The aggravatingly insistent, unemotional sound of my electronic alarm clock stirred me from slumber, just like when I was in school and my parents had to come in my room to drag me from bed. This time, though, I wasn't headed for class, or at least not in the traditional sense. I was going to the GReddy Garage Sale and Performance Festival at the El Toro Marine Base in Irvine, Calif., and was looking forward to some seat time to break in my 240SX. For me anyway, school was about to be in session.

The time flashed 5:30AM on the clock, so I jumped out of bed, threw on some threads and headed out of Riverside to meet up with friends for GReddy Fest. We arrived at the ex-military base a little after 8 and the scene was decidedly mellow. Strange, I think, since these garage sale-type events are normally chaotic near free-for-alls with people waiting in line for hours, if not days, before the gates open.

As we rounded a corner to the Garage Sale entrance, I see I have spoken too soon. A line of cars that go as far as I can see extends before us and then makes a sharp right turn out of view. Pulling up beside a brand new Infiniti G37 parked some distance from the front of the line, I step outside and take in the scope of the event. The old El Toro Marine Base is a beautiful location; when it rains (as it did just prior to the GReddy Fest '08) the precipitation turns the weedy, brown dirt that separates the air strips into lush green expanses. This February 23rd, the sky was blue with some clouds and temperatures were moderate. Drivers couldn't have asked for better conditions.

Like one might expect at a gig called a Garage Sale and Performance Festival, El Toro was lousy with people and cars. Those ready to spend money could do so in a massive tent that housed oodles of GReddy gear for sale. Those who wanted to get seat time could chose from a drift course, autocross circuit or a pair of skid pads. And if you came out just to watch, there was no shortage of distractions, from a number of vendor displays to several dozen show cars.

As I mill around I see the familiar yellow S14 belonging to drifting's youngest professional driver, Pat Mordaunt. The S14 is exceedingly clean, having been just painted by one of the industry's best, LJ Garcia, and tuned by another of the industry's rising stars, Frank Siharath of Boso Garage. If Boso sounds familiar, it's because it is also the shop of Siharath's partner and D1/Formula D driver Ross Petty, who could be seen buzzing around on his scooter at the event. The S14 had a wide-body kit, the obligatory SR20 engine swap, full suspension, roll cage and an A'PEXi exhaust hanging out the back side.

In the Drift Speed booth, I followed Pat to see what was going on. Drift Speed had set up a set of Dynapacks and was doing dyno runs throughout the day, drawing huge crowds for each pull. Without fail, the dyno seems to bring in the spectators.

In the ocean of show cars I encountered a group of new Subaru STI's intermixed with a couple classic Subie body styles. Distracted by one of the loudest exhausts coming out of a 240, I turn around to hear Gary Castillo firing up his beast and letting a VQ-powered 240SX take in some of fresh air. Undeterred, I make my way through more rows of cars and find myself staring at the main drift course, a circuit which seemed to tempt the adventurous drivers to reach for fourth gear.

To the left of the main drift track was an autocross course, and the pedigree of vehicles there was definitely in sharp contrast to the beaten and abused drift cars on the other circuit. A line of clean Nissan 350Z's, Miatas, BMWs, EVOs, Subie's and a few Hondas could be seen quietly waiting their turns.

Directly behind the autocross course was the Drift 101 tracks, where organizers Drift Day provided cars, tires and instruction for a relatively reasonable price. The main objectives of the 101 classes are to teach basic car control techniques, but that's another story. Behind the 101 track was the Fun Run course, a small and technical drift course which could be driven on for the low price of 10 dollars.

Unfortunately, around lunch time (the same time when people get crabby from not eating) the person in charge of base events at El Toro got fed up with a couple of the tracks and for some reason had event planners terminate the Fun Run/Drift 101 track, consequently killing the Media/Demo track that we were looking forward to driving. Oh well.

We stayed until the clouds rolled in and another winter storm began raining on our fun. A great time was had by all, but probably the coolest highlight happened on the way out. Like a snapshot from some Tokyo highway postcard, scores of fixed up Japanese cars flooded off the base onto the nearby Interstate 5, providing a bit of satisfaction (if not outright sentimental appreciation) for taking part in GReddy Fest 2008.

www.greddy.com

Visit the 2008 GReddy Performance Festival Gallery for more pictures.