When Bad Things Happen to Bad People
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
(Editorial note: this is pretty half a$$ed in terms of narrative, it is more a stream of consciousness’ rendition of events, but hey it’s a start)
First off to put things in perspective, I have my health, a decent job, all four limbs. So this isn’t the type of story that is going to make Extreme Home Makeovers there are people much worse off than I am – go see Slumdog Millionaire or something if you like that stuff. Also this isn’t some type of desperate plead for sympathy either, if anything it is more of an excuse on my p!ss poor updates lately. At one point on our way from Virginia to Atlanta Craig stated “God hates you.” He isn't the first to chalk most of my bad luck up to karma, but really at this point I’m not sure even that can account for the ankle biting madness that surrounds me since I'm just thoughtless and insulting vs. actually a serial killer - maybe in a previous life.
Strangely though I have a soft spot for dogs, I've never met one I didn't like. And I can't watch any movie that even remotely pertains to dogs dying. Like 8 below, it was a Disney picture not really hard core drama, couldn't make even 15 min. in, pretty soft I know. One of my good friends recently had to put his dog to sleep (we miss you Norm) right before a lot of this happened and I can't say that didn't weigh on my mind as we continue(d) our struggles with our dog Indy. IF you have a pet and haven't already, please look into getting pet insurance. We're lucky enough to have the means to afford (so far) all the various surgeries and medicines however I'd hate to ever be in a position where my financial condition dictates how I care for my pets. We didn't know it was an option when we got our dogs and I can safely say we've managed to spend more on our dogs than on my racecar and that is saying something. Our one vet who has become a friend was kind enough to point out that I could have gone to vet school for what we've spent surgery. Anyway enough about that.
I’ll try and condense the past 3 months into a few quick pictures and captions:
March – motor breaks unexplainably thus negating 3-4 months of work and putting the car back to where we started in December.
April – car goes to BimmerWorld for what, I had planned to be, “finishing touches” like safety stuff, paint, and fancy decals. They get it ½ done and I go up for a race and test drive at VIR, we confirm “Yep motor’s still broke”. Everyone inexplicitly shakes their head and says never heard anything like that before.
A rare site - an E30 coming off a pro team stacker transport!
An awesome track and fun time, especially since I got to drive Brendan’s car (we made some progress dropping nearly 5 seconds off his previously fastest time there). I’m second in the B-mod national championship hunt!
Fancy decal place semi-goes out of business. Engine comes out of the car stalling progress on fancy data / gauge solution, also means windows are stuck in permanent ‘down’ position. My truck overheats the day before a planned trip up to BW to pick the car up requiring a shuffling of plans. Mechanic states that this water pump failure is “uncommon”.
Craig and I make a pilgrimage up to BimmerWorld HQ the next weekend to see just how a pro racing team lives (the answer is they live much like I did in college). On the way home it is raining so hard that people are stopping on the highway and visibility is about zero. Since the windows are stuck down it is now raining inside of my ‘new’ car, complete with awesome new seat, and fancy new electronic dash. I’m imagining my car looking like an aquarium. It is here that Craig made his theological observations.
My wife takes our dogs to spring break 2009 and our one dog develops an odd sore on his leg. She goes to the vet and finds after 8 months his body appears to be rejecting a plate from his previous knee surgery.
Spring Break 2009 - Who let the dogs out!
He goes to the vet, who sends us to the surgeon. They take x-rays, plate needs to come out, bone might have a tumor. Surgeon says that less than 5% of dogs have this problem. Surgery goes well, biopsies go to the lab. We wait, I carry 90 lbs dog out into the yard every time he needs to pee, we don’t sleep much. Dog hates wearing goofy collar manages to take out stitches while we’re somehow not looking, new vet lectures me.
The big dog rolls in the grass after being carried outside.
May – car resumes its (rightful?) position in Craig’s garage. We do bare minimum to the engine to get it ready to go back in. Craig loans Dave White and I his car for CMP enduro race. We win and eat Mexican food. Brendan and Ted prep my old engine to go back in the car, I get sick with some type of mini-swine flu (despite first ever flu shot).
Dave White, the very pregnant trophy girl, and I, all hoping that black is as slimming as they say it is.
Dog results come back kind of, he has some type of crazy staph infection that requires 7 days of injections with an antibiotic that can cause kidney failure and hearing loss, also might have a fungal infection in the bone, but not cancer - still might have to cut leg off though. Surgeon and regular vet tell us the rarity of these types of things, especially the fungus. Christine becomes really good at collecting urine samples with those disposable Tupperware containers.
The Barber enduro is cancelled and we all sigh with relief since that gives us more time to finish things up. Barber enduro is back on, and we spend Memorial Day weekend pulling 8 hour days while Craig tries not to get divorced from his pregnant wife who is tired of us ‘visiting’ their house. Second lab result comes back, fungus isn’t in bone, but is present and needs anti-fungal medication that is very expensive 2 months worth, oh yeah by the way this will hurt his liver so we need to monitor that. Good news is full recovery expected, we sigh relief. Few days later dogs ear swells up with a hematoma (basically a huge fluid filled bruise, like wrestler’s cauliflower ear). They can’t fix it since his liver is stressed from the medicine so he walks around with a painful water balloon thing hanging from his head. He is miserable, oddly this is a common condition in Weims and the first time he has been ‘typical’ – regretfully so.
Is that a sausage in your ear or are you just happy to see me?
We get the car running, Brendan is now sick, I leave the car at RWL for him to finish a few things at work to make sure we’re ready for Barber. Since I felt that running the full weekend at Barber would be pressing my luck on a car that is almost 80% new and untested parts, I plan to just show up for the “enduro” race on Saturday. The “enduro” is now just an hour long, meaning it is a total joke, and a transparent ploy to get more money for NASA on what is a money losing event. Since I hate Barber and short enduro’s I complain a lot about this to no avail. See my feelings and description of Barber Motorsport’s Park here.
I pick up the car, and Brendan, bright and early Saturday morning. It is warm already and looks to be getting hotter, but at least no rain. We fiddle faddle with a few last minute things and load the car up for the trip to scenic Leeds, AL. The trip is 2 hours door to door and since we gain an hour with the Central time zone we’re there around 9am. We go to the gate to register and are told the entry fee is $30 a piece. Incredulously I inform them I’m racing in the event. The lady tells us it is $30 each, and please sign the waiver. This is kind of like your local county fair charging a $100 to get in; I’m $60 lighter just to entertain the ‘fans’. That spoils my good mood and brings back my “I hate Barber mindset”. I go to register with the NASA folks and they’re nice enough to refund me at least $30 for my entrance fee.
We still need to put stickers on the car, I had deliberately waited on this since I knew that Scott Mc MiniMe would be on hand. He is a true graphic artist (not like Craig who simply pretends). He is also really good at putting stickers on, however the festivities from last night have dampened his enthusiasm for working on my car gratis. I cajole him into the bigger harder stickers, but am left to fend for myself on the remaining. See the picture and see if you can guess who did what.
Don't worry it isn't finished this is just the 'interim' step.
Since we’re in first place overall (which defies explanation since there are much faster cars in the series) I should be starting on pole – meaning first guy in line. NASA, in a further attempt to stop the monetary bleeding, has let another group share the track with us, and they drive “Radicals”. (Really fast go-kart type cars with some flimsy bodywork on them.) They are a) very fast and b) incredibly hard to see in your mirrors due to being so low to the ground.
What is really radical about these cars is how bad the drivers are!
The race directors determine for safety to start them first. That means I’m now starting 16th. No problem, since these guys aren’t technically racing anyway. We manage to get most everything buttoned up and I go to the ‘gird’ where cars are parked in their starting order before proceeding out on track. There are numerous volunteers that work with the officials to get people in the right spots. The first girl confirms I’m looking for spot 16, I pull forward and the next guy motions me to the left row, I can’t see the numbers at this point so I follow his directions. As I pull forward I see that I’m not in the correct row and I need to be one over. The grid isn’t designed for parking lot maneuvers and you have a lot of people and cars moving around. I yell for help and a guy comes over. I mention the dilemma and he acknowledges and goes to talk to the head starter person. They chat for awhile and he goes back to staring at the sky. I yell again, he remembers me but doesn’t seem to have the answer for getting me to my spot. He walks off again. I holler one more time and he motions me into a blank spot #35. I’m thinking he is going to use this as a ‘conduit’ to the next row so I pull up. He is looking both ways to make sure I’m clear to advance. That is when the cars start to pull off the grid to begin the race. I’ve dropped from 1 to 19 before the first lap. I express my frustration on the radio and to the gentleman as I drive past.
"The Grid" imagine full of cars with me at the back instead of the front. I learned what Craig has felt like all this time..
Thankfully the race is uneventful despite being very crowded with fast cars / slow drivers that you can’t see in your mirrors and I manage to get past all of our serious competition and avoid manslaughter charges for killing any go-kart racers. Official results have me in third place, but we’ve lodged a protest since it appears that the top 2 finishers in our class didn’t do the mandatory 5 gallon fuel pitstop. So we may actually have won, we’ll see. I don’t have my hopes set very high since ‘unorganized mess’ is the best description I can come up with on how things are being run lately.
Is this the karma they're speaking of?
We’re home by 6pm. Sunday rolls around and it seems warm upstairs in the house. I check the upstairs Air Conditioner and it clearly isn’t working. I try the AC repair tricks I know (very few) and nothing works. Monday and I call the AC guy to come out and check. He says “Well here is your problem --- Good thing the house didn’t burn down, I’ve never seen anything like this before.” Well at least the car starts now.
Good Racing = Poor Blogging
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Warning this is pretty lame, I'd like to think it is my first 'lame' one but you guys probably know better. Stories about people that are warm, well fed, and rested rarely make interesting tales unfortunately (for you, but not for me!). I've tried to combat the lameness with cool pictures and some video.
Where to start? Usually these things write themselves since I just have to plan on a race and then try to remember all the goofy things [I do / that happen around me] I’m not naïve enough to think that this is a sign of things to come, but I’ll try to be optimistic. For once everything went pretty smoothly. Of course the secret to happiness is low expectations. I didn’t get to drive my own car since as you can see from the picture there is still daylight coming from places that should be filled with mechanical stuff like an engine.
My car has become the victim of ‘scope creep’, otherwise known as the ‘while we’re in there’ effect. When you take out a car's engine and transmission, it is easy to get side tracked on other projects like - replace every other part in the car. That is effectively what we’re doing. It will be pretty much brand new and rebuilt except that the outside will still look like warmed up cr@p. Of course that has dawned on me slowly so ordering stuff, and only working one weekend day isn’t speeding up progress but it has kept everyone involved out of divorce court (so far).
The fact that my car won’t even roll in its current condition meant that I was going to miss our February opener. This sucked pretty bad, since technically I started this engine rebuild project back in June of 2008 (long time fans will remember the pool hall). Craig stepped up like the true gentleman he is and offered his car to myself and new enduro partner Dave White. Dave had his previous enduro ride sold out from under him by newly castrated JP Coates (formerly of Beertech Racing). Pro ringer James Clay’s and DTOM Racing's 2009 contract negiotiations broke down over his World Challenge commitments and lack of providing a team coat to me. That meant I was looking around for another hot shoe. Dave was only too happy to oblige. And thus the BW JV All Star team was born. Dave is a single dude, who has I think several nursing home fraud scams going on in the North Carolina area, and with Obama beefy up govt. entitlement programs I expect to parlay this enduro deal into big things!
So we had a car, we had a team name, and I’d only miss the two sprint races (which under the new points rules I can drop as my 2 lowest scoring races I just need to win the rest of the season!). This worked out well since I was under significant spousal pressure to attend a charity event with my lovely wife on Saturday. The downside was that I’d have to leave Atlanta early morning drive the 4-5 hours to CMP, help Craig get the car ready, race for an 1 ½, help Craig get the car ready for the next day, and then drive the 4-5 hours back. That makes for a long day. To lend a helping hand our frequent DTOM chief mechanic Brendan Digel volunteered to make the ride up and back to keep me from falling asleep and also to watch the race.
The race itself was a lot more exciting than it should have been. Dave was set to start, and the grid was assigned by random draw, unfortunately we got the short straw and ended up at the very back. Our enduro class is once again the biggest in the field with 10 of the 16 total cars in E2. Steve Foushee taking a page out of my playbook decided to get into the enduro game and enlisted Mike Skeen.com to help hot shoe his ride. Dave took the green flag and within 3 laps was on Mike’s bumper. The sideline quarterbacks among us, figured Dave would hang around until it was time to pitstop and then I would hopefully get around Steve easy peasy. No one told Dave that plan, and he passed mikeskeen.com 5 or so laps later and kept him behind until it was time to pit.
The pitstop went smooth except for Craig and Brendan almost getting killed by a Mustang Challenge car that thought the pit speed was 110mph. I hop in and take off. Back stretch and they’re waving a black flag at me. I ignore it and keep going around another lap. They continue to wave, the car feels fine so it isn’t mechanical. I pull in and stop by the official. I crossed over the ‘blend’ line entering the track. Whatever. Of course that little conversation isn’t helping as people continue to drive past. Our comfortable lead is gone. I crank out my laps until the fuel light comes on and it is time to pit. Dave asks what my lap times are and I’m consistently a second behind his. I jump out and let him pull anchor duty. Still p!ssed about getting black flagged I tell the officials again what I think of them since roughly 3 other cars ignored any semblance of pit lane safety and my ‘crossing’ the blend line was questionable at best. I’ve given up on the retards running this show we’ll just have to do our best to work around it. Our 2 pitstop, and 1 black flag strategy doesn’t appear to be the fastest. Dave has to catch the Foushee #4 car and we’re running out of laps. White shows he is ready for anchor duty by pulling off a last lap pass and they race to the checker. Dave stays in front and 3 cars finish on the same lap roughly a second or so between them. Much more exciting than we wanted it to be. Team BW JV All Stars FOR THE WIN!
I reward the team with some cheap Mexican food, and myself with a big plate of fajitas. Winning a race and eating Mexican food is probably as close to heaven as I’ll get in this lifetime. Craig is nice enough to collect our trophy (see pic). Sometime NASA embraces their southern redneck roots a little too enthusiastically. Brendan and I drive back to Atlanta, I get to bed around 1:30am.
It was a great weekend for Craig, he put his car on pole twice and won the feature sprint for his first podium and first race win! He finished second the next day. Unfortunately there was plenty of car to car contact as the links and pictures below will attest to.
More Video?!?!! - how about deleted scenes
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Oh you said more cowbell? Anyway here are some more videos from Beertech's 380, you can see me passing him in these since due to inverted starts and DQ qual times he was given every opportunity by the race officials to excel. Unfortunately the many performance enhancing drugs he takes aren't enough to give him the courage he needs around the Rock's banking. Watch the Roll the Rock #1 Race around 5:53 mark when Travis bangs into him just for being Beertech (Travis is part of the Malt Liquor Tech crew). Something tells me we'll see some payback for that down the road...
Somehow I failed to mention that both Friday night and Sat. morning on the way to and from the track we were forced to go through police checkpoints looking for unlicensed drivers. On Friday night one officer quizzed me while another inspected my vehicle for anything they could write a ticket on. Sat. morning I was feeling a little more cocky so I asked the inbred Barney Fife looking security guard "We got stopped last night at one of these too. Do you all have a big problem with unlicensed drivers in North Carolina?" To which he replied "Yep - sure do".
After following some of the slowest drivers I've ever seen through the North and South versions of the state I think the problem isn't the licensing it is teaching them where the gas pedal is.
If the picture of the toliet didn't make sense that was another prank pulled while we were away from the track. It was positioned in lieu of a passenger seat. The funny part was I didn't notice it until we were almost ready to practice, and I had been at the track for an hour or so.
Also while changing wheels and tires Travis 'accidently' sat on my open hood causing it to shut partially on my hand. That hurt pretty bad, but not enough to take me out (like he had planned). Everyone agreed that was a stupid place for me to put my hand.
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.
Here is the wreck I talk about below. Hard to tell if Bob got a little love tap from the miata that helped him go around. The 944 went straight into him and basically stuck him against the wall.
Scott #467 aims for the smoke Nascar style and contemplates his next dry cleaning bill....
I'm like everyone else on the internet I love watching stupid stuff like this, but I can tell you when you're there an in the middle of it and it could be someone you know involved it isn't nearly as fun. In fact going by on the yellow laps I always get a little sick to my stomach when I see a bad crunch like this or when Chuck's car was flipped over at RA last year.
Anyway, as long as everyone walked away no harm, no foul. Enjoy.
I'm the 4th car, black with the big silver BimmerWorld sticker. You can see the smoke when I lock up in 3 and then later in 7. This is Chuck Taylor's camera he was nice enough to follow me around for this race and tape me. Haha...
