I could quit my blog to buy a yellow Cayman

The title sounds a bit more dramatic than it is. But I chose it to really in one sentence point out how good the yellow Porsche Cayman GTS I had for five days was. I asked Porsche if they would have a car for me to take to Austria, because I was on my way to road trip with two Porsche 918 Spyders for a few days. They offered me a yellow Cayman GTS. When I at arrival to Zuffenhausen saw they had booked one with a manual gearbox for me, it was love at first sight. Do not get me wrong, Porsche PDK is incredible and in the GT3 it feels just right because it is so incredibly fast shifting gears. But when it comes to a more affordable sports car like a Cayman, that I see as a rival to for example the Lotus Exige, I really want the manual driving experience. I can not have that in that many modern sports cars so when I find a good car with it, it feels right. It felt right with the Cayman.

I drove the Cayman GTS in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy for five days and when I returned the car yesterday I did it with tears in my eyes. It was a massive wakeup call to experience it. The last time I had tears in my eyes returning a press car (yes, women are emotional) was when I returned the GT3 after two weeks with it. But those were different kind of tears, because the GT3 is a dream and a goal but it is budgetwise completely out of reach at the moment. The GT3 is on my “one day”-list, not on my “soon”-list.

But if I did things a little differently, the Cayman GTS does not have to be out of reach. I drove on the German autobahn towards Zuffenhausen reflecting my spending. How much I spend on road trips to create content for this website. Of course I do it because I love to drive and explore the roads in Europe. Not because I have to – because I want to. But I do it with a high cost and small return. People can tell me how lucky I am because I get to drive incredible performance cars around Europe, but like I said in a tweet yesterday, I am no longer sure if “all the other cars” is what matters, or if I instead would want “the one” to which I had the keys in my pocket 365 days a year. What is worth more?

Last spring I quit my job to start putting my dream into reality, which is to run my own driving tour company and to build a brand around it (Colcorsa – website launching in January 2016). Anyone who has been in the same seat knows that life will for quite a long period be very different from what it used to be when you had a monthly salary dropping in to your bank account. The difference is that in the long-term all the sweat and tears are for your own dream and future that no one can take away from you. If you are lucky it is yours until the day you die. And when the day comes you hopefully spent your whole life working with something you love. That is more important to me than earning a lot of money!

In the long-term it will hopefully pay off also financially. But in the short-term it changes your spending habits because money is no longer something you take for granted, when a fixed amount does not drop in on the same date as it used to. Now you need to work harder to even get it in, and you will think twice before you take something out.

I do not regret one single road trip I have done and I rarely like to think about how much I have spent on them, because the joy I experienced made it all worth it. But at the same time it definitely now feels like if I want a yellow Porsche I possibly have to choose between one or the other.

If those choices means I have to cut down on road trips because it would be too expensive to both road trip for pleasure and pay off a Cayman, I could do that.
If those choices means this blog has to be my secondary platform for content and I can not update fresh road trip or test drive content on a regular basis, I could do that.
These choices definitely means this website needs to drop in my priority list lower and I need to put more focus on building my dream company, and I will do that.
There are a lot of changes I am willing to make for that yellow car, and for the future of a business as well.

I write this as an introduction to the following posts that will show you the road trip with two 918 Spyders and a Cayman GTS on Grossglockner, Nockalm Road and Stelvio Pass. I am not done here yet, and I will of course not delete the blog either because there will be content in future. Maybe not as much as before. But only time will tell how much is possible to create and how much I can road trip for pleasure next year. However I wrote this to tell you that I love to share content here, but at the moment I love the thought of being able to daily drive a Porsche a little more.

Porsches are so wonderful cars that they deserve a praise like this. I want to say to you it is really hard to be without one, and I think many of you can relate to these words.