I went to this last month and had a great time. All should attend....

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We're doing a "Driving Skills and Skyline Fun Tour Clinic next weekend!

Come join us in the fun of driving and touring over 100 miles of awesome roads and scenery! Learn new driving skills, improve your driving, have fun and be a better driver.

You don't need to have had any performance driving experience, but learning a bit more about performance driving can definitely make you a safer driver. Come tour with us, all are welcome!

This month's topic: "Driving Skills - Judging Entry Speeds"

Date: Saturday, November 4, 2006

Time: 9:00 am 10:30 am for the talk part of the clinic
10:30 am to 3:00 pm for the tour. Lunch in Davenport at 12:30 pm

Place: Active Life Medical-Chiropractic Center
1391 Woodside Road,
Suite 200
Redwood City, CA 94061

Register: Just e-mail me at DocWong@aol.com or leave a message on my cell phone at: (650) 400-9887

Cost: $0.00

Here's how the day will go:

We meet at my office at 9am and do the talk/clinic part till about 10:30am.

Guest instructors:

Aaron Tachibania: SCCA GTU & GTO driver/owner of Datsun 510, Datsun 280ZX Turbo and Pantera. Finished 4th as a privateer GTU. Currently organizes Car track days for seat time.

or

Chuck McCalmet: President's Cup, Tri-State Championship winner, Marlboro, VIR, Bridgehamptom, IRP, Loudon Enduro Karts winner, race instructor, has tested in a Lotus 23 with the lap record, owned and raced a Shelby GT 350. Past Team Manager and Mechanic with the USA Karting team winning the World Championship in Hong Kong in 1972. He currently drives a Beck 550 Spyder and 911SC!

There will also be a discussion on safety, autocrosses and time trialing.

Then we take off for our tour. We'll stop at Gazos Road and Hwy 1 and the proceed down Hwy 1 to Davenport for lunch. After lunch we take more twisty roads ending up on Hwy 9 and Skyline Blvd (Hwy 35). See below on the complete route and directions to my office.

If you have a family radio bring it. We'll be on Channel 9

For those of you who don't know me, I'm a chiropractor in Redwood City and quite a motorcycle enthusiast and have been organizing the Doc Wong Motorcycle Riding Clincs for the past 7 years (see me web page at: www.docwong.com).

This event however is a car only clinic.

Not too long ago I purchased a Porsche Boxster and a Miata and a whole new world of fun opened up for me. Learning how to really drive the car has been a fun challenge, fortunately much of my motorcycling experience has helped me with that. I'm having a great time in autox and open track days.

The tour/drive will be pretty mellow. The idea is to enjoy the scenery, the drive and to improve our driving skills. So if you're up for a very fast drive, this isn't it.

RIDE ROUTE:
We start at Dr. Wong's office on Woodside Road (Hwy 84) in
Redwood City. We go up Woodside Road, through
Woodside, and on up the hill crossing Skyline Blvd (Hwy 35).

From there, continue down Hwy 84 (name now changed to La Honda Road). Then almost to the ocean, San Gregorio, where you'll see a store and post office. If you actually get to Hwy 1, you've missed the left turn on Stage Road by the store.

From San Gregorio, we turn Left (South) on Stage Road to the
little town of Pescadero (which is a veritable
METROPOLIS compared to San Gregorio).

Then we head east on Pescadero Road a short ways to Cloverdale Road, where we turn south (right) again. We follow Cloverdale road down to Gazos
Creek Road, where we turn west (right).

We follow Gazos Creek Road to Highway 1 where we can take a break. Gas is available here.

Then take a trip down 1 to Davenport, where we stop for lunch.
After lunch, it's south on Highway 1 again to Bonny
Doone Road, where we turn east (left). Don't turn
right there, or you'll be surprised at the lack of
floatation a set of air bags provide. ;-)

Up Bonny Doon Road to Empire Grade. North (left) on Empire Grade to
Jamison Creek Road, down Jamison Creek Road to Highway
236. Right on Highway 236 to Highway 9 in Boulder
Creek. Another short break in Boulder Creek (gas, if
needed), then up Highway 9 (east) to Skyline, where we
assemble at the little rest area there for a final
meeting. After our meeting and bull session, the group
breaks up and everyone is on their own. Hope you can
find your way home from there!

Directions to Active Life Medical Center

http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp...submit=Get+Map
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Active Life Medical Center
1391 Woodside Road, Suite 200
Redwood City, CA 94061
(650) 365-7775

Drive well!

Doc Wong
http://www.docwong.com
Arctic Silver/Boxster Red/Bk 1997 Boxster
Red 1991 Miata
Harry K. Wong, D.C.
1391 Woodside Road, Ste 200
Redwood City, CA 94061
Off: (650) 365-7775 Cell: (650) 400-9887
Chiropactic and Alternative Medicine
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To subscribe to my "DocWong Driving Clinics" mail-list just e-mail me and I'll put you on the list!

This is a low volume list used for all my announcements on future drives and related activities.
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Driving Skills and Skyline Fun Tour Clinic dates:

Saturday, November 4, 2006 "Driving Skills - Causes and Solutions to Oversteering"
Saturday, December 9, 2006 "Driving Skills - Field of Vision"

 

I"ve always wanted to try one of these clinics and was wondering if you had anymore reviews of what it was like. Is it kind of a safe driving clinic or is it more geared to HPDE? Thanks in advance for the info

ChiShi

 

The drive portion is out on public roads so it is not like an HDPE where you can push beyond "reasonable and prudent" but there's usually a few Porsche's and Miata's so it tends to be a bit more spirited than your typical tour.

The clinic gives some good fundamental "classroom" information that you can usually apply without needing to get in over your head, and you can't beat the price.

 

I attended once, and I think it was a blast!

I think the only downside for the driving clinic is that sometimes there are too many cars. There are many drivers at different level with different cars. Most of the time a line of cars is stuck behind a few more conservative drivers in front and spoiled the fun. I suggest if you have a lot of performance driving experience, you might want to line up toward the front, and vice versa.

Also, some of the roads during the later part of the drive are really challenging (narrow, wet, dark, steep….etc), so be extremely careful and drive at your own pace.

Overall, it will be a fun and safe experience for drivers at any level if you line up at the right spot based on your own level and drive at your own pace.

 

I would disagree, if you have skills and want to push things, hang towards the back of the pack and just wait a little bit when you catch up to the people in front of you.

These are always going to be led by Doc Wong, and he gets caught behind local traffic too, so if you're in front you won't ever be driving any faster than he is, and its never good for the first people encountering oncoming traffic to be going like a bat out of hell.

On the other hand, if you feel the pack is going too slow, pull over and hang until you see someone come up behind you and jump in ahead of them, that way you should have the most open road ahead of you and anyone oncoming will hve already been scared back into their own lane.

It isn't a race and it can get really dangerous when a pack of people driving fast are all on top of each other, you never know the skill set of the guy ahead or behind you, either of them screw up and you might suffer.

Actually that's why I quit doing them after my first one, just a little too "close to the edge" for my taste on public roads.

But it was a good experience and if you enjoy that kind of drive, its a fun way to do it with a bunch of people you might not get a cjhance to run with otherwise, and maybe learn a thing or two in the process.

 

I went to last months; there were about 25 cars...Subaru, Porsche, Mazda, Acura, Honda, Saab, BMW, Mercedes, and Mini were all represented.

It did not seem too crazy as far as the pace... as previously stated, you can drive at your own pace… if you feel like the line is not going fast enough, decelerate for a minute or two and then catch back up.

The first part of the drive is a great warm up, a lot of twisty turns, but a little bit of distance between them in some spots.

The second part of the drive, after lunch, is challenging ( Jamison Creek Rd). It is downhill, with off chamber turns, and it is tight in some areas ( 2nd Gear).

You will have fun... Hope to see some of you there.