start work back and not sure if that day is a required or optional workday. If optional I'll be there!

Well the 23rd has taken forever to get here but we are finally coming down to pick up the new ride. I can't wait to finally see the car in person and to be able to drive it. Thanks again to Steve for doing a reconnaissance run for me and for meeting us at the airport. This forum is awesome! We would love to meet any other GRMers in Charlotte area for lunch at Duckworths Grille and Taproom around 1 PM, see above for address. 

I took a half day. Me and my red car ought to be there!

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :

Excellent, it will be fun to meet you guys. See you in a couple of days.

Imgon officially picked up the car and headed back north Friday afternoon. His wife said he had been crossing off the days on the calendar like alittle kid waiting for a holiday.

It was good to catch up with Dusterbd and meet Imgon and his wife.

I am sure there will be post travel pictures and description of the ride home.

So after an eternity, it was finally time to go pick up the car. (As for the calendar, although I was excited, it was my 5 year old granddaughter who wanted to know when the car would be home....) The flight to Charlotte was on time and uneventful, we were greeted at the airport by stafford1500, our most excellent  GRM chauffeur and remote set of eyes for the PPI. After a short ride to the PO's house, the garage door was open to reveal my beautiful new toy.

After a quick test ride it was on to the bank to exchange money and paperwork and then off to a meet and greet lunch with stafford1500 and Dusterbd13-michael. Too bad none of us thought to get a group pic, oh well, we all know what we look like now. Thanks for the ride and lunch, you Charlotte guys are excellent hosts!

Wow, that's pretty!

With great conversation and full bellies from lunch behind us it was off to our first destination, an overnight at my sister's in Davis, WV. About a 7 hour drive that included about an hour and a half on the Blue Ridge Parkway and a nighttime run through the Monogahela National Forest. The Blue Ridge was lots of fun for the 1st hour. Here is a shot from our first lookout stop.

With a refreshed butt it was on to Roanoke for fuel and a snack. I have been on the BRP a number of times on my motorcycle and I was very aware of the fact that deer are a constant issue. We had seen many already and they had all had been quite a bit off the road so plenty of time to take evasive action if needed. Anyways... I was in the groove on a nice section of road as we rounded a partially blind right hand corner (10'-12' rock cliff with 10' of grass apron), about 2/3's of the way through the corner, there were two fawns ON THE EDGE of the road. I drifted left a little as the closer one jumped towards us and there was a sickening thud. Less than 200 miles since I took ownership, WTF!!!! I was pissed, it was my own fault and I was confident some serious damage had been done. I knew we needed to stop for fuel soon so opted to wait to see the damage until then. When we got to the gas station Donna opened her door and to discover there was a piece of meat in the door sill, YUUUK! I was really sure I didn't want to see what else had happened. Much to my surprise there was minimal damage. I think it must have hit the wheel first and slid down the side of the car. There is a small dent in the bottom of the paasenger fender and I can't tell if the door skin got pulled out a little of the fender pushed in. Should be fixable by PDR. I was lucky. The rest of the ride I was hyper aware of wildlife and had no more runs ins with Bambi. The humans arrived safely in WV, the car mostly intact still.

Saturday morning, a new day, it will be better! Final destination for the day, Northeast PA.

In reply to glueguy (Forum Supporter) :

Thanks, that shade of green is gorgeous, it looks even better in person.

So Saturday morning started out a beautiful day, we had a nice breakfast with my sister and her beau before we hit the road. The plan was to go two lane back roads as much as we could, with an interstate usually close enough if we decided we were behind schedule. Heading north the route we chose through WV, MD and into PA was a mix of divided highway and two lane with lots of cool scenery and very little traffic. Just what we were looking for. Did I mention we were driving with no license plates? The previous owner had a loan on the car and by the time the title finally arrived to him it was not worth the risk of trying to get it to me so I could get plates before heading down. My state says I have three days to get to the RMV to get plates, so with a Friday sale I technically had until Wednesday to to take of that. I had my proof of insurance, the title and a bill of sale, I figured as long as I didn't do anything stupid, no one would give me a second look. It turns out in small town PA, very little goes on and Barney Fife was eating his lunch in his cruiser when this crazy car with no plates came rolling through town. I hadn't even noticed him in the parking lot as we were trying to find a place to turn around. We had lost the road we were looking for and were turning onto a side street to figure out where we were when I noticed the blue lights. At first he thought he had a hot case on his hands and was going to make his big bust for the day. He was disappointed to learn we were just passing through and had all our papers in order. He was actually very cool about it and was shocked we hadn't been stopped often. In reality I think we only saw two other cruisers (that weren't actively dealing with someone else) the whole trip. 

Some of the safer critters we saw. There were tons of windmills, we don't see that many up in our area. Only a few of them were spinning though. After our visit with Barney we discovered we had gone way off our intended route and were now a couple of hours behind schedule to arrive at our AirBnB so we jumped on the Interstate and did a quick blast across central PA to the Pocono area to a funky little town called Dingmans Ferry. Had dinner at the local golf course restaurant, we were a little wary of going in as there were almost no cars in the parking lot on a Saturday night. It turns out the food was good and they had a guy playing guitar that was fun to listen to, we chose wisely. Nice way to end the day.

Our home for the night, nice and quiet.... except for the ducks, chickens , dogs, hawk(s) that seemed to be awake very early the next morning. No road noise though. ​​​​​

I always thought it would be cool to buy one from a dude near San Francisco, drive around the city then drive it back to Chicago along the Lincoln highway. 
 

In reply to Datsun240ZGuy :

That would be a cool idea, wish I had thought of it. 

On Sunday morning we hit the road mid morning with a destination of one of our favorite lunch spots in Northeast CT, The Vanilla Bean. Great place to visit for car and motorcycle spotting. We had a mixture of some fun two lane roads in the morning and then hit the interstate from the NY line to just east of Hartford. Off onto back roads up to Pomfret, CT.

After a delicious lunch it was the final leg home. We come here regularly on our motorcycles so took familiar roads home, just cruising along on a wonderful Sunday afternoon. It was a nice way to wind down the trip. We went a little over 1100 miles in 3 days, got an average of 21.5 MPG, pretty impressive for 480 HP on tap, the seats are very comfortable (even at the end of the day), the color is amazing and the exhaust note is.... well now I know why the Harley guys rev their engines, 'cause they can! We have a mini concrete canyon (highway under pass) near home, I have gone through there 6 times already accelerating through 2nd, the sound is intoxicating. Thanks for following along and a special thanks to Steve and Michael, we couldn't have done this without your help.

Congrats on the purchase, sorry I missed the meet up.