NNJR CIA TREK 2016

By Mike & Lynn Shavelson

My wife Lynn and I bought our first Porsche in 1997. It was a new Boxster and we loved driving it on weekends, exploring back roads and finding out of the way places to eat. We now own a 911 S and continue our driving and eating adventures. Lynn bought “Great Backroads of New Jersey” and “Great Backroads of The Northeast” at our local bookstore to facilitate our passion for beautiful rides and wonderful food. We consider ourselves major “foodies”. We have taken many cooking courses at some very interesting places and have always wanted to enroll in the CIA Boot Camp programs but never had the opportunity or time to travel the distance to Hyde Park. When we saw the CIA Trek event listed in Porscheforus magazine we jumped at the chance.
We met everyone at the Sloatsburg Rest Area on the New York State Thruway to begin the adventure, and an adventure it was. Apparently, there was a fire on the route we were taking near Marlboro, New York, which backed up traffic for miles. The lead Porsche got fed up (note the irony) and made a U-turn to find another route. This led to a mass U-turn of over a dozen miscellaneous and sundry Porsches on this road. It must have been quite confounding to non-Porsche drivers, all stuck in the same traffic jam, that witnessed this strange parade all turning around at the same time. After several wrong turns and several more mass U-turns, we all found our way back on to the correct road. We wound through a spectacularly scenic route through the Hudson River Valley and finally arrived at the Culinary Institute of America’s beautiful campus.
The club booked us into the American Bounty Restaurant in Roth Hall, one of three restaurants on campus. We were seated at a table for six and had the pleasure to eat with four very interesting club members we had never met before. Much to everyone’s relief, we discussed a myriad of unusual topics and never once touched on the recent presidential election. All of us had very diverse careers. Although retired, I spent my career working for major record companies, my wife is a construction attorney. We sat with a woman who works in the pharmaceutical field, another woman who is a psychiatrist, and a husband and wife who were planning a trip to Morocco to spend three days riding camels in the desert (Boy, that sounds like a lot of fun). The conversation was incredibly interesting and we all shared a common love for our cars and driving them.
We all ordered drinks. I had a beer that the students brewed on campus called Cleaver IPA . It had hints of apricot and grapefruit. Very unusual and very tasty. Lunch was served. The first course was Pumpkin Apple Soup followed by Roasted Pork Loin and then a Lemon Tart for dessert. Being an unapologetic “foodie”, I would have loved to have given the food a rave review, but, alas, I couldn’t. Yet, after all was said and done, the drive and the comradery made for a memorable experience worth trying again. Many thanks to Cindy, Tony and the rest of the NNJR volunteers for yet another great event.