Hello Family,
It’s been a busy
couple of months for Susan and me since our last update.
About a month ago we
went crazy and bought another red Miata. For those keeping score we
now have five working cars (our neighbors are almost as excited as we
are!). This Miata is newer by a few years than our other one and has
relatively low miles (1997 with 70K miles). It was a pretty good
deal but the car came with many issues and Susan and I have spent a lot of time
doing work fixing its deficits. We’ve replaced the suspension, had
the exhaust quieted, replaced interior pieces, fixed the soft top back window
and zipper, banged out a couple of dents, repaired and painted a back panel,
and still have a few things to do. It’s mostly been fun and we’ve
learned a lot about the car. It is a blast to drive and we’re happy
with our purchase.
The rallycross season
began last month and we’ve participated in two events so far. The
first event came soon after a snow storm and the course was a sloppy
mess. Before the race I had thought driving on mud would be fun; I
now know better. Most of the day was an exercise in patience as the
wheels spun and spun with steering inputs being almost
meaningless. I found out that I have very little patience when it
comes to driving. The relative high-power our car produces was
wasted and there were sections of the course we could have walked through
faster. We both had dismal results and the car was filthier than it
has ever been before (this is saying a lot).
The second race was
held this past Sunday and went much better. It didn’t start that way
as I broke a wheel stud when switching out the wheels and stripped
another. We barely had time to replace the stud before getting the
car tech’d (having your car tech’d or checked for safety is required to
race). The event was at a truck driving school south of Colorado
Springs and is known for its high grip and relatively smooth
surface. It was extremely windy with dust flying
everywhere. It was a great day for us and we finished 2nd(me)
and 3rd (Susan) out of eleven drivers (most who had beaten us
at the prior event). It was also a year ago this event that the
engine blew on the WRX and we were happy to go home with only the power
steering starting to fade (yay, another thing to fix!).
Also this last weekend
Susan and I participated in Doors Open Denver. It is an annual event
where various buildings around Denver open their doors for a weekend to people
who are interested in seeing what’s inside. Susan has been going for
five or six years but this was my first time. Because of the
rallycross we went on Saturday. A lot of the most interesting places
to visit are churches and we went to several. The amount of detail
and variety in the structures was very neat. We were a little
disappointed that we only got to hear one of the big organs playing but it was
fascinating nonetheless.
Going back another day
to late Friday afternoon (it was a busy weekend) Susan picked up our newest
foster pug named Lucy. She’s pretty standard for a pug (cute, fat,
crazy, etc) but, unlike our other fosters, has no disabilities. While
we have no qualms about pugs with disabilities it does mean that the chances
are much higher that Lucy will find a new home sooner. We have not
had any of our fosters get adopted by anyone besides us and would love to see
this one’s story end with finding a good family. She has never
been kenneled that we know of and, because of this, gets free-reign while we
are away from the house. Besides being at first fascinated with her
existence the other pugs have been mostly ambivalent toward
Lucy. We’re happy to have her.
My band is still
trucking along or something. We played a show a couple of weeks ago
which, while fun, side-tracked us for a month with rehearsals from the CD we’ve
been working on for over half a year (not that I’m counting or anything). I’ve
implemented an aggressive schedule to try and finish the recording soon and get
a master CD off for production. It’s still enjoyable but I’ll be
very glad to be done with it.
You may have heard
about the “crazy” weather we had last week in Colorado. We’re
jokingly calling it the blizzard of 2013. The forecasters were
predicting over a foot of snow in town and blizzard conditions. Susan said
the list of businesses and government offices preemptively closing was the
longest she’d ever seen. It ended up being much to do about not
much. It did snow consistently for well over a day but the weather
folks forgot or blanked on the fact that the temperatures have been very warm
(60-70 degrees) on most days for the two weeks or so preceding the storm. Thus
the ground was still warm and there was virtually no accumulation on the roads
and what piled up on other surfaces melted in less than 24 hours.
That’s the news from
our neck of the woods. We hope this finds you happy and healthy!
Max and Susan
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