Visceral Thirst

The day started early, with us getting out of bed around 5:30am in order to leave for the airport by six.

We arrived at the airport on time, shuttled to the terminal and got to enjoy passing through the security checkpoint as a first-class passenger, cutting our wait time down significantly.

United’s flight was on time, and we made it into SFO without incident.  We had a hired driver and 10-person limousine waiting for the two of us.

Timing was perfect, and we made it to the Carneros in around 11am, as scheduled.

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After check-in, we grabed lunch at The Boon Fly on the grounds here and I enjoyed an incredible bleu cheese Kobe beef burger.

Following the meal, we were greeted with the Q7 for our use during our stay here. It’s the 4.2 with Premium S-Line package, black.

Also included was some free schwag – a bag full of goodies!

After laying down for a quick nap, we headed out to the track, where we were greeted by a team of Audi reps and a photographer.  I was presented with a trophy to commemorate my win!

Once the photo-ops were out of the way, I had a one-on-one session with the lead Audi instructor, Ken Dobson, in an RS4. I didn’t get to drive on the big track, but they had a slalom and a late-apex increasing-radius curve course set up in the lot.  Since there was a professional photographer documenting all of this, my girlfriend had video camera duty, which I’ll process and upload once I get home.

When I was finished thrashing the car around the lot, I got to take it out on the backroads of Sonoma for a road test.

Finally, I was taken for a hot lap in the RS4 with Ken driving… there were R8s on the track with us, although Ken had no problems passing them when space permitted. Can’t wait to do the R8 Experience tomorrow!

For dinner, it was Bouchon Bistro, which was incredible. After one day, we’ve already burned through $225 of our $500 dining credit

Hopefully I’ll get some good R8 photos tomorrow to share, so check back Tuesday evening!

This entry was posted on Monday, March 23rd, 2009 at 8:52 pm and is filed under Contest Update, General, RS4. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.