Of all the groups that put on autocrosses in the Washington, D.C. area, the one we hadn't yet run with to this point was the Founders Region of the Porsche Club of America. There's no real explanation why we hadn't, with the best attempt at one being that this particular group just wasn't on our radar. Their events didn't come up in conversation when we talked to people at other events. Also, we thought that their events were held at the Maryland State Police training facility in Sykesville, which was a bit of a haul from our HQ in southern Maryland.

With the season winding down, we were on the lookout for getting more track time anywhere we could get it. John Netzel mentioned during the week that he'd be partaking in a PCA autocross at Bowie Baysox Stadium and encouraged us to join him. We hemmed and hawed a little about it, but with good weather on the horizon, we made the trip.

When we got there we saw the course map and nearly choked. The lot at Bowie isn't very big, but PCA put together a course that criss-crossed over itself two or three times, with two double gates and what might be - for us - an unprecedented triple gate. Kate expressed concern that she should have looked at the map before signing up so she could have seen it and decided at that point to not participate. But we were already past that point, and the only thing left to do was to try and comprehend this wacky course we were handed.

Walking the course showed us that the course wasn't nearly as tricky as it initially appeared to be. While it did use some gates two or three times, it wasn't nearly as daunting as some made it out to be.

Kate and I were to run in the second heat of four. We worked during the first and saw quite a number of drivers not follow the prescribed route. Maybe the course was more complex than I thought it was?

Our work assignment over, we turned out attention to putting down some times of our own. I was driving Captain Slow while Kate was behind the wheel of the B0000STmobile. I finished my first run and the announcer said, "Those little Miatas can haul." So I must have done fairly well. I knew I had done well when he added that my time (64.657 seconds) was the fastest of the day up to that point. That was fairly encouraging.

Through the balance of my runs - we had five this day - I was trading FTD with a guy in a Porsche 911. I had gotten down to a 63.137 on my third run but couldn't improve on the fourth run as I got greedy and wound up blowing past a key braking point. On the plus side, the Porsche driver hit a cone on his fourth try.

I suited up for my last shot, still thinking that my kid-sized 1.6L Miata could run with the more sporting (and much more pricey) machinery also playing on that day. On the relatively gripless Bowie lot, I tried concentrating on getting the car slowed and turned as quickly as possible before jumping on the gas, and at the end I thought I did well enough to improve. But at first glance I thought the timing board read 63.367. I said "Not good enough" but the announcer countered with "WOW". Turns out that the time was actually 62.367 and I had reclaimed FTD.

This euphoria lasted about three minutes, and then the 911 made its last run and beat me by 0.003 seconds. I would have been fine with the story ending there, but it didn't. We all got beat by a road-racing RX7 at the end of the second heat, and then a battle royale erupted in the afternoon with a handful of SCCA invaders driving well-prepped cars. At the end of the day, James Newman put an exclamation point on his Corolla's return to competition with a low 60-second time that will put him on top of the results sheet when that is posted. This is not necessarily a bad thing, since we're big fans of Jim as well as the other drivers shooting for FTD in the afternoon sessions.

Our maiden voyage with PCA turned out to be a good day. They put together a good course and kept the day moving well. We were putting up fast times in the morning and watched as friends got even faster. Will we be back next year? Probably. They run at Bowie, which isn't ideal. I don't think they track points for non-Porsche, so there's no huge incentive to make a bunch of their events, unlike NCCBMW. But if they're running on a weekend where we don't have anything going on, you just never know.

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