On the Saturday nearest to New Years Day (weather permitting), the Georgia Triumph Association puts on their annual Polar Bear Run, which being a charity fund-raiser, is open to all vehicles. There’s usually a goof Lotus-contingent but this year I brought the only Lotus. I had a good co-pilot too, a friend’s 20-year-old son who is one of the very few members of his generation to be into old cars and he had a blast! The drive started at Atlanta Motorsports Park, one of those ‘country club with a race track instead of a golf course’ type of places, ran for a couple of hours through the countryside and ended at a brewery with some delicious BBQ. After that everyone went their own way and my co-pilot and I spent the rest of the day having a good proper Fang up the twisty roads of southern Appalachia. A fantastic day!
Today my local Lotus club had its annual chili cook-off, hosted by our dealer of Lotus, Lamborghini, Aston Martin, McLaren, Rolls Royce and Koenigsegg (and they did not have any of that last one on the premises, if you’re wondering). Yelotus got plenty of attention, even from people not affiliated with our club! Famous Frank’s Elan was there too, along with a rather interesting Europa. And of course many millions of dollars worth of lesser cars.
Famous Frank’s Elan:
Yelotuses from opposite ends of a half-century!
Aston Martin lift?
Along the way home, the view in the mirror at one point, proving that you have to have a certain amount of courage to drive an old Lotus in the USA!
@The-veg Wow! Thanks for those descriptions and all the photos, looks like this new forum software is making it a lot easier to upload and display.
Absolutely! One thing I did notice is that when using the drag-&-drop method, the images show up in the reply box as lines of computerese rather than as pictures, and if you highlighted several of them to drag at once, the forum software automatically puts ‘grid’ tags around them which makes them show-up as a square of four smaller images. I simply deleted the tags to keep the images full-size and sequential. Of course you then have to count down the number of lines of computerese to know where to put what caption if you’ve uploaded multiple images like that.
Fresh from its pre-sale check-over and new MoT last week, I took my Elan out for a quick spin and down to Poole Park for some photos in the Spring sunshine. Going great, but too cold for putting the hood down, I’m afraid.
It won’t sound like much but I drove it to the nearest gas station, whose pumps were all inoperative for some reason, which meant I was forced to take that fun, winding road across the fields to the next closest station. The car is just barely back on the road and I was a bit leery of driving it that far. But oh, was it fun. I have a long way to go in establishing a relationship with this little jewel, and I’m greatly looking forward to it.
Yes, I had that problem yesterday. I had to go to Waitrose to buy some bananas.
I took the long way there - and the longer way back! Mmmm, expensive bloomin’ bananas!
Tim
Took my +2 to the golf club yesterday, and found someone else had parked in my usual place. Is this anyone on here and if so, did you have a good round as the course was playing really well yesterday. Nice car by the way.
It’s a light car. 3 tires on the pavement is plenty. 
Very nice, George. Is that an Iso Grifo with you?
Looks like an Aston Martin DBS to me. He must have used 4 times the amount of petrol than the Elan on the trip, but hey.
Leslie
Yes, you’re right, Leslie.
Leslie , We were more concerned over the Aston’s braking on the down hills than its MPG 
Not today, but yesterday (Bank Holiday Monday). Drove out to Tretower Court and Castle, a Cadw site in the Brecon Beacons (or Bannau Brycheiniog as the Welsh government has now decried). A round trip of 80 miles. Last visited 15 years ago and Cadw have done a lot of work on the site since. Roads were pretty busy (especially through Abergavenny) so I did a side excursion of 20 miles making a total of just over 100 miles 
Had a nice meal in Crickhowell. Several shops had VE day displays. One rather ironically had a large German tank parked in front of it, blocking the view 
Took the Elan out of storage, went for a short run, which turned into a much longer run:
God I love this car…
