Conversation I had during the 2 1/2 hours I was working the course yesterday whilst the wind froze me and the sun burnt my face to a crisp: John: Man, Tony’s WRX is awesome! Me: Yeah, he’s got everything on it…his 6-speed transmission alone cost $4k John: Holy SHIT…what does he do for a living Me: He’s a programmer, I think… John: See, now that’s what I need to get into…no more of this turning wrenches for Uncle Sam ...
Why were American cars from the early 90’s so crappy? Specifically, I’m speaking of the the Chevy Lumina and Ford Taurus. Granted, these were cars of the (now non-existent) cheap, mid-size, soft suspension class, but where’s the quality? Drive a 10 year old Accord versus a 10 year old Taurus, and the Honda is a revelation. Why is it people at autocross keep trying to kill me? I was 10 feet away from 3 spins this weekend, one of which saw a guy in a Mitsubishi Evo sliding at me WITH HIS FOOT STILL ON THE GAS. Also, got to watch a 4000 lb Volvo S60R slide right into a patch of grass I’d been standing in just 10 minutes before. ...
…one rather surprised competitor at the Atlanta Nat’l AutoX.
On order from Ken Towrey’s in Louisville, 4 Kumho V710 racing slicks: ß
Hats off to Wes Allen, of our local chapter of SCCA, competing today (and tomorrow!) in the grueling Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona. Wes is running in the GT class in a Porsche GT3. Here’s his team listing: Number Class Team name Drivers car type sponsors 43 GT Orison-Planet Earth Motorsports Wes Allen, Lexington, KY; Brad Blum, Winter Park, FL; Eric Lux, Buffalo, NY; Manuel Soltero, San Juan, PR; Ron Zitza, Maitland, FL ...
Few pics from the 2004 Awards banquet David Patrick My 2nd place tropy:
Random, utterly useless tidbit: After trying this past season every weekend to find the perfect tire pressure combination for autocross bliss in a MINI, I found it in my last 4 events, pretty much by accident. IF you have a MINI Cooper, Sports Suspension, and 15" tires running 205/50R15 Kumho Victoracers, run the rear tires 4psi HIGHER than the fronts, and the car will turn-in marvelously. If the event is warm to hot (that is, above 50 degrees), run the tires at 44f/47r, adjusting the rears up or down in increments to increase or decrease rotation. ...
Quote of the YEAR from the past weekend’s autocross: Since when do they invite 15 year old hookers to our events? Andrew Buck…the man, the myth, the legend. Incriminating video of Mr. Coleman with said trollops * * * This actually reminds me of something I wanted to Blog on: The differences between the three regions of SCCA I attend. Don’t worry, this will be to the point, I promise. Lexington (CKR): A bunch of overgrown frat boys who are out for a good time. Mostly guys fleeing from their wives, jobs, and all responsibility to let it all hang out in their miatas. Laid-back, in general. Wives and gf’s only…no groupies. ...
If my splitting headache this morning is any indication, it’s going to rain today. Alot. We had our monthly meeting of the Central Kentucky Region of SCCA yesterday, down at Jim Sawyer’s Bar and Grille, downtown where the old Civic Center shops used to be. These days, it’s mostly known as “That place at Main & Broadway where there’s a Starbucks”. Sawyers is a great place, and the CKR members are great people. Mike Janssen is getting married to his sweetheart on Sept 3rd. There’s an Autocross on Sepetember 5th, so the honeymoon will likely be short. He’s trying to get his performance parts business off-the-ground, and he was trying to sell me some camber plates for my MINI, which would kick me out of stock and land me smack into STS or F Street Prepared, if I decided I still wanted to run on R-compound race tires. ...
This is how addicting autocross is: I would like to modify my MINI. Specifically, I’d like to put a different wheel and tire combination on it (some 15x7 wheels with some WIDE Hoosiers) and a rear swaybar, and maybe some suspension work (a slight lowering) If I do that, I’d be in FSP, the same class my friend Russell Long is in in his Morris Mini Cooper S, a 1967. It’s kindof a ripe class for picking around here. No one who’s nationally competitive seems ot be running in that class. I’d probably get beat alot if I went anywhere else, but…on the bright side, I’d be out of HS class for good. One rear swaybar and that’s it. ...
And now some gloss to go with the illustrations. My weekend in Sparta. Two days of autocross, or “How burnt-out can you be?” I’ve autocrossed for the last 6 weeks. I haven’t been to my home church for a regular Sunday service since May 9th. »sigh« It’s something I love, but it’s really taking over my life. …and I didn’t do so hot at the races, either. Not being whiney, just realizing that I feel like I’m driving the wheels off my MINI, but I’m still not catching Scott. Beating him requires consistent excellence and a bit of luck, and I’ve only done it once. With the condition of my Victoracers, that’s probably not happening again, at least not this year. ...
In the past 3 days, I’ve driven roughly 500 miles. Saturday, Susan needed me to come down and fix their wireless router so that it would interoperate with their library card catalog server. Basically, the way I had it set-up, there was a D-link 614 4-port switch that sat between their DSL modem and their network, doing Network Address Translation (NAT) and defining a private network 192.168.2.0 with a netmask of 255.255.255.0. On THAT network, I had their wireless router sitting on 192.168.2.5, also doing NAT and defining its own private network for wireless clients 192.168.0.0, netmask 255.255.255.0. ...
The weekender blog: Spent most all of this weekend up in and around Louisville. Friday night, I went up for dinner with Whitney and Joey, then Saturday we found ourselves in sunny New Haven, KY: Where we found ourselves at the Kentucky Railway Museum to ride Thomas the Tank Engine on his tour of America. The start of Saturday was a disaster; Joey hid Whitney’s keys inside the laundry and we didn’t leave until a few minutes after 11, when we had tickets for the 12:20 train. It takes a little over an hour to get to New Haven via US 31E through Bardstown. On the bright side, we got to take the Pup and the drive was a blast with Whitney and Joey in his car seat in the back. ...
Heard complaints lately that the ‘Blog is a real bitter pill to swallow. As in, “Harold, you’re frickin’ depressing, man!” So, my hand-clap of praise for the day: My mom found the watch I “lost”, my Eddie Bauer watch that was a graduation present from my father. Awesomeness! Also, a small report from the autocross at EKU yesterday. Short course, with lots of sweeper elements and good flow. Not very technical. With the low turn-out we had 3 heats with 6 runs apiece. (I would have pics, but Whitney absconded with my Nikon digicam.) ...
LOL!! THIS IS ME! I particularly like: - Your email address refers to your race car rather than to you. - You have car parts in your cubicle at work. - After your answer to “What did you do this weekend?” the next question is always: “And you do this for fun? Right?” - Your first date involves asking her to crew for you. - A neighbor asks if you have any oil, to which you query, “Synthetic or organic?” and they reply, “Vegetable or corn.” - Everywhere you go, you try to find the fastest line through the turn. - You always do a toe & heel downshift while whoever might be your passenger gives you a real funny look.
Shots of A rather stormy ft. knox (Pics courtesy of Whitney) Had a fair to middlin’ day: Kept chanting “Look a-head…Look a-head” to myself throughout the course, but I couldn’t seem to put all the pieces together. DNF’d or coned every run; just wasn’t that much fun doing that. We had 3 heats, with 5 runs each (before the last heat was shortened to 3 runs b/c of weather), HS was in the 2nd heat. ...
autocrosstraining: n. (colloquial) The act or enterprise of exercising muscle groups heterogeneously to participate in the activity of autocross :-) Some neologisms are a little too good to pass-up.
I’m so spent I can barely hold my eyes open to write this. but I WON! I WON! No voodoo, no tricks, no luck. I was up at Kentucky Speedway at Sparta, and I ran 5 clean runs without hitting a single cone, knocking .2-.6 of a second off each pass up until I won my class. The sense of accomplishment and satisfaction was enough to get me home alive. ...
For some reason, this picture is autocross for me; it’s the anticipation, the course, the car, the man, the weather.
Some pics from the evolution school I took on Friday: Ahh..nothing like MINIs in the sunrise A little symmetry as Ron (left) and Mark (right) change their street tires for Khumho Ecsta V700’s. Rons would delaminate from the heat by the end of the day. This is Ron’s MINI about to head out on course. We had two parallel courses, both exactly the same, so both groups compared times against one another. I was the fastest MINI, but Mark was right behind me.