warning: This story is a bit of an omage to hunter S Thompson and gonzo Journalism the story is 96% true but ~ 4% is completely made up.

As I get older I make an effort to spend more time with friends. For the most part this has been a positive experience. Friends unlike family are people you choose and who also choose…. I hope to spend there time with you. I find that for the most part this makes for more enjoyable interactions than you have with close family members and probably most importantly when your tired of your friends you can choose to no longer associate with them. Which I guess is true of family too but I think for most people that decision should not be taken as lightly.

So a few days ago I got a call at 5:00 am from a good friend saying he was in trouble and needed to be picked up from the airport right away. As a good friend might I didnt ask any questions and I dutifully went to pick him up from southwest at the oakland airport. He seemed fine but as we existed the airport he explained to me that he had spent the weekend in las vegas and gotten himself into a fairly impressive spot bit debt and needed to barrow some money in order to pay his mortgage. Mother Fucking friends!. Anyways I explained that I wasn’t comfortable lending him the money and after a few deep breaths he proposed an alternative solution. Because he needed the money NOW ( apparently casino markers are not low interest!) with tears in his eyes he suggested that he would sell me his prized 2013 Porsche 911 for 50% off if I could get him the cash that morning. After pretending to think about this offer for 2 or 3 stop lights and reminding my friend that everything would be ok I took him up on the offer.

After waiting for the bank to open. I was now the proud owner of 911s convertible! and hopefully my friend was a bit closer to being out of the hell he had just created for himself.

this is going to be fun !

Now anyone who knows me knows. That I have been a Porsche fanatic for life. When I was born my dad was the proud owner of a poorly cared for yellow 1974 911 sc that spent at least 60% of its life dumping large amounts of oil onto the ground. I have memories as far back as I can remember of him picking me up from school or taking me to school. I loved sitting in those largely useless back seats and just listening to the engine or sitting in the front seat silently rooting for my dad as he passed various Honda’s and Toyota on the way home I loved that car and when my dad sold it preceding his retirement I cried. To this day I have a poster of a red ( I would never own a red car) 911 on my wall. So making this decision was really a no brainier. The big question was well WHAT NOW?

Out of sheer luck I had arranged to meet an old freind of mine for wine tasting; I want to be clear THIS WAS NOT MY IDEA! I like to drink as much as the next guy but sipping on tiney amounts of over priced grape juice while pontificating over hints of eucalyptus is not normally my idea of a great time. But the chance to drive to Napa in a Porsche was basically irresistible.

So Saturday morning, After losing my weekley basketball game to my most reliable friend. I set off on my trip to Napa. The car is just great and I wish I was a practiced automotive reviewer so I could really describe what its like, but I am not, and at least for this portion of the trip I would be lying if I said it was brilliant because it wasn’t. What would have normally been a 42 minute cruise to ” the wine country” was basically an hour and a half of stop and go traffic. I did take the top down and breath in some of the crisp swamp air that you can find in the low lying valleys of northern California but this was hardly the breath taking mind bending back roads experience that I had dreamed of.

After arriving in Napa while sitting in traffic I decided to try out the cars hands free system and gave my friend Josh a call. He said to meet him at the Winery at the ” barn in the back”.

Now I have to apologize here I didn’t take any pictures of the first winery I always find taking pictures a bit awkward and I will be honest you didn’t miss much. A bunch of old people were gathered in a tent regularly lining up to receive tiny pours of “free” wine. I wondered about this a little bit. Do winerys just regularly give out free samples?… Well no! It turns out that if you agree to buy 4 bottles a month from the winery in question you become a member and you can invite your friends to come and drink for “free” ! Josh, Thanks for being a friend!

I have known Josh sense middle school. We don’t get to see each other much these days. But through copious amounts of facebook stalking I have managed to stay in touch and we have met up in Chicago a few times for dinner and now for wine in Napa!

When we were kids I had a decent businesses burning CDs full of pirated music and selling them at school.

Out of friendship I shared one of my more formative discovery’s with Josh. It was this really interesting little program called Napster. I quickly learned why good businesses have secrets! After teaching josh to How to convert mp3s to Wavs he quickly started his own competing business selling CDs. And because he lived in a nicer neighborhood with broadband my own businesses fell apart as I couldn’t keep up with the number of songs he could download with my shity 56k modem. These days Josh has an engineering degree and a masters in business and he works as a management consultant and has developed the very Type A personality to match.

After about an hour of trying to drink as much free wine as possible, bullshitting, pontificating and humble bragging. I learned that Josh worked at Porsche of all places ( god damn it I still cant win!). I naturally brought up the Napster story, we had a good laugh about it. Then with the grace and confidence of a master orator I gestured as I spoke and knocked over my first glass of red wine which splashed like the brush to the canvas of a great work of art onto josh’s button down shirt. ( insert dramatic pause.)

In my defense I thought the wine went well with the shirt. He took it like champ and we had another good laugh…. Josh I’m sorry, at least consciously it was an accident. I can’t be held responsible for the actions of my subconscious. Like I said Josh works for Porsche and I fallowed him to the next winery.

Thats Josh’s company Tycan up ahead…. 911 > Tycan just saying.

Outside deck of winery.

in a moment of weakness they managed to sell me a bottle of wine for some other friends.

Ok, So I have to admit that tooling around “the wine country” in a couple of Porsche’s was basically a dream come true. Not to mention I got to spill some wine on a good friend and former rival. Thanks Josh, but mostly his wonderful wife Carla for inviting me.

I was going to split this into 2 posts but as usual laziness has won the day. The fallowing weekend. I decided to take car up to Scotts valley to take a peak inside Bruce Canepas shop. He is the largest importer of porsche 959s in the US. I was hoping the car might help me to look like a potential customer instead of the lookeyloo hooligan that I am. It didn’t work. but I got a few pictures inside of Bruce’s massive shop. ( Story continues after the photos)

Before I left home some facebook stalking led me to send a message to my friend Hustle. His real name is Rustle but I call him Hustle.

Rustle Joined my High school during sophomore year. The story goes; After his first year at the local public high school Russell received a D in AP English and his parents assumed he was on drugs. After attempting to show up for his first day of school he was informed that he was no longer enrolled and that he would be attending my private school instead. Hustle did eventually manage to get himself back to public school after only a year but we developed a decent friendship and I made efforts to stay in touch over the years.

Knowing that Rustle lived in Santa Cruz I was hoping he might call me back during my trip to scotts valley and as luck would have it I received the fallowing text ” I’m in Watsonville having beers at the ‘beer mule’ at the moment, but i’ll be back to the ranch mid-afternoon I reckon… ya coming to town?”.

Now the last time I checked with Rustle he had just graduated from UCSD. And he was spending his time surfing and fishing so I was a bit perplexed by the “ranch” but I was looking for any excuse for more driving so I agreed to meet up with him that afternoon. In the mean time I made a quick 60 mile run to what I thought was carmel on highway 1 To pick up a pair of sun glasses. You shouldn’t really drive a 911 without sunglasses but you absolutely cannot show up at the ranch house of some one you haven’t seen for 10+ years without a pair !

30 minutes Later… I walked into the local sun glass hut, grabbed a pair off the rack and spent 10 minutes arguing with the clerk about my need for 2 receipts…I just wanted to make sure I could return these “expertly crafted, polarized, shatterproof, 200 dollar, 7 ounce” pieces of Chinese plastic in the event I lost the primary receipt. As the clerk relented and printed my 2nd receipt I received this text from Russell. “ Would love to have you over for dinner, have an old boat you can crash in ” … Well …. Fuck me running now I have dinner and a place to stay! now this is what friends are for. I flogged the 911 back up the 1 to some where in the santacruze mountains. These are the kinds of back roads that motoring dream are made of. After about 25 minutes and 3-4 near death experiences. I Entered what appeared to be a residential neighborhood.

The very first house to my left was a large white sort of Spanish style mansion. Now I am thinking to myself ” this is not really very ranch like but hell I’m game!” This wasn’t the house so I kept driving. The next house was another large Spanish style house but this time Cannery yellow with colored tile. This was also not the house. But this was the end of the road. So I was a bit confused and out of cell phone range. As I went back down the hill. I noticed a boat and a large ford f250 parked in front of a wooden fence about 6ft high. Close enough to a ranch for me and I parked outside.

I hadn’t seen Hustle in years and between seeing him and his compound for the first time I was a bit overwhelmed. At an undisclosed location in the crustacean mountains my high school friend ordered a shipping container from the port of oakland had it transported ~ 70 miles. He then modified the container. Gave it running water, a full complement of appliances and a bathroom complete with a Tub, shower and urinal. I wish I had taken more pictures of the interior But I am always hesitant to take pictures inside peoples homes.

In addition to his container based home. He raises sheep, chickens and naturally grows a small amount of marijuana … this is northern California after all! At this point I was tired. excited to finally see my old friend and a bit beat from all the driving. Russell offered me a variety of his locally grown products and we relaxed and reminisced about times gone by. As the night went on his wife returned home and they began to prepare dinner. Now, at my house. Things get microwaved and or boiled. I pride my self in both my nuking and water heating abilities. This was not the case at the house of Hustle. For dinner Mrs Hustle made from scratch Duck pot stickers which were amazing accompanied by my choice or chardene or Coors light. After Verifying that she was in fact Mrs Hustle and not a kidnapping victim. I ate a brilliant dinner by there indoor and outdoor fireplaces places. Fallowed by the hand rolled bounties of there harvest. At this point I took a quick nap on there couch. A while later I was informed that Russel had created a bed for me in the boat ( pictured above) as promised. He used an electric blanket to make sure things were warm enough and I was surprised to find out it was actually quite comfortable. At about 1am I woke up coughing. I have terrible allergies and the combination of wood fire and sleeping in a boat did not agree with me. I got up, peed over the side of the boat , puked a little bit ( caused by the coughing) and went back to sleep. I guess some where around 3am I woke up again peed and puked over the side and decided that this was probably not going to work. I went and grabbed my covers from the cabin climbed into the 911 and found restful sleep after I turned on the seat heaters.

I never imagined I would sleep in a 911 but that night I did!

Surprisingly I slept well. Some where around 6:30am Mrs Hustle headed off for work. I tried to say good morning but I don’t think she noticed me in the car.

I went back sleep and some where Around 9 am Russel woke me up and informed me that he needed to go do some work on his other boat down at the santacruze harbor. After we gathered a sander, beer and some horticulture I fallowed the f250 to the local hardware store and then to the harbor. Now obviously hustle has some home court advantage and I was still a bit groggy but I just barely managed to keep up with his f250 in the 911 through the back roads of Santa Cruze.

The SC harbor is gorgeous and this day was no exception.

SC harbor.

When we arrived we went down to the boat and Hustle threw on some Bob Marley played back through the hidden sound system on his boat. He proceeded to start sanding and painting and I mostly just chilled had another Coors light and shot the shit about former teachers and friends from High School. 3 are dead the rest are happily married and enjoying there lives.

Some time around 11:30 I started to get hungry and I offered to take Russel out to eat for lunch. He informed me that he couldn’t because he had prepared a lunch for Mrs hustle who was going to meet us at noon during her lunch break….. no word on my lunch..

I checked with Mrs hustle again and she assured me that she was not infact suffering from Stockholm syndrome. The rest of my time in Hustle land is not particularly entertaining but I want to take a moment to thank the Hustles for the hospitality and quickly acknowledge that my friend Rustle is winning at life!

Time to go home. So I fire up the 911 and get back on the 1 headed toward the san mateo bridge. If you have not had a chance to go for a drive on highway 1 I highly recommend it it is a long coastal highway with incredible views, very few police officers and more than enough curves to put the life of any Porsche driving douche bag at risk.

After reaching the 92 I was tired and ready to go home when I got an idea. I called my friend T ( mostly just to test the hands free feature of the car ) And asked if I could come by to drop off the bottle of wine I had picked up during the prior week. T lives in walnut creek with her husband and 2 children we have been friends for a long time and she seemed happy that I wanted to visit. I hung up the phone and and proceeded to sit in bumper to bumper traffic for 2hrs.

Arriving in Ts quiet and fancy neighborhood I promptly reved the the engine to 7300 rpm and was soundly ignored by ~ every thing. Entering el casa de T&A ( yes those are there initials) is always a great time they like to make stuff so often you get to see some new cool furniture they have made or some remodeling project in progress. But tonight I walked into a large number of children’s toys and the sounds of people trying to convince a 2 year old to eat broccoli. I walked in, Told T happy birthday and handed her a bottle of wine. I attempted to help feed a 2 year old for roughly 3 seconds at which point her husband solved the problem by adding a genrous amount of ranch dressing to the broccoli. After the 2 year old seemed satified I watched him laugh and run around in ciricles while screaming for 30 minutes straight at which point T said ” its bed time” At this point I was happy to open the bottle of wine and sit on the couch and wait for parents to do what ever they do during bed time. But I was infromed that I was going to help put people to sleep.

I Mostly laid on the floor and watched T read a book to her son.

I realize this story got a little boring but I value my friends and all the exsperiances we have had over the years and hopefully the ones we will have in the future.

As for the 911 I had to get rid of it for financial reasons and I miss it every day.