"This is California," says Art Basham, the Los Gatos ophthalmologist at the wheel of the 1926 Ford Model T speedster in which I'm riding.

Art and I are making our way up Quimby Road, a winding, sometimes steep road that will take us up to the summit of Mt. Hamilton. We started out at the intersection of S. First Street and W. Santa Clara Street in downtown San Jose, along with 56 other speedsters, and we're headed to Lick Observatory, the first stop on the 35th annual Model T Ford Endurance Run.

Though a few trouble-laden vehicles are still behind us, most of the rest are ahead, since we stopped a few minutes ago for a couple of minor adjustments. But we're doing fine now—whipping around those corners, wind in our hair, nothing wrong. For another minute or two, anyway.

Suddenly, the car starts shaking violently.

"I think we've got a flat!" Art shouts over the sound of the old engine. "Look on your side!"

I do, but neither right tire is flat. The right front wheel does look a bit like it could fall off at any moment, though.

Before I have a chance to tell him that, we're crossing over onto the wrong side of the road, and with a jolt, we're nestled into the side of the hill on our left. Had we veered to the right, down a hill that appeared to be less than soft, I might be writing this from a hospital bed. Or at least a psychiatrist's couch.

But we survived, with all of our limbs and major organs intact. In fact, Basham even won the award for having the most trouble but finishing the run—known affectionately as the "Hard Luck Trophy."

Seven others didn't finish, and understandably so. The June 13 rally took drivers from San Jose to Livermore, and back to Santa Clara through Contra Costa County—more than 200 miles. The route was a recreation of the inaugural run in 1970.

Ed Archer, a Hayward auto appraiser, chaired this year's event. The prime example of a Model T owner, Archer sports a beautiful handlebar mustache and talks about the endurance run as though it's one of his children. Archer developed and chaired the inaugural "enduro" with former Los Gatos resident Jim Treleaven after each man finished restoring his own speedster.

"We met at a race in Watsonville, and started talking," Archer said. "We said, 'Wouldn't it be neat if we had an event of our own?' We met at my house one night and we just went through a bunch of ideas. That night, we came up with the endurance run and the lowland tour."

The lowland tour refers to the group of antique coupe and touring car owners who take a flatland route and meet up with the speedsters at rest stops and the finish line.

There were 32 participants in the first endurance run. It grew from there, at one point boasting about 80 in the enduro alone. The route changes every year, as does the chairperson.

Recent attendance had been down, though, and the Santa Clara Valley club didn't even present the run the last three years. Instead, the local Vintage Rally Group took it over.

Some club members were dismayed that it had changed hands, and only a handful participated in the 2003 run.

The event needed a jumpstart (don't expect this article to end without a few more obvious metaphors), and Archer felt a bit of pressure to take over once again.

"I did not want to chair a big event like this—I'm enjoying myself," he said. "But I love the event, and some of the ideas we formulated early on got lost by the wayside. I just said, 'Yep. OK. I'll do it.' It should be a world-class event and I wanna see it there."

So Archer once again took the wheel (see?) and settled in for the bumpy ride.

He and the other club members must have done something right, because 61 cars registered (though four of them never started) and about the same number took part in the lowland tour. Most were from the Bay Area, but some came from as far away as Nebraska, Idaho, Florida, New Mexico and Arizona. Most, but not all, were Model T's.

The endurance run is not technically a race, but rather a timed rally. Participants are given a target time (this year, it was eight hours, 35 minutes and 27 seconds) and are given points based on the difference between the target time and their arrival time.

Unlike a true race, drivers are not encouraged to be the first ones across the starting line—the race organizers encourage safety—so they're given three times as many points for every second they finish early as if they finish late. This year's first finisher, Joel Young, actually ended up in last place.

Though it might seem unbelievable that a nearly 100-year-old car could go fast enough to be a safety hazard, the stripped-down bodies and souped-up engines of most roadsters make for a pretty quick vehicle.

"It could probably go faster than I care to drive it," Peder Jorgensen says of his 1926 speedster. "My guess is it would do 85 miles per hour."

Jorgensen, who lives in Los Gatos, has participated in about half of the club's endurance runs since he built a speedster in 1972. He first got interested in Model T's because of his father.

"My dad used to tell stories about his old cars," Jorgensen says. "By the time I was in junior high, I started tinkering around with them."

He and his brother found out that a man who attended their church had an old T frame and buckets of parts. So they traded him two canoes they had built and spent the next five years restoring it.

"Most of it was just manual labor," he says. "Model T parts are very inexpensive. You can go to swap meets and buy parts for five bucks."

Jorgensen and others point to this availability of parts as the main reason for the T's popularity among relative novices. Ford made more than 15 million of the vehicles. At one point, about half of the cars on the road were Model T's.

Generally, a decent one costs about $5,000 to build—slightly more than the $260 you might have paid in 1925, but not that much more when you take inflation into account.

And the early mechanics mean that you don't have to be a rocket scientist to fix up one of the old jalopies. Not that rocket scientists aren't interested in them.

Saratogan Jim Cullinane, a retired weapons designer who spent 23 years with Bechtel, owns three of the cars. His 1922 and 1926 speedsters both ran in the endurance run, and he owns a pristine 1926 roadster.

His mind can't help but engineer improvements on the cars. Though he generally uses parts that are either original or could have been made at the time, Cullinane and his friend Howard Genrich have filled seven books with maintenance tips, suggested improvements, mechanical diagrams and, of course, stories. They're working on an eighth.

The '22 speedster contains improvements and parts that most other Model T's don't. The engine, the only overhead "Rajo" race engine built by race legends Ed and Bud Winfield, uses an unconventional roller-lifter camshaft system. It was originally in a car driven by actor Robert Taylor, and then spent more than two-thirds of its life in museums.

Sadly, the engine doesn't handle the demanding Quimby Road too well on rally day. Cullinane thought he had the car's sensitive airflow issues worked out, but the steep hills show him otherwise.

"We took it home," Cullinane says at the Codiroli Ford lunch stop in Livermore. "There was too much pressure."

His son, Monte Sereno resident Dave Cullinane, jokes about coming to the dealership in a reliable German car to make sure Jim's other son, Mike Cullinane, and son-in-law Carlos Rosa are doing all right in the '26. Dave says this isn't the first time he's experienced troubles in one of his dad's cars.

"We were sitting in lucky number seven, me and Howard," he recalls. "The back right wheel goes flying off, and takes off in front of us."

Risking death and bodily harm has become a family tradition for the Cullinanes, as Dave says working on and riding in the old cars has "always just been something we've done with Dad." Jim says his sons will inherit the cars when he passes, and someday his grandchildren will have them.

Many Model T owners make the hobby a family affair. Both Jorgensen and Basham have sons who work on and drive the cars. John Bertolotti of Los Gatos got his first Model T when he was 12, and like Cullinane's, his children have always been exposed to the cars. His son Reid Bertolotti participated in the run this year, but the carburetor in his 1919 speedster gave out on the downside of Mt. Hamilton, and he had to be towed.

Some of the club members pointed out that younger generations aren't quite as interested in antique cars, since there are so many more distractions today than when they were kids. Older generations may remember parents telling them about their old cars, or even recall riding in them. But most of today's Model T enthusiasts, the older Bertolotti says, have no such memories, and are in it for the pure enjoyment.

"The people who have Model T's now just appreciate old mechanical objects," he says. "It's more of a true love. It's not a memory machine anymore. It's not that it was part of their past, it's part of their present."

Nowhere is that "true love" more evident than at the endurance run. At the lunch stop, some drivers frantically fine-tune their cars. One man runs around asking for gear oil. Another asks a Codiroli salesman if there is an automotive parts store nearby. But nearly every single one of them has a huge smile on his or her face. The period clothing, music and cars may bring to mind images of the Model T's heyday, but the participants in this run are surely living in the moment.

Sitting in his medical office a week later, Basham's face lights up when he remembers the "euphoric" sense of achievement he felt at the end of the run. He talks about the playing of the national anthem at the starting line ("truly a slice of Americana"), the addictive nature of antique car ownership (every collector I talked to referred to the hobby as "a disease" and asked me not to print the actual number of cars they own), and the amount of respect he has for his fellow participants. In fact, club members only had wonderful things to say about their fellow racers, many of whom have known each other for years. "Great guy" was a description I heard a lot.

Basham tells me the very nature of owning and maintaining the old cars calls for someone with an upbeat attitude.

"With Model T's ... there's so much intrinsic adversity that unless you have the right temperament, they'll beat you down," he says. "If you're not patient, you can't make a Model T work. When there are problems, you take 'em one at a time, fix 'em, and move on."

He pauses a second.

"In fact, there's a life lesson there," he says with a smile.

Or, as I now know, a life-and-death lesson.