The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, May 8, 1904, Page 13

THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY A s own W £ " ong € s betwee £ e resting feature s g was the fact r. Plepe ad not set out f d that ke e 1 and e of speed and ance se who had been g his » with extreme . L what he was that »uld have shaved b score had he to do so. feat is the talk of the circles, for more has made an effort between here and In a heavily laden White Steam Touring Car, A. H. Piepenburg of Santa Bar- bara maKes the run from San Diego to San Francisco in five and a half days, thus clipping two and a half days from the best record and setting new standard inspeed and endurance | month in what was fth Buckbee kbee, i fas iis run steam tc ng ¢ at which ¥ irove such splendid To make this record ail the more re markable it is ubly interesting to state that the young automobilist had ust completed nd trip between i Los Angeles by way Barbara, when the roads were possible condition from during t atter part of p h and th st days of April, and bad enough t ¢ machine up for extens s, but Mr. Plep- enburg simp had his automobile washed to mal presentable, its water and fuel tanks replenished, and 2 AN B S N TONABLEE Aga only a few hours® 1is time with three youths from atcher School at Nordhoff as engers. Leaving Santa Barbara at 9:20 in the & they the ¢ h morni covered nce of miles to dig ed and tweive Los Angeles by 6 o'clock in the even- ing, and departed immediately for San Diego the following morning at haif- past eight. The route they were obliged to take via El Toro, Capistrano and i :condido is the worst imaginable. In many places it is liftle better than a waste of quicksand, In which the ma- chine plunges almost to the depth of SIRTEC » AJDTTOMIOIBIOL AT e (ICAJLAOE @IRINILAL (OIRCID the axle itself. ing to make And just imagine try- ~2ed over such a road as that, even when the automobile weighs. only 1600 pounds. This purt of the jour- ney will furnish an interesting prob- lem for the members of the Camino Real in its popular agitaticn for good roads. ‘But the young men accomplish- ed it in splendid time, i ¢ manner at once unique and exciting as will ba seen from the acegunt of the return journey with which this article is more particularly concerned. After nding some time at Corona- do-on pleasure bent the return trip was n at 4 o'clock on Saturday after- Escondido was reached by But almost immediately af- and nizhtfall. ter leaving Escondido the next morning at 7 o'clock the trouble began, not with but th the road. the touring cs notwithstanding that th had cut in toward the mountains by way of Mis- gion de! Rev, expressly to avoid the heavy shifting sand, thus lengthening the round trip between Los Angeles and San Diego to much over three hun- dred miles, while by rail it is only miles. “When {he car made its first plunge into the sand we were brought to such a sudden stop that for a moment I thought we would all be thrown out head foremost,” said Mr. Plepenburg, in telling of the exciting incidents of his remarkable trip. “And when saw how deep the wheels sank with every turn it was the general opinion that we would never make it; that in- deed, we would have to return the way we had come. “phead of us stretched over half a mile of this soft sand and the only way to reach the solid road beyond was to cross it. There was no road by which we might skirt it or even pass- ably smooth ground over which we might cut a virgin path, but we had traveled too far and too fast to turn back now and so calling upon each of the boys with me to do likewise I re- moved my leather coat and laid it out in front of the yheels to make a fairly we CALL. Photograph B‘f P! Y. N Prentiss and Hart firm path over which they could travel without sinking over the hubs. “That was, the longest half mile I ever knew in all my life. It was noth- ing short of a heart-breaking task, and go slow that I thought we should never get across that waste of sand, but we Kkept at it taking the coats out from be- hind and moving them up In front again for all the world like th2 rollers with which el contractors house, inch by inch, foot by foot. But when, we did finally feel solid earth under us once more we made the ca fair hum until we reached Los A s shortlv after dark.” move a he next morning promptly at half- past nine the northward journev by way of Santa Barbara was resumed, the distance o the mountain road which they took for the beauty of the scenery being fully one hundred and twenty miles. And right is where the car ed its reliability not only to climb and c¢limb them continuously, with a full load on only ten gallons of fuel and fifteen gallons of water, with- out replenishing either for the full dis- tance of the 100-mile journey, but to do it all so nciselessly, so quietly, with its unique, odorless generator, which not only muffles all sound of the exhaust, but converts the steam back into water again and pumps it into the water tank to be used over and over. On one of the steenest grades they found the road blockaded by R. T. Crane, the multi-millionaire of Chicago, and his party. Their automobile was stuck fast and could not proceed any farther with the heavy load imposed upon it, for Mr. Crane's party consisted of Mrs, Crane, her maid, Prentiss Crane and the chauffeur, Mr. Boyd, while the tonneau itself was heavily laden with over 200 ponnds of baggage. In this dire extremity the millionaire found Mr. Pfepenburg’s arrival most providential, for on learning that both parties were bound for the same des- tination' the young man exchanged loads without a moment's hesitation, and giving the stalled machine a lift over the rough places landed the whole party in Santa Barbara by 7 o'clock in the evening, thus covering the 120 miles under very adverse conditions in only ten and a half hours. Mr. Crane was so pleased that he de- cided to abandon his own machine, or at best let it follow along with the bag- gage, and continue with all his party in Mr. Plepenburg's car, more especially as the young men from WNordhoff were remaining over in Santa Barbara. here Most Valuable Cup Ever the start was made at the merning, and the route taken was over the San Marcos Pass by way of Santa Ynez, which, by the way, is prohibited to automobilists by law. cordingly 9:30 o'clock in Jut 1 did not know that at the time,” said Mr. Pic rg in speaking of this sp: cular eature of the record-breaking journey, “because I e over this road before. It is a narr road, with hair-raising frightfully steen and danger- I don’t wonder that there is a law agaiust automobiles over it uch for the prote: the omebil agaiust thems as because of the extreme dang: any team that might be encountered on the way. But once started we elimbed it in splendid style, and made the de- scent in such good time that we passed through Santa Ynez early in the after- noon and reached Santa Maria shortly after 5 o'clock.” On the following day good time north- ward was made, leaving Santa Maria at 9:30, passing through San Luls Obispo at noon and reaching Paso Rebles at 5:30 in the afternoon, but on the next day a record-breaking run was made over mountains of the heav- iest sort. At 7:30 the party left Paso Robles and raced all the way to San Miguel, where they branched off through In- dian Valley and thence took the steep ascent over the mountains to Peach Tree, a climb that is nothing short of stupendous, because the storms have cut the road into ribbons, omly to be confronted with a new and insur- mountable difficuity on reaching Kings City. At this point they were stopped by the Salinas River, which, besides being high, was nothing but a bed of quick- sund at the only place where it might be forded. There was nothing to be dune but to retrace their course over the main road and then by another route to Salinas, which they passed at 9 o'clock in the evening, and because of the extra thirty-five miles thus add- ed to the great distance they had to travel in any event did not reach Del Monte, the objective of the Cranes, until 10:30. The whole distance they had covered since leaving Paso Robles was one hundred and fifty miles, a truly remarkable performance in slushy weather for one day's run. At Del Monte Mr. Piepenburg left his party and journeyed on alone to this city in a heavy rainstorm, leaving there at 8 o'clock in the morning and had never | as 1 ts ‘Won in Automobile Race. arriving here at 8 o'clock in the even- ing, with a machine that was buried deep under such a heavy coating of mud that it was hard to tell what its original color or stru was And thus was record-breaking from San Diego to San Francisco de in five and a half days. As was said before the official distance record- ed in the railroad guides i3 601 miles. Mr. Piepenburg's odome showed that he had actually traveled 750 miles sinca leaving San D but app tly he is the only one who does not see any- remarkable in h rmance, ess than two days aft arival e he newly pol 1 Wh d h steamep taking their blitheful way bac anta Barbara for the third round-trip within a mo: That is indeed subjecting an s bile to terrifically h. hundreds upon h at a ¢ k to tomo- rd usage, covering ds of mites with- rt and doing it cent or two a n one may travel at such speed and in such lordly style it is all wonder that automo- biling has grown to such _tartling pop- ularity in California, nor that there is such a widespread demand for good roads. And in view of the new standard set by Plepenburg it is Interesting to note that it was a car of the same pattern, owned and operated by H. D. Ryus of Los Angeles, that won the most valuable cup ev offered for au- tomobile races at the big meet In Los Angeles last November. This was the $1000 Huntington Chal- lenge cup presented by H. E. Hunting- ton, the street car magnate, to the Automobile Club of Southern Califor- nia for the best record in the five mile race at the fall .:2et. Mr. Ryus cov- ered the distance in six minutes and six seconds and won the cup, but al- most immediately afterward, on the same day, he lowered his own time to five minutes and forty seconds with the same machine, which travels so noise- lessly and with such an utter absence of the rattling vibrations so common to ordinary motor rs that it seems to be u2~oid ¢t machinery of any sort, while it glides along with the speed and silence of some huge mysterious monster. It will be both edifying and instrue- tive to see what Mr. Piepenburg’s next trip with his White car brings forth as against the numerous other vellicles that are going after his record this summer. On his next trip he will make a minute report on the condition cf the road.