If you listened to the Ross Bentley podcast with yours truly, you probably heard me talk about the roads in southeast Ohio. I’ve been to Tail of the Dragon, Appalachian Mountains, Rocky Mountains, as well as all California has to offer. For spirited and twisty road driving, nothing compares. It’s a quiet area with little traffic and very well maintained roads.  This area is truly the best kept secret.

We used these roads for tuning MRC and steering primarily for Sport but also some Tour. We found them somewhat by accident.  We were headed to Harrisonville, VA where we had been performing most of our high-spirited tuning.  One day we decided to take back roads, and BOOM, we stumbled on the roads in southeastern Ohio. After that trip, we never went back to Harrisonville.

Let me digress a bit and give a brief description on how we tune during these trips. It’s 2014 and the Z06 has been revealed but not in production yet.  Most of the trips there were 2 of us, each in a car. In this case, we were tuning the Z06’s. Scott, the steering engineer would be calibrating steering in one of the cars, myself in the other calibrating MRC and steering.  Sometime during the day, or when we got back in the evening, we’d swap all our equipment and tune the other car.

About 50 times during the day, we’d stop, driver side door to driver side door.  This was typically when I wanted a steering change.  I would explain to Scott what I was looking for, he would make the appropriate changes, hand me the OBD2 cable, I’d plug it into my car, he’d flash it, and away we’d go.  If I had an MRC change I wanted to put in his car, I’d do the same.

A lot of times we’d use the same section of road for consistency but tried to move on before we upset the locals.  Nonetheless, when we remained on a certain section of road for a period of time, two Z06’s parked door to door were something the local folks were not used to seeing.

You can imagine the locals wondering what is going on when suddenly a variety new Corvettes appeared for days and weeks on end.  Well, we found out. Most of the them were incredible friendly, except………..

One day, we spent a lot of time making changes at a general store in the middle of nowhere.  I had just left Scott after a door to door “meeting”.  A little old lady walked out from the store, leaned in the passenger side window and asked Scott if he had a sense of humor.  He replied, “I’d like to think so”.  She said “good, because those old farts that just left the store think you two are dealing drugs and they’re calling the law”. Which caused an eruption of laughter among the two of them.

This store was high on a small mountain.  When I returned, Scott told me the story, we had another good laugh, and headed down to Woodsfield, OH for some lunch.  Now, up to this point we had been using these roads for weeks and never saw an officer of the law. So, when we encountered a Sheriffs car heading up the mountain, you can imagine how we felt.

We headed to Woodsfield, Ohio. Despite images of Burt Reynolds and a Trans Am in my mind, we drove like boy scouts.  We suspect that’s where the sheriff came from as it was the closest town. However, we never encountered flashing lights coming up from behind us.  But, as soon as we hit the city limits, there was another sheriff waiting for us and immediately pulled us over.  Now I have the utmost respect for law officers, and always treated them with complete respect, but this one had quite an attitude.

He walked up to the Z06, hand on gun, and asked me to keep my hands visible and get out of the car.  Scott was already on the sidewalk. I asked him why he stopped us, he replied that there were a lot of complaints by the locals about our driving.  Knowing we’ve been profiled as Corvette driving drug dealers, I replied, “Bull shit you guys think we’re dealing drugs”.  He told me, that’s right and we are waiting for the Lieutenant to arrive. I told him exactly what we were doing, showed him the manufactures plates and told him to look inside of the cars at our tuning equipment.

Shortly after, the Sheriffs we passed earlier showed up, it was the Lieutenant. Compared to us, this guy was young. He walked up and asked which one of you two is from Goodrich, Michigan.  I told him I was. He said he used to live in Davison, Michigan (about 10 miles away). I asked him what year he graduated from Davison High School.  As fate would have it, he was friends with one of my best friends’ son.

We were parked in a residential area on the main street heading into town. As we were conversing, a man came out from his house and shouted, “Hey, those are the new Z06’s”.  Suddenly there were about 20 to 30 people around the cars.  We started talking to the locals, answering questions.  At that point, the officers realized that we were 2 nerd engineers and the only drugs we had were Advil.  The first officer lightened up, the transformation was amazing, he was a nice guy. Suddenly he had a lot of questions about the cars.  As I reflect, perhaps if I were in his shoes and all I knew is what the old farts told me about their suspicions about drug dealers, my attitude might have been the same as his, bygones.

All was good.  The lieutenant had two requests, first, is there any way we could make the exhausts quiet, no problem, stealth mode.  The second, when we were going to use the roads to let him know so if he got a call, he would know it was us.  I agreed but knew better.  I thought inviting the law up to the areas we were driving, probably not the best idea. We spent about an hour talking to the locals and the officers about the cars and moved on.

Just another day in the life of a Corvette Ride and Handling Engineer.  More encounters with the law yet to come….

Below are one of the areas we stopped for changes, a pavilion right along the road, not exactly sure exactly what its purpose was, but a good place to make changes. Also, a look at the tuning set up, an office on the road…

Also, one of the roads OH555 had a lot of quick elevation changes.  One snuck up in me, check out the video…..FYI, Zero Damage to the car.