[Ed. notes] - answering a few questions, etc. on yesterday's entry.
First up a special DTOM congrats to Ted McMahan on getting a job. Poor Ted was a victim of the recession when the place he used to work at got raided (and shut down) by the Feds - mortgage stuff not car stuff. Yikes! You can find Ted at Hi-Tech Auto Repair here in the ATL. Ted is a good guy and great mechanic. Ted is a big fan of the blog so shout out!
This week will probably be a little lame in terms of narrative, this is meant more to shock and awe in terms of crazy sh!t that happens around me, then to be a laugh riot. If anything I sugar coated the animosity in the neighborhood over the great wall. It was a total pain in my a$$ and included about 20 pages of handwritten notes of conversations, printed emails, and certified letters. Some good questions that have been raised by the peanut gallery: a) why didn't you move instead? Well hindsight is 20/20, at the time the location of our house was pretty close to ideal in terms of commute, I would have had to spend quite a bit more to get closer and really if anything we would have wanted to move farther out which would have meant a significant drive for me. Also we were a bit polly anna-ish in terms of "this will be easy" famous last words, you'd think I would know better - well I sure do now! b) how recent was this? 2004, and I still bear the scars. c) is "Tommy" that guy's real name? I don't know, I've considered calling Homeland Security to find out. I doubt it, just like IndyJim is my Nome De Plume. I call him a$$hole most of the time. d) which is more aggravating the wall episode or Barber Motorsports Park. No contest the wall. This was pretty serious since we were talking about thousands of dollars and these tools acted like I wanted to plant a tree. Numnuts even suggested we build a '3' sided fence so that it wouldn't be close to his house, now what the f is the point of a 3 sided fence? Total morons, seriously.
If that curbing wasn't there, this would be a different story, probably involving a medical helicopter...
Now for today's show. This will also be more of a 'look what happened' episode. Christine was off on summer break and actually in the house when this happened. I get a call at work in the afternoon from her. She said, "You're not going to believe this the UPS driver is stuck in our driveway." I said, "What exactly does that mean?"
Turns out this dude was delivering a package that he claimed was heavy. I forget exactly what it was, but Christine picked it up and carried it inside so if your definition is less than 20 lbs, I guess that is accurate. Well Mario Andretti was lazy, it was late in the day and he figured he'd drive it up our hill instead of walking (turns out this is a UPS no-no for good reason). He gets up to the top and that is where his brain shut down. Instead of slowly backing down using his mirrors, or even leaning out and looking behind him, he tries a 3 point turn. Well the 3 point turn can be done, but probably not in a UPS truck. Or at least not with this guy driving.
UPS trucks are rear wheel drive and his was unloaded, so he had no weight over the rear wheels, the engine and all the weight were on the front wheels, when he tried to back up on the incline the rear wheels would just spin. I explained this once I got home several times but he seemed to think he could fix it by putting a board under the rear wheels and other acts of genius. Thankfully once he shot the board out he saw that wasn't going to work, thankfully it didn't go through my truck window or anyone's chest. About 30 min. after I get home and ask him what his plan is, his wife and father-in-law show up. They try again putting like a rubber mat under the tires. At this point I'm done giving advice because no one is listening and its clear we don't have the varsity team on the field.
Two more UPS drivers eventually show up, and each one comes to the "Yep, you're F-d" conclusion and leave. Finally the General Manager of the UPS branch drives out and is standing there scratching his head. He at least had the sense to call a big a$$ semi tow truck. I can't explain how awkward this all was. His wife is henpecking this poor dude, the old man keeps trying to find stuff to wedge under the wheels, the driver is sweating because he thinks I'm p!ssed (which I was but also somewhat amused) and he is going to get fired, then all these other clowns keep showing up shaking their heads, also it has become a neighborhood attraction and people are walking down the street to see if this thing will pitch over our front wall. Good times.
So we've been standing around now for a few hours and the tow truck finally shows up. This guy isn't at the top of his class either, but I pull him aside and show him how the rear end isn't getting grip which he at least understands. He has a tow cable but isn't sure where to put it. Together we determine that if he wraps around the front axle and drags the truck forward it should pivot enough to face down the hill. Or tip over.
Thankfully it pivots and the UPS guy drives away. Of course even after contacting them I get no $$ for the 4 hours they used my driveway as a loading ramp, the burnout marks from this dude practicing his tire warm ups that took like 3 months of rain to wash away, exceeding the driveways weight limit by several tons causing cracks, or the bush he ran into and knocked out of the ground. I guess all's well that ends well.
Or as it was sometimes known overseas "Robinson's Folly". Seriously this experience alone convinced me to never, ever get involved in any type of home improvement or construction project. I could write five days worth of rants just on this little gem. In fact if you ever want to get me wound up simply mention this - mission accomplished. I'll hit the highlights and then link to the 'visual essay' that is 7mb and will probably crush the limited DTOM servers - we'll see.
So after having the dogs and our house for awhile we were never happy with the layout of the yard. We're on a pretty steep hill, with another steep hill behind us so we constantly had drainage problems, there was no landscaping to speak of so it looked like crap basically. After living with this for awhile we decided that we wanted a) a bigger and level yard and b) the ability to put up a fence. Both of these would ideally help with the drainage that was washing out our yard every hard rain, and give more room for the dogs to use as a toilet.
Roughly at this same time there was a landscaper in our neighborhood that had just completed a fairly large and complicated waterfall / pond deal for some people down the road. We went and looked at it, and spoke to them about some options. Now my thinking was - building something with huge rocks, plants, and water moving around is a lot more complicated than a wall. Boy, what did I know. So we priced out the options, for a timber wall - cheap but ugly and didn't last, a paver type retaining wall 'system' - moderately expensive, durable, but still not that attractive, and finally settled on a poured wall with a brick face - expensive, durable, and attractive. The idea was this wall would blend in nicely to the wall that exists in front of our house.
After securing funding and establishing a rough 1 month plan from start to finish we broke ground. The first hurdle we faced was a large chunk of 'granite?' that prevented the wall from going exactly where we wanted. It also broke a few pieces of machinery and we spent probably 2 weeks chipping away at this thing. Finally the landscaper started talking about dynamite. I said we'd done well enough. Visions of every window in the neighborhood being blown out and me picking up the tab helped make up my mind. During this period of time we discovered our landscaper was pretty much the same as every one of these guys I've ever dealt with. The 1 month estimate was correct "IF" that was the only job he was doing and if he really paid attention to it.
The second hurdle was the wall itself. Given the placement now of the rock instead of doing 2 small-ish walls we decided we'd do one big one instead. This meant getting an engineer to draw the wall, and securing the permits and approvals from the city. This wasn't too much trouble, but did add time to the process. Oh and the way engineers draw walls is no joke. This thing would survive a direct hit with a bomb. I would later find out just how much extra $$ this would add to the project, there was as much concrete and rebar in the footings as in the wall itself.
So, we had our drawings, the basic excavation was done, and it was time to build out the footers. This was our third and biggest hurdle. Before we got started I had a survey done and also sent out our plans for approval to our neighborhood aesthetic committee. As the workers were building our footers, our next door neighbor came out and told them to stop or he was calling the police as they were digging on his yard? I come home from work and see that they're well within our property line. Being the good neighbor I attempt to explain where the property lines are and what that means to our 'foreign' neighbor who explains to me that he was an engineer in Egypt? Well the curriculum they're following must not be the same one the dudes that built the pyramids followed since this guy doesn't understand property rights, footers, or even how a poured concrete wall worked. He kept thinking it was going to fall over onto his house, but I think he was just playing the 'foreign' card because he wasn't hearing what he wanted.
We agreed to disagree and I gave him a period of time to get his own survey done since he didn't believe mine. In the meantime I also called another company just to double check the first places work. They came out and confirmed what we already knew. In the meantime "Tommy" wouldn't move on his. Then in some classic neighborhood politics their friend who happened to be the association president called and said we had to stop since he hadn't given approval. I informed him of what we sent out and who we had talked to, and sent him the copy of the approval email from the committee (that had the right to review per the bylaws). He basically said that didn't matter he was the president. At this point I finally lost my temper and told this dude to "F_CK OFF since I wasn't planting a GD bush we had already spent thousands of dollars." I also told him (knowing what a cheap a$$ neighborhood I live in) that I was getting a lawyer and if he wanted to go around with his hat out to all our neighbors to get one to fight me just for one guy after the other 3 houses saw what we were doing and liked it - he could be my guest. Roughly 3 days after that conversation we got a letter in the mail announcing his resignation. One of my proudest moments.
I come out of my pocket again to have a lawyer drive over review everything, talk to me, and then render an opinion. He tells me (again) what I already know, not only am I well within my rights I can actually tell Tommy to remove the poured concrete wall that is attached to his house off my property. We craft a letter to that effect and tell Tommy we're moving on. To this day I can't even look at that toad without getting angry, he still doesn't get it.
From this point it went pretty smoothly but all of this had consumed considerable budget so we went from 1st class to economy pretty quickly. Since several mistakes with the landscaper had eaten additional funds he couldn't afford to correct so he was working for free more or less and I was paying subs directly and effectively managing the whole process at the end. We finished on December 7th at 6pm I remember because Christine had a school Christmas party at our house and I was laying sod with mi amigos right up until the bell.
So if you want to see the "Great Wall of Jim" click the link and download a few months of my life and many of my dollars. We started in July and finished (fence and all) officially in Jan.
Well as promised here are few additional things that just didn't 'fit' into the overall O'fest writeup but were still amusing enough as stand alones but first a message from our sponsor. Not really but I am going to grouse on the govt. for a bit. I can hear the collective groan of the audience. I feel like the teacher that promised movie day and gave a quiz instead.
Speaking of teachers, here is evidence that the govt. shouldn't run anything. I mean that literally, short of the military and maybe the police, I honestly think anything else would be better off in private hands. Eliminate all but the very minimum amount of taxes and let us pay ala carte. I'll call out the non-funny stuff with tags so you can skip ahead if you'd like.
[not very funny] Why do I say this? We take our dogs on a nightly walk / park trip and my wife announced she was tired of being a teacher yesterday and wanted to look for a new job. I can't emphasize how shocking this was. My wife was named teacher of the year at her highschool for 2008. Now I don't particularly like her job, but I will be the first to admit that I think she does it very, even exceptionally well. She is one of those lucky people that has known since they were a kid what they wanted to do and has always enjoyed her work and looked forward to it. As a further testament to her teaching skill she managed to teach me enough calculus that I got a C in my one last gasp at math in college.
So why the change of heart? Well here in GA since the schools do so well, they figured kids weren't learning math due to the curriculum and really the 'order' of how concepts were presented. So they completely changed everything mixing alegbra and geometry together (among other things), they've also added extra fun stuff on teachers like reading/writing in math class. Makes perfect sense to me. Now the math that you learn in highschool hasn't changed in literally hundreds of years, most of these concepts are old timey Greek civilization things. In my business mind to be efficient and good you assign one teacher a 'type' of math let them learn it up and down and that is what they teach, maybe 4-5 classes of it in a day. Pretty much learning by assembly line. What does the school system do? They give their teachers a bunch of different classes so they can't get in any type of routine and are teaching something new each period. This just creates confusion, busy work, added overhead in terms of preparation and grading, and you have some teachers that are more qualified than others in terms of the high level math classes so this 'equal distribution' means some students don't get the right people instructing them. So this is what has brought on her career crisis, right now she comes home from work around 4-5pm and spends an additional 3 or so hours grading papers and planning. All for the amazing salary that you could make managing a gas station, and minus the college and advanced degrees. Way to go govt.! Also all kids must now take college prep. math regardless if they want to, if there parents want them to, if they're not going to college they'll just sit there and fail it which will certainly help bring those test scores up! As with most govt. programs I'm sure this was based on good intentions, and like most of them no one will pay attention to the actual results. [/end not very funny stuff]
Okay on with the show.
Clay takes great pleasure in his jokes and for O'fest he had planned two that he (and I'll admit to an extent - I) both thought would be pretty hysterical. The first was a rigged raffle where Dave White would win a prize. I coordinated with Chuck and Patty to have this raffle done during the final awards ceremony where they're giving out trophies, prizes, etc. So there are roughly 50 or so people standing around. Dave's racing number is called to win a "Special prize from BimmerWorld" and he immediately knows something is up. Chuck hands him a plain brown box which he unwraps and quickly sees his 'gift'. No one else can see what it is and Dave isn't too pleased with our humor. So he walks off and no one in the crowd gets the joke. Clay has to awkwardly take the microphone and explain the punchline to an uncomfortable smattering of laughter and tense silence. Joke Fail 1.
The 2nd involves the crew and a horrible experience they had with an E30 3 series, very similar to mine. For a long time I had tried to get Clay to do some work on my car and he was very reluctant. It all stemmed from an E30 that had come to the shop with some 'electrical' issues. The geniuses that built the car had spray painted the interior white, but had neglected to cover up any of the wiring bundles. When trying to trace problems with wires, it helps to be able to tell them apart - which is difficult if they're all white. To further exacerbate the problem, they had removed all the car's fuses and simply jumped them together. Apparently Marks and the guys spent weeks trying to fix this thing. So what does James do when he sees this beauty for sale? He buys it and secretly arranges to have it delivered during the BW BBQ so that Marks can be horrified as he sees this nightmare coming back into his life. Unfortunately for Clay his clever plan fell apart when Marks informed him the trailer this car was to ride back to Virginia in had left about 4 hours eariler... Joke Fail 2.
On a more positive note, Steve Bassen who wrecked his car in the Friday race won the "Spirit of Club Racing" award. This is a very cool thing that the BMW Club Race guys do for each event. Every racer signs a flag and it is presented to the guy that has the best attitude and most closely embodies the 'spirit' of Club Racing, meaning he spent the most money on his car -- NO -- meaning an all around good guy, that is helpful and generally liked and respected by all. Anyone that knows Steve knows that description fits him to a T.
Next up at DTOM - our 3rd annual IFU race at CMP along with the enduro. Should have that out early to mid November. Some pics to entertain in the meantime -
Steve with his well deserved award.
My car parked 'uncomfortably' close to Dave White's fancy ride. Note Joke Fail 2 / finding nemo car in the background...
The amazing Mark's family grill. Smoker, gas grill, and 2 mini-keg fridge capacity. John in the blue shirt is ironically a vegetarian.
My awesome plan of taking down BW property values with the car on jackstands. I at least made sure the amateur body work wasn't facing the 'street'.
Whatever happened to that dude Rerun from that show? I think he became a minister and might have died. I'm tempted to google to find out, but my version of the truth is usually more entertaining than real life.
Anyway just a quick update on DTOM. Car is beat out and ready for bondo and paint. There is a slight (very slight) chance I'll do the work myself. If that happens I'll document the process, which will include me probably lighting myself on fire somehow, since if I do it, I'm going to use real deal auto paint not Krylon.
Craig had a baby - well not Craig but his wife as usual she did all the work (but I think she is used to that by now). Thankfully for them the little girl looked nothing like Craig. Since I'm thoughtful I took the liberty of signing Craig up for more information about the Routan (VW minivan) and offered up his 911 as trade bait. The salespeople have already contacted him a few times. High comedy.
Next week (9/24 & 25th) I'll be at Road Atlanta watching Clay and the BimmerWorld crew hopefully win a World Challenge race. After that 9/30 and 10/1 I'll be instructing at the BMW Oktoberfest DE at Road Atlanta, then racing in the club race with Brendan in the fire breathing 5 series. Oktoberfest is a big deal in the BMW Car Club world since it rotates to different locations annually. Supposed to be pretty cool with lots of neat BMW rides. If anyone makes it up Wed. or Thur. let me know I'll bring an extra helmet and we'll get you a ride.
I'm sure all of this will make for exciting DTOM reading in the coming weeks. Until then enjoy a few pics as entertainment.
That'll buff right out. Notice the miracle silver door find!
White bumper, but see if you can find the rest of the damage.
Congrats to Steve D. for winning (not the special Olympics) but 3rd place in the SE30 National Champion race out in Utah. If I told you the two men in this picture raced Spec Miatas would that shock anyone?
Long time DTOM fans will remember the HeartBreaker Democross project. Since it is getting around that time of year, Al was nice enough to send us an update on the car's status (below).
[I really really tried to keep this one short, since general feedback from the peanut gallery = ‘brevity is the sole of wit’. I guess I need an editor since I failed miserably again. Look at it this way – DTOMRacing gives you a lot of words for your entertainment dollar].
Shark week footage in progress. Dog update – Indy went in for surgery on Monday to fix his ear and get another biopsy on his leg. We are waiting for test results they take 10-14 days. He is wearing his mummy headdress while his ear heals nicely, but he is angry since it is very un-cool.
I didn’t want to race at Road Atlanta on Friday. I didn’t have the time to go over the car the way I like (read “need to” - I don’t really like it), and didn’t have the money to pay someone to do it for me. We went out for team trivia on Wed. to celebrate my wife’s few remaining days of summer vacation. That meant we got home late and that combined with work meant I was tired whaa whaa whaa whaaa whaa. Sometimes this hobby feels a lot like a job, but we wear the chains we forge in life.
My co-driver Dave White wasn’t coming down so I was faced with driving 2 hours in the hottest part of the day. The most dangerous thing I think we face driving on track is dehydration. Racing a car requires tremendous concentration, and nothing goes out the window quicker when you’re hot and your body is lacking what it needs to work properly than your higher cognitive processes. That sounds fancy but what does it mean? For me it means instead of thinking “brake here, watch for the shift light, check mirrors, etc” (or at least their instinctive counterparts) I’m thinking “man I’m hot, this sucks, what is that over there in the trees” or in other words your mind wanders and you’re not paying attention. So it makes driving and concentrating that much harder. It also means you have to strike a balance between drinking enough Gatorade to stay hydrated but not so much that you have to pee the minute you’re in the car. Believe it or not “Big Time” endurance drivers (or Al) pee in their seats a lot. I’m not sure how much money would have to be on the line for me to consider this…..
My race preparations consisted of putting the dash back together from my ill-fated attempt to diagnosis an electrical problem I was having (I stood as much chance of figuring this out as a monkey does of doing calculus, but at least I tried). That and packing the truck took the little free time I had left to devote to preparations. As I was getting ready to put the car on the trailer, I turned the key and nothing happened. Battery was dead. Now normally this is as much trouble as a cloudy day. Not sure if you’ve ever noticed but when you’re tired and grumpy the littlest things rub you wrong and everything seems to take twice as long. It was now 9pm on Thursday night and the last thing I wanted to do is screw with a non-starting car. My low maintenance plan was to roll it down the driveway and drop the clutch (known as ‘bump starting’ and one of the many awesome features of a manual transmission car). For some reason that didn’t work and now I was faced with a non running car that was at a 45 degree angle blocking our road outside in the dark. Run and find my jumper cables, bring the other car down to jump it since the truck was hooked to the trailer, etc. Get it running. Sounds loud and ‘racey’ too loud / too racey. Like I have an exhaust leak. M#@## F#@$%.
Wake up bright and early; convince Craig to move his 911 off the lift and into its proper home in his museum of non-running 1980’s cars. Amazingly the car still won’t start on the trailer. Jump again and send the battery off to Brendan to put on the charger. Shockingly the exhaust leak is a simple fix. Brake pads and tires aren’t up to Dave White spec, but more than adequate for Jim Robinson. Battery goes back in, and we’re off to the races. I thank God for small miracles.
Now each one of these posts are filled to the brim with my b!tching and moaning but to put it in perspective – I have little ankle biting bad days. Our buddy Ted was able to come up and help out on Friday. Usually Ted has to work, but it seems that earlier in the week Federal Agents raided his company’s headquarters and shut them down. The 5000 or so employees got an email around lunch time telling them – good luck finding a job. That is a legit bad day.
We got up to Road Atlanta secured our pitstop and got ready to go. One of the many things to fall by the wayside in terms of race prep was charging (or even finding) the batteries for the radio. We’d do this race in radio silence as a result. We’re in first place overall which meant I’d be in pole position for the start. Green flag flies and I get a good jump, the high horsepower cars get passed and I’m in fourth or fifth with a Vette right in front and a 944 in back. As we go into turn 5 the Vette checks up hard. I get on the brakes but the 944 behind me is too little too late and he hits me from behind. I feel the hit and then I’m 180 and facing traffic coming up the hill and waiting to feel the crunch of the wall. Miraculously I come to a stop about 8 inches from concrete. I watch as everyone drives past and then pull out on track. Car feels fine and I do a lap but Race Control black flags me so I have to pull into the pits. The rear bumper was loose so Ted and Brendan rip it off and out I go.
I’m surprisingly calm and ‘un-angry’. I decide to use this ‘alone time’ to focus on consistency and making lemonade. I’m clicking off decent 90% laps and turn the wick up as needed to make up time. A little after ½ way and I’m catching up to cars. I pull in for our mandatory 5 gallon fuel stop and that goes off without a hitch. Few more laps and I’ve passed class traffic and can see two guys I assume are in the top-5. They’re racing and therefore going slow. I catch up quick and make a good move going into turn 1 to get past both Jim Leive’s Spec E30 and another Spec Miata. Going into turn 3 – I’m suddenly sideways again and then crunch as the wheel is yanked from my hands. I sit for a second trying to figure out what the F just happened. I see the miata and Jim driving off and figure that the miata must have just punted me from behind and then hit me somehow again. I pull back on track and smoke is filling the cabin. I stop at the bottom of the hill not knowing the extent of the damage. Turns out sheet metal was crumpled on the rear wheel and the tire was getting cheese grated against it enough that the little Spec E30 that could – couldn’t finish the race. At the time we figured I had come from last place to a 2nd in class, only to get wrecked out with about 10 min. left to go.
Moral of the story - NEVER get a race car painted.
Street view of where it went pear shaped.
Clay showing how its done in a car. Not sure how you can get 'inside' on this line?
Aerial view. Green = good / Red = bad. I've seen some people try to pass here none have ended particularly well...
So now what. I get questions from non-racers about this so I’ll lay out what happens. Basically I’m SOL. No insurance on track, if you get broke you fix it, your dime, regardless of whose fault, why it happened, etc. The first guy that punted me came up and apologized he felt bad, of course me not being there allowed him to win so he probably didn’t feel ‘too bad’. But at least he made the gesture, we were in pretty heavy traffic and sh!t happens. I’m cool with a little rubbing since if you’re an amateur egg juggler from time to time you’ll have omelets. The Spec Miata guy I filed a contact form on with NASA. What does that mean? Roughly the equivalent of a complaint letter, with probably as much getting done. At the end of the day NASA is a business, so if they ban a racer from racing they just lost a huge chunk of change. So they have to balance the perception of caring (enough to mollify me) with not making the other guy mad so that he keeps coming back, but balance that with – is this A$$hat so dangerous that he will eventually kill someone and get us sued. IF this guy has been a source of constant problems NASA will tell him to sit the bench for awhile or pull his license and tell him to play somewhere else. Why did I complain in one case and not the other. Well Jim Levie witnessed the incident and said the guy basically just drove in the back of me. Also this guy didn’t come and look for me. I wandered a bit to see if I could find him to see what his story was, but nothing. He didn’t show up for the awards ceremony and people are parked over a 5 mile square parking lot. I had Ted and Brendan by my car in case anyone stopped by (like the 944) guy. So we’ll see what happens, I’m guessing nothing. In the meantime I’m looking for a discount bodyshop.
Another ‘to put it in perspective’, ironically (sad irony not funny irony) poor Jim Levie got victimized by a Miata during the sprint races in roughly the same place. Unfortunately he didn’t get off as light, and his car looks like a wadded up pop can. Thankfully he was all right.
What I did on my summer vacation...
Monday, August 3, 2009
Indiana Hoosier Hound in profile at the beach.
By Jim R.
My wife loves the beach, I hate the beach. I love race cars, my wife doesn’t. She told me that she was going to St. George Island for a week before school started and if I wanted to join her that was okay. I called her bluff and decided I’d give the beach another chance since I hadn’t really been since our honeymoon years ago. My last beach vacation I almost died from food poisoning and dehydration so you can understand my reluctance to go back. I’m pasty white and inclined to burn, I hate being hot, and I don’t like sand. Other than that I figured it would be fun. She left with the dogs on Saturday; I had to work for a few extra days and planned on leaving mid-week.
It’s about 6-7 hours from Atlanta to St. George Island and the quickest route there reads like a treasure map. One of the 24 steps from Map Quest says “Turn left on Bob Bodkin Road”. I was running a bit late since looking out for all these goofy little roads meant I couldn’t make good time. Map Quest was also decent enough to be off on their mileage by about 10 to 20%. They say go 55 miles on GA27/1 South, they really mean 63-ish. This didn’t help improve my mood as I hunt and pecked my way through rural Georgia. Then I found a hidden gem of a road called FL65. Its 60 miles and straight as a ruler and flat as a board, it’s in the middle of a national forest and has no real place for cops to hide. SENTENCE REMOVED ON ADVICE OF LEGAL COUNSEL... you can do the math on why that road might appeal to a guy that races cars for a hobby...
SGI is a pretty nice place, and it really wasn’t that bad. I actually had fun. With my wife there to remind to wear sunblock I didn’t get burned. The wind, I can’t really call it a breeze since it was quite strong, coming off the gulf kept the temperature around mid-80’s which after spending years in Georgia passes for comfortable these days. Our little rental place even had its own pool so I only had to suffer the beach sand when we took the dogs down to do their ‘swim’ in the morning before the families arrived.
The last day I decided it might be cool to charter a boat and see the rest of the island. If you wiki SGI you’ll see that only a portion is available to regular folk. There is state park at one end, and a gated community that is rumored to house Kid Rock and Hank Williams JR. among others, it even has its own runway so you can land your private plane. Since we couldn’t get past the gate I figured we’d go Omaha Beach on them. Unfortunately the weather conspired against us, but “Capt. Jack” was cool and said lets try and do it before you leave on Sat.
The rain let up just as we were resigned to cancelling the trip altogether that morning. Capt. Jack met us at the dock and we loaded up the dogs and headed out to sight see. We quickly saw dolphins up close and personal which for some reason Indy started to bark at thinking he was going to play with them or something? We saw big houses, and then on the way back saw a shark feeding frenzy. That was pretty wild. Jack said in his years growing up and working on the water he’d only seen it once before. My words won’t do this bit justice, but thankfully I have some shaky and poor video I’ll put up eventually that got the dolphins and shark stuff.
Look I'm a dog on a boat!
I should have suspected things were going too smoothly at this point. As we pulled into the dock Indy decided he would jump out of the boat and be the first on land. Thankfully Jack was close behind and was able to drag him out of the water before he hung himself on his leash, drowned, or was crushed by the boat smashing him against the dock. As he sputtered and coughed we noticed he was favoring the leg that he just had surgery on. We had been watching it lately since it seemed to be getting worse, and sure enough it was bleeding / weeping again just like it did prior to the antibiotics, crazy fungus medicine. I hosed him down to get the fish cannery smell off for the trip home and we started the easter egg hunt in reverse.
We made it about 5 hours into the trip when on 85, construction caused traffic to come to a stop. I was following Christine in the Lexus and had to jam on the brakes to keep from hitting her. Unfortunately the dude behind me wasn’t so lucky and hit me doing about 20-30 mph. We had to drive about 5 miles to find a safe place to pull over and the GA. State Trooper was waiting for us to fill out the paperwork. As he was completing the forms I went over to the truck to talk to Christine and see the dogs. Rubbing Indy’s head I noticed his ear was swelling up again too. So he was right back to where he was 2 months ago.
Nissan 0 - Lexus 1
Anyone know a good insurance agent - @!$!%!!#$ State Farm
Today we took him to the vet, and they knocked him back out sewed his ear up and took another biopsy so we know if he needs more / different antibiotic, or more / different fungus medicine, or if its something else entirely. I called our great insurance company since the Trooper assured me all I had to do is give them a call and give them the report number and they would take care of the rest. State Farm said they’d be happy to take care of it, minus my $500 deductible. I questioned this since I was clearly not at fault. The chuff girl on the other line said I was welcome to sort that out on my own with the other guy’s insurance company. When I questioned what exactly was the value they added, she again stated they’d be happy to help if I wanted to claim it on my own. Needless to say the first thing I’ll be doing after this gets straightened out is change all of my insurance over to someone else, that will probably be equally unhelpful and incompetent but at least different.
In the meantime I should have stayed home and worked on the car. We have a race at Road Atlanta this weekend and my car is in pieces in the garage and I’m not very motivated to put it together.
Shark Week video and Road Atlanta race report next week, stay tuned..
Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory
Monday, March 16, 2009
CAUTION – Lots of Words ahead. 40 degrees and rain is bare minimum weather (no photos or videos). Let my scintillating prose craft the images in your mind.
In Spec E30 terms I’m like the New York Yankees you either love me or you can’t wait to see me fall on my sword. Either way is entertaining I guess. (ed – for the record this is just my perception, in fact most people may be and probably are indifferent).
I meant to type something up after we got the engine installed since a lot of people put forth a ton of effort to help me out but I got lazy and in the end there wasn’t much to talk about just a lot of hours. For the install we had over 100 years of pro mechanic experience so that left little opportunity for me to screw something up and/or hurt myself. So before I go into the Road Atlanta race weekend, let me give my sincere thanks to the following folks:
Craig – for the nearly unlimited use of his awesome garage Brendan – DTOM crew chief Jason Mascow – the cobra Chris Thurman – who handled most of the ‘heavy lifting’ for the install Ted McMahan – retired mechanic and insurance specialist My friends at RWL German Imports and BimmerWorld for parts and moral support.
***Just a quick note. Being a mechanic is a hard job, people that don’t understand cars always assume that they’re being cheated, people that do understand cars are always thinking they can do it quicker and cheaper (but won’t). Mechanics are paid on ‘book’ time meaning when you come in and say “I hear a clunk in the trunk”, the mechanic gets paid only for the time the factory thinks it should take to fix the problem, not for deciphering what that means and the actual time they take to fix it. So not only do they have to know and be able to pinpoint the problem, they then have to work against the clock and ‘beat’ whatever time it ‘should’ take them in order to do more work and make a decent wage. It would be very difficult for a mechanic (or service technician) to make a living on 40 hours a week of pay. Some of the best can get paid for 100 hours per week and maybe only in fact put in 50-60. It is still hard physical work and anyone that thinks mechanics are dumb manual laborers should try it for a day and see how quickly they change their mind. And oh by the way, they own all their own tools, in fact most techs that have done this for any length of time may have up to $50k in tools, which they have to pay for on their own. Now for an example, during this endeavor Craig’s starter went bad. We decided to change it out in our spare time. This is a hard job on our cars but one that we’re completely familiar with. The factory (or ‘book’) says it’s a 2 hour job. It took us 4 hours, we pointed that out to Brendan and he said “Not bad, but there were two of you, so that is really like 8 hours”. In other words Craig and I would be poor and hungry if we had to pay our bills this way.***
So after 3-4 months of weekends and making the project much larger than it needed to be, in the end all that went wrong is the junk yard transmission I had bought turned out to be from an early 5-series car meaning it was the right ‘type’ of transmission but the shift linkage wasn’t correct so it wouldn’t work without extensive inventing of parts. Of course somehow no one realized that until it was installed. That cost us probably an hour or so and we got to lift heavy transmissions into place twice, which is good for the pecs.
The goal, ironically (foreshadowing) of all this hard labor was twofold - One, to build a car with a bunch of new parts so that nothing could break without a freakish coincidence and Two, combine my amazing driving talent with amazing horsepower to unleash an unstoppable Spec E30 force on the SouthEast NASA Region. I would dominate all of the remaining races and then look to retire undefeated at the end of the year. I kindly kept the car out of the first CMP race as payment to Craig so that he could win the first two races in return for his garage.
To ensure that this would be the end result I cajoled my loving wife into letting me instruct at a DE the previous weekend so that I could test and tune the car in order to make sure that all systems were go. The motor felt good, everything was in place, I had a minor electrical glitch in the tach and with some of the gauges that we traced back to a loose ground wire, but overall nothing serious.
So I went into the Friday enduro with new tires, new brakes, a mostly new car and feeling pretty good about our chances. My illustrious teammate BMWCCR 2008 JP Champion Dave White was scheduled to take the start, I’d come in during the middle and depending on circumstances we’d see who would finish. At least that was the plan. Dave took off well and was comfortably in the lead after about 40 min. he radioed in to say the coolant temp was rising and he smelled coolant. He came into the pits and a hose had blown off the front of the motor spilling water. We refilled and fixed and sent him back out with a full tank of gas. After an hour he came back in to swap drivers and get a full tank of gas. I went to start the car and noticed the oil pressure light had come on, it flickered a bit and then went out, I shut the motor off. Brendan poked around a bit, I restarted and everything looked / sounded fine. I got on the radio and confidently stated that it was the old electrical gauge gremlin showing back up and that I’d do a lap or two and watch it.
I went out and ran two easy laps, the car felt fine, no lights or anything out of the ordinary. After about 20 minutes the temp started climbing up again on the back straight. I brought it back to the pits. The bleeder screw on the thermostat (another part of the cooling system) had come off and disappeared. We replaced with one from Craig’s car, but at this point with all the pit stops we were out of the race. I figured I’d go out and finish for points and to make sure the car was okay. It was and we finished in maybe 8th place.
Steve Foushee – spec E30 competitor – assuming he had the victory in the enduro stayed out after the checker for some celebratory donuts and burnouts on the front straight. Unlike TV and NASCAR no one at NASA thought that was cool. He was promptly DQ’d for his enthusiasm and forever earned the moniker “Donut King of Augusta” in the SE30 paddock.
Saturday came and it was cold and rainy. Standing in a parking lot with limited shelter and amenities while trying to work on your car in the cold and rain is about as fun as you would think. Like a dumba$$ I wore tennis shoes that were quickly soaked, I spent most of the day worrying about legionnaire’s disease or trench foot. By the time we went to qualify it was a full scale downpour and the track was like roller-skating on an ice rink with a blindfold on. You know how a semi-truck throws off mist on the highway multiply that by 5 and then do 120 mph with a stop sign somewhere up ahead. With 60 cars and 15 minutes you have to be quick and aggressive to get a clean lap, I was neither and earned an awesome 7th spot for my efforts. The race conditions didn’t improve and for some reason the NASA officials thought that combining all the different classes together would be a great idea. So typically I would have been 7 out of 20 because of this I was 20 out of 60. I would usually be racing people I know for points and cars that are about as exactly the same as rules and man can make them. Instead I got to race a bunch of dip sh!ts in 944 cup cars. Specifically Scott Campbell #82. I went to offer him some advice after the race but couldn’t find him unfortunately all racing people out of your class does is slow both of you down for no apparent purpose. (ed – as I pointed this out in my general b!tching and moaning that I’m famous for, an anonymous bystander pointed out WWSCD. To which I replied – Huh? He said, “You know What Would Scott Campbell Do?” To which I replied – Huh? The anonymous bystander explained “The sticker on the back of your car WWSCD, that is the dude, you didn’t know that?” To which I replied – Uh, no?. The anonymous bystander went on, “Yeah the 944 dudes printed those stickers up for him but I think it is an inside joke.”) Well Scott the secret is out of the bag, apparently a bunch of people think you’re a tool – I agree with them OSB – other sports beckon. Someone had put that sticker on my car (like most of my stickers) without my knowledge or understanding what it meant. I was too lazy to remove it, and now I’m glad I didn’t!! Hopefully he saw it when I finally got around him 2 or 3 laps from the end. (ed - A further editorial comment, I’ve had the most problems with stunts like this with the 944’s. Spec Miatas, despite being hairdressers of questionable sexual orientation, are generally good and considerate drivers. It could also be it is really easy just to stay close and overwhelm them with our awesome 150 hp down the straightaway. I don’t think the 944 guys have the car counts so they are always looking for a ‘friend’ to race with instead of realizing that we view them as rolling obstacles vs. a good time. In this specific example I was, generally speaking, 2 seconds a lap faster and when I went to make a pass through turn 12 (in the rain not cool) he came in on me and did even worse and more aggressive things to one of the Lasko / Walsh cars.)
We were scheduled to qualify Sunday morning early. I spent the entire night stewing over the race and my own p!ss poor performance. I put a lot of pressure on myself to do well and even more than usual since a lot of people had put a lot of time into giving me my best shot. I fully intended to be one of the first people on the qualifying grid, and any out of class cars that got in the way were getting the chrome horn. I went to start the car and get it warmed up while I changed into my monkey suit. When it turned over I heard a strange ‘clunking’ noise that I recognized all too well. I went and solicited several independent opinions on what that noise may signify and they all came back terminal – rod knock. I’ll have to save the suspenseful conclusion to this adventure for the future since at this time I don’t really know what happened. Our particular motor is notorious for having this problem with the number 6 cylinder. A piston is connected to a crankshaft by a rod, that rod is ‘suspended’ in oil. So when the car is running this oil provides a cushion that keeps actual metal to metal contact from happening (at least limits it). The number 6 rod may have been deprived of that cushion and then bad stuff happens. Of course I’m not an expert and I have thought things were “A” when they turned out to be “B”. So I have my fingers crossed that I didn’t screw things up too badly and I’ll wait for experts to weigh in with their opinions and judgment.
Of course stuff like this makes you sick to your stomach when it happens, more for the effort and help of friends that is seemingly ‘wasted’, unfortunately disappointment and general suckiness is a large part of racing. I think that is what makes this so addictive when you actually can succeed and triumph. You have to make your peace with these things or you’re in the wrong sport, but it is days like this that make it sometimes feel like a full time job (and not a good one) vs. a fun hobby. Of course it can always be worse, there were several cars that wrecked in the rain and one driver that was rumored to have broken an ankle when a wheel broke through the cage and got into the pedal box. I also thought a lot about when Clay and the BW team wrecked all three of their cars. They managed to put things back together and ended up winning the next race, so while this is a pretty big bump in the road and drastically alters how I envisioned this season working, DTOM will be back and better than ever.
After Laughing Comes Crying....
Monday, September 22, 2008
[Editorial note – My PC is a little screwed up so I had a hard time putting up anything that wasn’t from my camera phone. Check back over the week for updates.]
In the mean time WORLD EXCLUSIVE Video from our friends at BrandNewEngine.com. I personally think this is some of the coolest race video I’ve ever seen.
At least that is what my mom always said whenever she saw me doing something that had the potential for ending badly.
The adventure begins as Craig and I headed off early Friday morning to Rockingham, NC. I leave the house at around 9:30am, plenty of time to avoid traffic (so I think). I'm in traffic merging onto I75 when inexplicably everyone in front of me jams on their brakes. Not expecting this I jam mine on as well, and quickly realize the little lady in front of me driving a KIA is about to become the meat in a train wreck sandwich. Using my hard won racing skills I dive off in the shoulder and grass with the trailer fishtailing behind me. No harm no foul as I zip by the line of amazed and terrified traffic and merge neatly onto the highway.
I meet Craig en route and head onto NC. We had to briefly stop off in Kannapolis to drop off a part at shop doing some work for me. Towing to the track at the best of times is a bit of a pain. My truck is probably 20 feet long and my trailer is another 18 or so. Next time you pull into your local Quickie Mart imagine the logistics of getting something like that in and out. You have to choose your gas up locations wisely or you risk getting stuck, like I did coming home from Roebling a few months ago. To make this problem even worse - approximately 60% of the gas stations we saw at any given time were out of gas, or had lines that looked like something straight out of the 70's. One interesting bit of trivia that we discovered, many of the vending machines that you find in your finer truck stop bathrooms are made in Kannapolis, NC. We didn't see the factory on our tour through town, but we did meet a very optimistic rural gentleman with as many earrings as he had teeth, he had a Ford Ranger pickup truck and seemed convinced that we were 'drifters' and that if he put a V8 in his little pickup he could be a drifter too. He added that 'someone' had told him all he needed to do was make a drift truck and he'd be turning sponsors away. He did a burnout to display his skills as he left the gas station parking lot. The good news is some of the cheapest gas (when you can find it) is found along 85. We filled up one time for $3.69 vs. the $4.19 they want here in Atlanta. Our gas easter egg hunt continued through the weekend since finding premium (93 octane) in Rockingham, NC isn't as easy as you would think. Our cars will run just fine on 87, but even 1 HP that comes as cheap and easy as running higher octane gas is worth the effort (and that 1 HP is probably just the placebo effect).
Our trailer troubles didn't end with gas stations. The shop we were going to in Kannapolis had a small driveway that already had cars parked in the grass on either side making a narrow crappy driveway even more narrow. Parking on the street wasn't an option so I pulled forward into a grassy area to allow Craig to park in the more civilized driveway parking spot. The shop shares a building with Speedy's pool hall - home of (you guessed it) Speedy, I know this because it said so on the sign outside. All I saw was a small rug rat kid (Speedy?) running around with no shoes and some old woman that looked like she had become part tobacco leaf. She immediately started yelling at me for parking in the weeds next to the shop. I hadn't blocked anyone in so I wasn't exactly sure what she was hollering about. I yelled back that we were simply dropping something off and would be gone in a minute and walked off. We go to "Suite B" only to find that quitting time on Friday's in Kannapolis must be around 3pm. I make the executive decision to leave our package on the doorstep and keep moving on. The sweet old lady in the meantime is sitting in her car looking like she wants to back out but my truck and trailer 10 feet away are somehow keeping her from leaving. My options are backing my rig up with this old bitty watching with her reverse lights on like she is going to ram into me, or exploit the one great virtue of American made trucks - ruggedness. I take the truck and trailer through the weeds over a small ditch and onto the road. Craig follows on the road more traveled and we're on our way to the Rock.
Rockingham is a former NASCAR track that has fallen on hard times. It is roughly 1-2 hours outside Charlotte in the absolute middle of nowhere. Just some of the NC state highways we were on during our travels 52, 177, 220, 74, 1, 277, 485, 17, 29, 601. Not to mention the 85, 285, and 75 that I need just to get out of Georgia. As an indication of the track's prosperity they recently tore up half the grandstand area bleachers and sold them for scrap aluminum. I don't have my MBA, but I’m pretty sure it isn't a sign of growth if you're selling off parts of the buildings. However, once you get to the place it is actually pretty cool. The banking is between 22 and 25 degrees. Which is about average for NASCAR, tracks like Talladega and Bristol are banked in the 30's. 20 some degrees of banking may not sound like much but it is easily as steep as your household stairs if not more so. The track is also pretty abrasive and bumpy, which doesn't lend itself to being easy on tires or suspensions. The Rock mostly exists these days to run some small time NASCAR-esque races (ARCA) and for some teams to do testing on. NASCAR has stringent rules about testing on the actual tracks that they race at, so since the Rock approximates tracks with bumpy and abrasive surfaces like Darlington and Atlanta teams use it to figure out setup tricks. For us the banking means going flat out for about 3/4 of a mile. The banking is odd since it does compress you into the car quite a bit, it also makes vision tricky as you have to look out of the driver's side window in order to see what is going on ahead of you. We spent the rest of Friday walking around the actual track so that Craig could get his bearings and see where to turn left and right! Early on we had discussed camping at the track since the local hotels aren't much different and some actually worse. Being old and soft and lazy we opt to try the Holiday Inn Express in Rockingham. My travels to obscure countryside destinations have shown me that the Holiday Inn Express is the Ritz Carlton of small town America. Craig and I check in and head up to the room over the sounds of our witty conversation we hear what sounds like 'romance'. We listen a bit more carefully and our suspicions are confirmed. The decision to turn on the TV loudly is unanimous. We then speculate that we may be hearing the intimacies of one of our racing fraternity members who had left the track earlier with his new girlfriend. Luck is a fickle mistress since he would pay for his nightly good fortune by going home Saturday afternoon with what sounded like an engine about to explode. Thankfully it didn't last too long ;)
Saturday morning arrives and we begin with our early morning practice session. I go out and have an absolute blast jamming around the banking. I don't 'win' practice but set a few quick times that seem to bode well for later in the day. Despite every evidence to the contrary I still seem to have this part of my brain that thinks I know mechanically what is going on with this car. At Road Atlanta I had been locking up my brakes, having replaced (so I thought) every functioning part that made up the braking system before Rockingham and not locking up a wheel I naively think that the problem is solved. I put on a brand new fresh set of tires, since my other existing set had some residual flat spots from the RA race. Pro drivers don't need ABS, they'll maintain that you can stop a car more quickly without ABS. Which (for reasons I won't get too much into here) is true. With that said, it requires skill, a car more properly designed for not having ABS, and an infield track not polished shiny after years of neglect. When you lock up a tire you make a small 'flat spot' on it. At that point it ceases to be round, and every time you do it, makes it easier for you to do it again. If you do it bad enough it can destroy the tire. I go out for qualifying and immediately start locking up time after time. Not just the rears, but the fronts this time too. Which was nice for a change of pace. Regardless I come in feeling good about my time and am rewarded with 3rd place. In a shocking development Travis Wilson beats out THE Mike Skeen for pole. As the race starts the world quickly rights itself as Travis goes skidding off the track and Mike regains 1st place, leaving me in... 2nd! I manage to pull away from the pack but can't get my braking figured out and Mike puts a pretty big gap on me. Towards the end of the race I see Travis coming through the pack and soon he is right behind me. I spend the last 4 laps driving as quickly and as defensively as I can to keep him behind and it works. I'm rewarded with my highest finish ever, which felt pretty good. Vic Hall of team Salazzar (pronounced Salad Bar) Racing made the trip down from Washington D.C. just to join our hi-jinks. Knowing that 6th place is probably the best paying position of our race - with handcrafted trophy, t-shirt, and free brake pads pulled up right before the checkered and let some people by to claim the coveted award. So in other words he is a sandbagging cheater. He also claims to be nuclear inspector, just like Homer Simpson. Lets all hope that they find more oil soon.
Since Rockingham has a low turn out, we are rewarded with an extra afternoon race. I had taken the time between the first race and the second to completely dismantle my instrument cluster. Encouraged by several of my fellow racers we look for a mysterious ABS relay that might have gone bad. It also seems in an interesting piece of E30 trivia, that if the light bulb for the warning light goes bad on the instrument cluster the ABS system shuts down. Now I hold German engineers in pretty high regard, but I'm at a loss to describe how a pretty critical safety component can be disabled by a burnt out light bulb seemed like a good idea? We check the bulb and sure enough it is out. However fixing it doesn't seem to do anything, which means that more electrical stuff is broken that I don't know how to fix. All of this goofing around means that the race starts in 15 min. and my car looks like a radio shack that just exploded. JP Coates knowing my mechanical abilities tells me to get dressed while he zip ties and crams everything back into place. I take the grid with an ABS computer dangling by my feet, no working gauges (speedo, tach, etc), and the instrument cluster simply 'pushed' into position. Surprisingly this works out okay, and in typical DTOM laziness I leave it that way for Sunday too.They start this race with the quicker guys in the back and we're lumped in with the high horsepower cars. Meaning 30-ish people on track. The flag drops and I think we were 4 and 5 wide on the banking going around. It is 3 or so laps of madness before everyone settles into their positions. I managed to finish 6th or 18th overall. But it doesn't really count for anything but fun. Which these crazy races always are. The Rock has a great viewing area so everyone gets quite a cool show since they can see pretty much all of the track at one time. That leads to the obligatory trophy presentation where Jim Pantas - Nasa-SE head honcho and amateur comedian MC describes me affectionately as Skeen's b!tch. We leave the celebration around 8pm with everyone several beers into the Sat. night celebration. Sunday morning comes along and everyone looks hung over and pretty girm. We quickly find out why. The "Spec E30" guys in a bit of sophomoric prankery (that pretty much has become our calling card) take Jim Pantas' "pink pantas" race car and park it on the start/finish line sometime during the night. The steering wheel had been removed so that no one could move it. The track management doesn't find this amusing, along with unsubstantiated talk about physical threats and vandalism leads the track to talk about shutting the entire event down immediately for breach of contract. Things have officially gone 'too far'. The entire Spec E30 group is called into a secret meeting room and given the high school 'we're very disappointed in you speech'. Everyone is appropriately shamefaced and apologetic for putting Pantas in a bad spot. He is a genuinely nice guy with a good sense of humor and no one would intentionally jam him up.
During one of the school sessions a car leaves the track and takes out a fence in such a strange location I'm still not sure how the guy managed to pull it off. The angry track people still looking for an excuse to kick us out, say this is a safety issue and want to shut us down again. Jim goes back in negotiation mode and agrees to put yellow flags at the corners effected. Unfortunately this means that 2 or the 4 or so corners on the track are pretty much off limits. We qualify right after this happens and no one had time to really explain how it was supposed to work to the race groups. I get behind Skeen for qualifying and we're cooking along when an RX7 rookie comes onto the track going very slowly. He gives us a point and thinking we're past the incident I pass he and Skeen to hopefully continue my lap. Well long story short almost all the top qualifiers get screwed up and disqualified for passing under yellow. Personally I think a little more slack should have been granted since a) the yellow was a joke anyway just to make the track people happy and b) no one really explained exactly what the yellow was for prior to qualifying. Regardless since I was the slowest of the 5 impacted I start DFL (Dead F-ing Last). I'm pretty angry at the time since I know it is going to be almost impossible to make big moves when the first turn off the start is off limits for passing and how close the competition is in general. I managed another outstanding sixth place finish but am frustrated since I would have liked to have raced with some of the other top guys instead of working up through traffic. Having had my fill of the Rock - hopefully forever since I doubt we'll be going back anytime soon - we set off for home.
VZ Navigator, which has supplanted my brain due to a complete and utter lack of directional ability when it comes to finding my way around, finally lets me down. For some reason it takes us roughly an hour or more out of our way and turns a miserable 5-6 hour drive into an even more miserable 7-8 hour drive. I'm coming around a corner almost home around 10:30pm at night and there is a car, dark parked in the middle of the road with some dude rummaging around the trunk. I'm side by side with another car and we both see him at the same time. The car gets on the brakes and has to skid off onto the shoulder to avoid hitting this guy. I lock mine up too not being able to tell exactly what lane the guy is in. The dude looks startled but doesn't seem to be especially concerned that he almost was crippled or killed. I gather the truck up and arrive safely at home after another exciting adventure in amateur grassroots racing.
Come say "Hi" to the Bad Guy.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
I'm not a huge NASCAR fan but if I have time and its on TV I'll watch a bit.
My favorite racer(s) Tony Stewart and Kyle Busch. Why? Because they're jerks. Being a jerk is hard work, trust me I know. Most of the time people don't like you and who wants that? I think one of the biggest problems with road racing in the US, no one wants to be controversial or speak their mind. Even NASCAR tries to shut these guys up and make them play nice. But, its clever. Without the bad guy there is no hero, or interesting story.
Without these guys calling people names, insulting their team, or wrecking some guy out on the cool down lap, I'm not as interested. To me hockey without the fights isn't worth watching. And here is another secret about NASCAR, there is a lot of engineering and go fast in those cars. They try to hill-billy it up with a bunch of lingo but these guys are all pretty clever like it or not. Now we'll be at Rockingham in two weeks, and you can say they just drive around in a circle. Well I've driven 3/4 of a circle at 125 mph 3 wide and its enough to pucker you up. At 200 mph in a pack of 30 cars 2 and 3 wide for 3 hours, that is some hard work.
And Stewart is from Indiana too. So don't be afraid to root for the bad guy!
Well here we go. Some of you may find this amusing. I'm a professional idiot argue-er so these guys are really out of their weight class since I do this stuff at work roughly 12 hours a day.
Either way some of you (the few that don't follow online grassroots amateur racing as closely as you should) will enjoy some classic Jim Robinson style internet forum bickering.
