2012 Fall CAC / Citroënvie Fall Outing – Saturday Sept. 29
Since the City of Toronto decided to dig up the street at our meeting location (my house), to avoid the mess and keep our beloved Citroëns clean, I decided the day before to change the start location to the community square at ‘Shops at Don Mills’ (at Lawrence Ave and Don Mills Rd). It was a great choice. We gathered there for 10 am and everyone enjoyed a coffee and croissant from the Aroma Café before we departed for our country road tour.
2012 Fall Outing (photo gallery)
The route Roland Voegele and I mapped out took us through the winding Twyn Rivers Rd, just east of the Toronto Zoo in Rouge Valley. Then north of the urban sprawl of Pickering and Ajax to Oak Ridges Moraine. We turned off Lakeridge Road at Townline Rd to take in some of the gorgeous backroads (all paved). Ashburn Rd was particularly nice, winding by horse farms and some lovely country estates. By 12:30 we had arrived at the town of Uxbridge where we had scheduled a lunch stop at Mc Grady’s Pub & Grill. We also met up with Barry and Anna Evans who joined us traveling north from Bowmanville in their 2CV.
After a relaxing 90 minute meal, we continued up to the south shore of Lake Simcoe taking the scenic shore road over to Keswick.
Our final stop of the scenic portion led Lloyd McBride to discover he had developed a LHS leak in his 1960 ID19. After careful consideration and a pool of red fluid that had emanated from the lower left side of the engine (where the hydraulic pump and accumulator are located on early D models), it was determined that the only way the ID was going back to Toronto was on a flatbed. So we called CAA and relaxed for another 90 minutes as we awaited its arrival. As the scenic drive was essentially over anyway, many said their farewells and left taking various routes home while Jeff Teerlinck, Jim Sciberas, Ken Deal, Roland Voegele and I waited with Lloyd and Romeo (Lloyd’s laid back bull terrier) to assist getting the car on the flatbed. Turned out that the tow truck driver had plenty of experience with cars hunkered down to the ground and getting the ID on the flatbed was really quite easy.
Since Lloyd lives in Brantford, Jeff offered to stash the ID in his driveway in Toronto so our Citroën mechanic (Bernard Laborde) whom Jeff had managed to contact by phone, could stop by on Sunday and try to get the leak sorted out. Jeff graciously offered to put Lloyd up for the night at his place. And Romeo had an exciting evening because he got to be a surprise house guest for Jeff’s cat who was none too pleased to surrender its territory.
Even the breakdown didn’t really detract from a wonderful day of taking in the autumn colours and some wonderful scenery. Bernard was able to fix the ID on Sunday and Lloyd eventually made it home safe and sound.