Issue link: http://digital.nexsitepublishing.com/i/1404782
FEATURE STORY 16 Spiel – August 2021 Story by "Bobbie" Kalben and Photographs by Dr. Don Perry GRIOT'S TO GRIOT'S TOUR IMPRESSIONS "M agical" is not an overstatement of my experience on my first Porsche tour. I have owned my Porsche for just a month. I have liked sports cars since I was an adolescent in the 1960s, and I remember my old boyfriends by what kind of sports car they had. At about age 13, I had a ride with a friend and her father in his Sunbeam Alpine two-seater sports drophead coupé. My high school boyfriend drove a Renault Caravelle. I learned to drive a manual transmission from him – he would use the pedals, and from the passenger seat, I would use the gear shift. One college boyfriend drove a Lotus Elan and another had a Jaguar XKE. In graduate school two boyfriends had different Porsches as their rides. The boyfriend I had when I got my first real job had a Jensen Healey. That is when I bought my Datsun 1600. Called a Datsun Fairlady in the Japanese and Australian markets, it was the predecessor to the Datsun Z's. I remember when I was in college, in the days when I wanted to be a college professor, sitting at the dining room table with some family members and calculating how many years of an assistant professor's salary would it take to be able to buy myself a Ferrari. Dreams. In 1984 Seattle, mutual friends introduced me to John, my future husband, because we both liked sports I couldn't believe how I felt. John was in my heart saying "Go, Bobbie!" and tears came to my eyes. It was extraordinary.