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Coast To Coast Tire Roast

An epic road trip across the USA for 86 enthusiasts

By Scott Richardson

August 1^st, 2019

Don’t be boring.

My wife is a car enthusiast. When she bought her Scion FR-S in 2013, it was the first new car either of us had ever owned. She fell in love with the car’s styling, which took cues from the classic Toyota Eight-Six, and the promise of superior handling which would make for a fun car to drive.

Within a few years, she’d learned everything she could about the car and started modifying it with brakes and tires that made it suitable for performance driving. She spent her weekends on racetracks throughout the northeast and mid-atlantic learning how to push her car to it’s limits.

The one thing she was missing was the open road. Most days, she’s only navigating through the suburban half-mile between our house and work. Occasionally she’ll insist we use her car for the seven-hour ride to visit my parents. She dreamed of taking the car coast-to-coast, and set out to find a group of people to share that experience.

When people asked: “Why are you driving all the way to California?” She’d just answer, “Don’t be boring. Why not?”

I share my wife’s sense of adventure, but I don’t share the car obsession, so I opted only for the east-bound return trip. We planned two trips to run concurrently: she’d drive loosely along the I-80 corridor west to California, and I’d fly to California and camp for the week until she arrived. The following story picks up from when we met up in San Francisco, seven days into her trip.