Sunday, May 13, 2012

At last...

Another blog post!

Well, the title really refers to the first mountain drive in the TT RS. Given the glorious weather we have had here as of late, I decided it was time to take the car out for a bit of a joy ride. The only constraint was that I had to be at the PNE for the Blue Sky Circus performance at 12:15pm. I wanted to do at least part of the Duffey Lake road so needed about six hours. This meant getting up at 5:15am and being out the door at 6am.
This was a brutally early start but it also meant the roads were completely deserted. It is still shoulder season, Whistler is pretty dead right now so traffic on the Sea to Sky at 6:30am was practically non-existent. This meant I could push ahead and arrived in Whistler Village for a quick break one hour and 10 minutes after getting into the car. This is a new personal record :-)

The amount of sheer power and speed this car delivers is breathtaking and it does it effortlessly. This was on the wide open highway 99 with long sweepers and a few curvy bits leading up to Whistler. After Whistler is starts getting interesting, going through Pemberton and arriving at the turnoff to Lillooet which is the start of the real fun.


One past the village the road starts climbing sharply up the mountain through a series of switchbacks and other joyfully twisty bits of road. The little traffic that was on the Sea to Sky had now completely disappeared so I opened it up and truly got a taste of what this car is capable of. Utterly solid handling coupled with massive power delivery surely makes for one incredible rush. You get lost in the moment, focused solely on working the car and ripping through the turns.

I stopped every once in a while at suitably picturesque places and snapped a few...



I made it just past Duffey lake when I decided to turn around and head back. I wanted to have breakfast in Whistler so I gleefully repeated the experience, in the other direction this time. I did have to be careful with temperatures dropping to below freezing at times given the early hour and elevation. The Z rated tires are happier in warmer weather for sure.


I think I finally managed to properly break in the brakes...
Whistler was pretty deserted, there are a couple of runs open so there was a smattering of people carrying skis and snowboards but with the bike park still closed that was about it. I had a coffee and wrap at Moguls Coffee on the Village Square. Things had warmed up and it was a balmy 18 degrees, I had a nice stroll through the Village and managed to find some purple Converse for Connie mostly by accident.


I headed back, traffic was still very light so it was another fun rip along the 99. I made it to the PNE at exactly 12:15 beating Connie and Kai by 10 minutes!

Btw, the TT has a Sport button as well :-).