Wandering Leopard in the Garden - Day 1

I’ve been looking forward to getting back to Vancouver BC. This particular time (There will be a total of 3x this summer) because it is when I get to drive my M30 convertible. A few months back was thinking what to do with my M30 and then something popped up in my head… I should take pictures showing British Columbia!

My initial flight had me arriving Thursday night at 9pm. Factor in getting to my parents place and a few things, I would be in Vancouver BC by 2am.

One of the goals was to see Mark (Strikevalk)’s newly acquired Leopard Utlima Turbo! Since it was gonna be late, I told Mark just have Dominic (his cousin) have it out so I can take pictures of it.

That all changed. I got an earlier flight that would let me arrive in Seatac airport around 5pm. Now, that I could do more with.

Going back to Mark’s Leopard, he said it is gonna be cool to see an F31club sticker on it, so I was like, I need to get some from Ben of Redstart Racing. So I set it up that I would meet with Ben and get the stickers.

I typically try to catch up with folks here and there. So I was reaching out to Chris (Nyeark) and when he hit me back up, he said he was gonna be in the PNW…. I was in utter disbelief.

Jim and Albert also wanted to meet up and so I had to look at how I was going to do this.

Get the vert going.
Meet with Ben (Redstart Racing) and get the stickers
Meet with Dominic and see the Leopard Utlima Turbo
Meet with Jim and Albert
Meet with Chris (Nyeark)
Be in Vancouver BC

While I did arrive in the right time frame, my luggage was delayed by 15 minutes and of course the traffic was horrible going back to Olympia. I was delayed almost 2 hours by the time I finally got going and of course I had to get gas too.

FAILURE: Ben was further south and so I couldn’t meet with him unfortunately. I haven’t seen him since high school. So that was a fail.

I did rush over to Puyallup to meet with Dominic and see the Leopard.

And so this was epic. This is the 1st Leopard to be on US soil. When it first landed, it was Mark who found it on CL being sold for $9000. Curtis was the original owner and sold it a few months back to Mark for a very good price. Still trying to finalize the paperwork, but this gave me the opportunity to see it and drive it up the street. It was awesome… I mean the feel of it, being on US soil, being an F31club car… it’s just too awesome!

Shout outs to Dominic too. Giving me an opportunity to see this and talking about cars for a minute.

After that, I headed straight for Seattle, where there was rain! Luckily the top was up (as I wanted to cruise with the top down).

I pulled up to see Albert’s clean white M30 coupe. There is quite an extensive history in this one. It was an M30 he saw at Golden Gardens and bought eventually. Also there is a backstory that the motor in it was from one of Jim’s old M30s that he had owned a few times as well.

Albert and I have been communicating for a bit and we were suppose to meet back in November. It was finally great to meet Albert. We decided to go take pictures, but like always, we stood out in the middle of the street talking for probably a good 30 minutes conversion about history and cars and what not.

Finally, we went just up the street and took pictures our the F31s together!

As I was saying to Albert, these cars are pretty limited in what is out there, but our ownership stories and meetings like we had are something that continue to inspire and appreciate the M30s/ F31s. Always awesome talking with Jim because he has so much to offer!

Jim and Albert

Albert and I

Jim and I

We called it a night and I started to head north.

FAILURE:

It was near midnight, I was hauling and it was raining sporadically. I was getting close to Burlington and Chris told me he was out in Anacortes.

It would take me 30 minutes to get out there, and he was at a camp ground with family. So I didn’t think it would be appropriate to disturb them. It was late was the main factor.

So I FAILED to meet with NYEARK. I think it would have been EPIC, if it did happened, but again, I would have wanted to hang with him for at least 30 minutes, even though I push to meet for a few minutes.

I finally reached the Peach Arch Canadian border.

The border wasn’t super busy, but there was only one line:

It was pretty late, I got to Burnaby about 1 am. I still had some energy and decided to go around to a few spots I had on my list to take pictures of the vert….