Hello everyone
Susan and I had a
rallycross the first weekend of September at CORE. We also camped at
the site the night before. We have almost no camping equipment and
borrowed our neighbor’s tent. It was much bigger than we needed (I believe
it was made for nine occupants) and our little pile of blankets seemed very
small inside. A few other rallycrossers (including our neighbor
Gregg) camped with us. No fires were allowed so instead we used an
electric lantern and two Citronella candles to set the mood. We
consumed adult beverages in excess and had fun. I played the part of
the old man and went to bed around 10:00. Susan and the others
played Frisbee (it had LED lights) until 2:00am. I didn’t mention
this before but the supposed purpose of camping was to make the event the next
day easier. It’s an hour and a half drive to the venue and everyone
is generally rushing around getting things done in the morning. I
woke up to a very quiet campsite at 6:00 before the sun came up feeling
refreshed (albeit with a crick in my neck and a sore back). I think
I finally drug Susan out of the tent around 7:30 and by the time we packed up
the tent and other stuff the morning felt just as rushed as any
other. In my mind the camping wasn’t worth it and I don’t think
we’ll be investing in our own equipment any time soon. The race
itself was fun and I came in a close 2nd.
Our foster pug Tina
was adopted on September 15th to a couple we’ve been friends
with for the last several years. They already had a massive
lab-mastiff mix and wanted another smaller dog. They also
immediately changed Tina’s name to Lucy which confuses me more than a little since
our foster pug before Tina was also named Lucy. We are very glad to
have her get adopted so quickly as it made it easier to let her go.
Jana was very pregnant
in our last update and is not as of this one. Susan and I
went up to visit Matt, Jana, and their new baby girl Elle on the 21st. Elle
is still in her “so tiny you think you’re going to break her” stage and is very
cute in her baby-way. When she’s in her swing she’ll sometimes bring
her hands almost together and touch her fingers in a somewhat maniacal fashion
(her parents call it her “take over the world” pose). Matt made BBQ
and we visited for a few hours. Jana had two very close calls after
the birth and we’re all thankful for modern medicine and blood donors.
The next day was the
Colorado Pug Rescue’s (CPR) annual Pugs in the Park. This is theannual
fundraiser for the organization and is quite the ordeal. Several
vendors came out and there are many fundraiser-type things going
on. There was a pug costume contest, a pug race, a pug hotdog eating
contest, a silent auction, etc. At one booth a person could buy
squares in a big grid set up in the middle of everything where a pug would be
placed. Whoever bought the square the pug used to do his or her
bid’ness would win some money. Good fun all around. The winner
of the pug costume contest was a pug in a bubble bath. My favorite
was a pugstachio with a “get crackin” sign hung around her
neck. Susan and I had to go stag since we didn’t have a foster pug
to bring and we volunteered in the foster tent (this is where the fosters are
brought to show off). We met many very sweet darlings and wish we
could adopt them all (well, most of them anyways). We also brought a
PA system from our studio to use for announcements. We’re suckers
for pug art and acquired a few cool pieces that will soon adorn the walls of
our home. It was a good time for sure.
After we adopted out
Tina (always Tina to me) I made the proclamation that we wouldn’t take on
another foster until sometime in October. Then CPR emailed us
directly about a pug they thought was a good fit for us and we got Zoey on
September 26th. Zoey is an almost 8 year old fawn female
from a home where one of the children developed allergies to
her. The house keeper for this home then took in
Zoey. They let her sleep in their bed until the snoring was too much
for them. Zoey was then banished to the laundry room where she
proceeded to whine. At this point the original owner then contacted
the rescue (insert a big *sigh* here). Besides infected ear canals and nose
wrinkles she is in great shape medically. She LOVES people and is
learning to tolerate the other pugs. She is also and by far the
largest pug we’ve had under our roof. Zoey doesn’t have a lot of
excess fat but is just bigger in every way than our permanent
pugs. She weighs in at 27 lbs whereas the others range between 11
and 14 lbs. She is well trained and gets free reign while we’re
out. Zoey is already set to go to a new home this
Sunday. The family is driving out from Kansas to get
her.
The SCCA National
Rallycross Championships were held from October 4-6th in Tulsa,
Oklahoma and Susan, Zoey, and myself attended (doesn’t “myself” sound better
than “I”?). The original plan was to drive out on the 3rd but
we ended up finishing our packing at 6:30 the night before and decided to just
head out early. That night we stayed at a surprisingly nice Days Inn
in a small town outside of Hays, Kansas and left again early the next
day. The drive was mostly uneventful with Susan reading on her
tablet and me listening to an audio book. With the car so full of racing
stuff Zoey got to sit on the floor in front of Susan. We checked
into our Tulsa hotel early around 2:00. Aunt Julie mobilized some of
the family to meet us for dinner at Ricardo’s (a Mexican restaurant). We
sat at a big table and chatted while we ate. Billy, Janie, Kevin and his
wife and baby, David, Leslie, Carol, Charlie, Caroline and her baby, and Julie
were there. It was a very nice time.
The next day we went
to the event site (a big field next to Tulsa raceway). The first day
of the race does not actually include competitive racing but rather
registration, tech’ing the cars, a practice course, and a class
inspection. After registration and the tech workers verifying our
wheels probably weren’t going to fall off and we had all the necessary stickers
(yes, this is part of it) we took the car to the practice course to stretch its
legs a bit. We went early as the line for the practice course gets
long as the day wears on. It was good to flog the car a bit and it
performed as expected. After we were done and while we were not
present a 2013 Mazda 2 rolled over on one of the turns. The driver
was uninjured but the car was pretty banged up. All the airbags deployed
(there were a lot of them) and it was dented on all sides and the top. The
course was changed to prevent another incident and the rest of the practice
portion of the day was rollover-free. The last part of the day was
the class inspection where all the cars lined up in their respective classes
for the competitors to inspect. One may think that a person driving
sometimes thousands of miles to a national level event would know the allowable
modifications for their class. One would be wrong. There
weren’t a lot of issues and all was resolved to everyone’s satisfaction before
it was over.
We woke the next day
to find it raining outside and I immediately had a flashback to the horrible
and muddy first event we had in Colorado. The racing field was
extremely slick in many places so the organizers let one of the competitors
attempt to test drive the course. It got stuck after a couple of
turns and had to be pushed. The event was subsequently delayed for
an hour to let things dry out a bit and the course was altered. Susan
and I were lucky to work in the timing truck and got to watch the sad course
workers get wet. It was very slow going for the drivers in the first
heat. No one got stuck but a few almost did. When we got
back to our car and prepared to drive we were more than a little
worried. We probably shouldn’t have stressed ourselves out so much
as the course was much better for us. The traction got better after
our first runs. Unfortunately for me and Susan we drove much too
conservatively and put ourselves well out of contention almost
immediately. The afternoon course was much dryer but a couple of
uncharacteristic mistakes kept us low in our class standings.
The final day of
racing was on a course with tons of traction and speed. Driving was
done in the morning to early afternoon. We pushed hard but could not
overcome the mistakes of the previous day. I ended up in 6th place
and Susan in 10th. It’s tough to be beaten by competitors
you regularly trounce at local events but them be the shakes. Susan
and I stayed through the trophy presentations before packing up and heading
out. The plan was to visit Susan’s grandmother on the way home and
we arrived at her house around 6:00. Dinner was at Lone Star and we
slept in her spare bedroom that night. The next day we completed the
final leg of the trip and decompressed at home. While we didn’t race
very well it was a lot of fun and an experience we were glad to
have. You may have noticed I didn’t mention much Zoey at all and
that’s because she was a fantastic companion on the entire trip and caused no
strife at all.
Some tidbits for the
end. Susan has become mildly fascinated with the show “American
Pickers” and has started scouring Denver’s antique stores (I told her she
should start with our basement). We have a dead tree in our backyard
that we’re going to cut down soon (if hate was a wood chipper this tree would
be mulch). Satchel’s food trial didn’t work and she is still without
much of her hair. We’re changing her meds and thinking she’ll be
wearing a sweater this winter. My band still exists (we even played
a show) and you can probably decipher how things are going by the amount I’m
writing about it. Susan painted the hood scoop on the WRX bright
yellow and it looks super-cool. I hate mustaches. I grew
a mustache and goatee for the last several months and discovered I hate the
mustache part a lot. Like bane of my existence type
hate. It’s now gone and all affiliated parties are happier.
Tldr: we camped and
raced in Colorado, adopted out a pug, visited our friends and their baby,
volunteered at a big pug event, began fostering another pug which is now about
to be adopted, and raced in Tulsa.
We hope this finds you
happy and healthy!
Max and Susan
