Now this is cool! I just posted a picture at minimania of a mural we did in our playroom:
And found out that the car is being worked on at Boot 2 Bonnet Restoration in California. Looks like they're doing some really nice work to fix the front clip and windshield since the guy who owned it after me somehow flipped the front end up while driving and smashed it up a little. The current owner is taking care of it nicely! So cool to see it again.
Probably because I sold the little car this past summer. Had a kid, moved to the suburbs, bought a house, and prioritized on family. Funds from selling the car became more important than the car itself, and I figure I can always play with cars again in the future. To buy a house where we bought it with the housing market doing what it was doing was a much more rare perfect storm of opportunity. So maybe this blog will return later! But for now ... peace out!
The other day at DSG's site they posted a bunch of awesome looking old black and white photos. They inspired me to make a simple 75mm Black and White Film action in Photoshop, through which I ran a whole ton of old mini photos. A couple of the photos ended up looking really nice with the effect, and I posted 'em over at flickr.
Youtube has just gone widescreen! Kinda cool, but I'm especially pumped cause a bunch of my videos are actually in the appropriate widescreen format and look pretty good. Check 'em out at my youtube channel.
So, due to recent life events, car stuff hasn't had a whole ton of attention lately. And now it's getting cold as hell, and with the impending threat of snow and salty roads I figured it'd be a good time to stow away the little monster for the duration.
Have a good rest, you little freak! I'll see you when it's warm out, and we can try to work out some of your kinks.
Friday night, my long lost friend Steve joined me from NYC for a trip up to VT. It was a shitty rainy night and the going was slow, but it was a good drive after we met up with Alex of DSG with his 1JZGTE powered Dodge Raider. That's the twin turbo motor from a toyota Supra. His latest project car used to tow his race car ( EVO II GSR ). A totally awesome setup.
We conked out immediately when we got to the hotel at 1am.
The next morning the event began and the course was still pretty wet from the previous nights' rain. I wasn't too worried because FWD in the wet isn't treacherous. Just a guess, but this guy will probably do pretty well:
I could make a "hot chicks with douchebags" reference here, but I won't.
Here's some video Alex got of the GTR launching:
Anyway -- we had a full day of runs and it was fantastic. I was really scared at the beginning of the day -- the surface and quality of the road made the mini VERY sketchy, and the wet pavement made the car feel like it was sliding all over the place and a little out of control. I went slow. But the road dried up bit by bit as the day wore on, and the last run of the day was almost dry, so I had a lot more confidence. Also, by my fourth run I was starting to learn the course a bit.
Who is this jackass?
I think I absorbed the details of this course slower than I would have normally; the first two runs of the day I was paying attention to nothing but keeping the car on the road. Wait; actually I was paying a great deal of attention to the details of the course, the crowns, the camber, the wet spots, the different edges of the asphalt, but I was not learning the overall layout of the course at all. Kinda dumb. I need to learn to just relax and pay attention.
Here's my best run of the day:
Saturday night we went to an awesome restaurant for dinner in stabbyville. Shep left his number for the waitress. He never got a call.
Sunday we awoke to pouring rain with thunderstorms. BOOOOO. So Sunday's runs were cancelled and Steve and I went to breakfast at a seriously ass kicking Diner in Stab Vegas. Doesn't Alex look pumped?
