Hello! It’s
been a busy month (or so) for Susan and myself so here is another update on our
goings on.
-Aug 24 – We
rallycrossed our new car (“the Evo”) at the truck driving school down
south ofColorado Springs. The surface is really hard there
which helped mitigate our disadvantage ofusing worn snow
tires. It was a fun course with a big loop we all drifted
around. We’re figuring out the car and I was able to come in 2nd place
by only a few seconds. On the way home several of us
stopped for dinner at a Chili’s. It was here the
discussion of what we should name the Evo came up. Several
jokingly thought we should call it “the Biebs”. Much laughter was
had. After dinner we all drove up I25 more or less together when the
others started posting pictures of our car with “BiEBS!” where our
license plate would be which we thought were edited photos. It
wasn’t until hours after we got home that we realized one friend had
actually taped “BiEBS!” on our car before we left the
restaurant. More laughter was had.
-Aug 26 – We sold the
WRX. Actually, Susan sold the WRX. The guy who bought it
came around for a test drive with his girlfriend while I was on the phone with
someone else interested in our other Subaru up for sale. Susan ended
up going with them on a test drive and answering his questions about the
car. We had removed the stickers and other race-identifying garb
from the WRX but found that the windshield tint faded around the large
rallycross banner we’d had for over two years leaving a clear outline saying
“SCCA Rallycross”. Oh well.
The guy picked up on
this on the test drive and Susan explained the car’s history in detail. She
even had him spin a few donuts in a dirt parking lot while they were
out. He was pretty jazzed about the car when they got back but
didn’t have the funding to make a good offer and we bid our
goodbyes. Two nights later he called with an acceptable offer and we
sold him the car. Turns out he searched the internet and found our GoPro
videos we took racing and got all kinds of excited about the
car. I was initially skeptical about Susan’s
method of selling the WRX but it obviously worked.
-Aug 31 – We drove a
foster pug to his “forever home” in Grand Junction, went to a car show, and
tasted some of the local wine. Earlier in the week there
was a call made for a volunteer to ferry a foster pug named Sparkpug to his new
home in Grand Junction from his current foster home in
Greeley. Susan thought this a good opportunity to show a little
support and volunteered. Fortunately Susan was able to save us the
drive up to Greeley by meeting the foster mom closer to Denver after work. Sparkpug
is a big fawn male stray that was brought into the Colorado Pug Rescue fold a
few weeks before. He’s deaf and has pretty bad arthritis. We
had him for two nights before our trek and he was a fine temporary addition to
our house though he did reinforce our decision to not permanently foster any
more pugs at this time. The drive was pleasant and we made good
time. Sparkpug was a good traveler and mostly slept on the
trip.
We met his new owners
at a park to take care of the necessary paperwork. They
were nice folks and I’m sure they will take care of him
well. They also get points in my book for changing his silly name to
“Archie”. By chance there was a car show going on in a different
part of the park and we decided to check it out. It was
pretty early in the day and it was evident that some cars hadn’t shown up but
we enjoyed walking around looking at what was there.
It probably isn’t
well-known outside of Colorado but Grand Junction has made a name for
itself as a producer of decent wine and there are multiple wineries
and vineyards in the area. Since we were in town with nothing left we
needed to do we visited a few to sample their wine. We’ve never done
this before so Susan picked a vineyard and we headed over. The first
one we went to was closed for the morning but the second wasn’t and there were
other people trying the wines when we arrived. The owner was also
the pourer and told us how the process worked and walked us through his
selections. It was fun and interesting though we both agreed his wine
was not very good. Undeterred we went to two more wineries before
heading back home through the mountains. It all made for a good road
trip.
-Sept 5 – We went to a
newly opened go cart track close to our house. It is a K1 go cart
facility (they are a chain out of California) that uses
electric-powered carts. Along with our racing neighbors and some
other friends we raced around the track vying for the best times. We all
had a blast and I did surprisingly well and was even the fastest for
one of the races. It was agreed that we’d gather
periodically going forward to test our cart-racing prowess.
-Sept 6 – This was a
busy day for us; the Evo was measured for a skid plate, I picked up wrong-sized
rally wheels, and Susan made silent auction baskets. Our new rally
car sits lower to the ground and there is a real risk something important could
get damaged while racing. Thus we searched around and found someone to
fabricate a skid plate. I had also ordered rally wheels earlier in
the week so after getting the Evo measured for its skid plate I drove up to
Loveland to pick up the wheels. The business owner’s son was there
to complete the transaction and, unbeknownst to me at the time, loaded up the
wrong-sized wheels into our car.
While I was out another
Colorado Pug Rescue volunteer came over to our house to help Susan put together
baskets of silent auction items for the annual Pugs in the Park which
is occurring this Sunday. You may remember that Susan has been
gathering and inventorying donated items for the last few months. I
came home to find them still in the basement amidst dozens ofbaskets
full of various items. The ladies finished up soon after
and yesterday the baskets were picked up in preparation for the big
event.
-Sept 7 – Our neighbor
Mike came by to supervise the installation of new brakes on the Evo
and we sold the Imp. Our new car came equipped with front brakes
that were far too large to fit the rally wheels we intended to race
with. Fortunately for us, others online have figured out a
relatively cheap solution which is to use the front brakes from a
selection of different models in place of the stock
brakes. A little researching and ordering from a few online vendors
and we were ready to go. We had our master mechanic neighbor Mike
over to supervise the installation. As is generally the case with
car brakes the work was simple and I finished quickly. It was at
this point we discovered the rally wheels I had picked up were the wrong
size. A little miffed I left a couple of messages with the
owner of the business we bought them from seeking
assistance. It turns out the son misheard his father’s
explanation of which wheels were ours. A few days later we
met to exchange wheels and all was well.
Later in the evening
we delivered the Imp to its new owner. I had been conversing with
the buyer for the last few weeks answering questions before he finally made an
offer. He lives in a beautiful historic house and we got to see
inside while we finalized the sale. It really reminded
me of the house we lived in downtown Findlay, Ohio with its hardwood
floors, stain glass windows, and overall feel. We were ecstatic to
finally sell the Imp. It was on craigslist for four weeks.
-Sept 10 – We bought
another car. I know what you’re thinking. Wasn’t the
point of selling all those cars to bring the stable down to a
manageable number? Well, yes it was but one ofremaining cars is
really nice car that we’d really hate to wreck in bad weather this
winter. We ended up buying a 1997 Subaru Impreza Outback Sport
wagon. Because it is blue (which is an unusual color for these
normally green cars) we named it “Jay”. Of course it came with
its own set of problems and we are in the process of replacing
the radiator, timing belt, water pump, and thermostat. There is some
rust we’ll have to attend to soon but overall it’s in decent
shape. Jay is pretty fun to drive and we’ve already utilized its
wagon to haul stuff around. It will also serve as a backup rally car
because that’s how we roll.
-Sept 12-14 – We drove
to Nebraska and raced in a rallycross national challenge. A few
weeks ago we decided it would be fun to participate in the national rallycross
in Nebraska as a lot of Colorado people were going. Also
since we won’t be able to go to the national championships in October
because of my job this was somewhat of a
substitute. At first we were going to stay in a hotel but decided to
camp instead. Besides our one night last summer we haven’t camped in
fifteen years. Instead of borrowing equipment again we
bought all new camping stuff. We had lists of things to
get and ended up with more than we needed.
It quickly became
clear that not everything we wanted to bring with us was going to fit in the
Evo so we had to leave our newly shod rally wheels and related stuff at
home. Knowing this was a possibility I got new snow tires installed
a few days before. Even without the rally wheels et al it was still
a close fit. We also brought Sophie and Bella
along. Sophie because she is starting to go into heat and needs
extra care and Bella because she’s cute. Satchel and Tweetie got to
stay at home and get fed by Tristan (our across the street neighbor’s
son). Loaded down we started on our journey only to stop about a half an
hour in with mechanical problems.
When I installed the
new front brakes I did not tighten up the caliper bracket bolts enough and one
fell out causing the caliper to lean out and impact the inside of the
wheel. This made a horrifying sound and I promptly pulled into the
nearest turn lane to get off the busy road we were on (Santa Fe and Oxford by
the Costco). When the light changed I found the car wouldn’t move as
the caliper was wedged tightly in the wheel. I was the
opposite of happy at this point. On went our hazard lights
and out came my cell phone as I called AAA to get a tow back home. I
had gotten out to diagnose the problem by now and conveyed our situation to the
operator. Since we were in a turn lane much and it happened to be around
lunch time there was much honking and lamentation from the other
drivers. It took around an hour before we were finally towed away in
which time a police officer came to block traffic behind us (this mercifully
stopped the honking).
We were very lucky
that there was no real damage done and our mechanic neighbor happened to have a
parts car that had the right bolt to replace the one that fell
out. To put how fortunate we were into perspective we originally had
to order the correct bolt through a dealer and wait a week for it to be shipped
in. It took me roughly 10 minutes to get the bolt off the other car
and onto ours (and really tighten up all the brake bolts).
After all this we
started again around three hours after we left the first time. The
rest of the drive was mostly uneventful and we arrived at the site
around 11:00 at night. I had prepared foil dinners like we used to
make as kids and they turned out much like I remembered them (very
good). It was a bit chilly so we set up camp and sat by the fire
until around 1:00 when we went to bed.
The next morning I
tried my hand at making breakfast burritos. I’ve never made
breakfast burritos before and decided to use ingredients that seemed
logical/good to me. I, of course, made way too much and
was able to feed Susan and myself along with four other camping
racers. The food turned out to be pretty tasty. Later in
the morning we checked in with registration and lined up our cars for class
inspection. Class inspection is when the competitors get to look at
everyone else’s cars to make sure they are classed properly. It so
happened to be that everyone in our class (all four of us) were
Colorado racers and the class inspection was really just a formality.
There was a
lot of waiting around for something to happen during the
morning. Most of the time racing occurs in the morning and
afternoon. For this event the organizers had us hanging around until
the afternoon when we would actually race. This is one of those
instances where different does not equal good. It wasn’t terrible or
anything but most of us had driven a long distance to race and not to
stand around swapping stories. They did provide lunch and after that
we finally got down to bid’ness.
The course was a
grassy field next to a dirt race track. It was still wet from
colossal rain the region had received the week before and the ground was
saturated. We were in the second run group and got to watch the
course be rutted out by the first run group. It was very different
racing than we’re used to as chunks of grass and mud were flying
around as opposed to the copious amounts of dust we usually generate
in Colorado.
One feature on the
course was a roughly 20’ wide and long dip which turned out to be deep enough
that the cool looking and expensive font bumper on the Evo scooped up a
lot of mud by the time it came out the other side. Susan
was looking mortified when I got back into grid after my first
run. Not only did I pick up mud but the bumper itself was bent down
at an unnatural (for a bumper) angle. I managed to
kind of bend it back up by hand and we continued on. By
the time we were done I was flinging the Evo sideways through the dip to avoid
scraping the front bumper (which was more fun and faster anyways).
This first
day of racing ended with another meal provided by the event
organizers and some jovial times had by the camping Colorado
folks. A couple of “explorers” discovered that
someof the track lights were accessible and were delighted with themselves
as they flipped them on and off. It didn’t take too long before the
Poe Poe showed up to see what was going on. *sigh* Honesty won
the day and no one was arrested or embarrassed too
badly. One of the revelers may or may not have been
Susan. For my part I kept my dignity by the fire throughout the
whole ordeal.
The following morning
I made breakfast burritos again and they turned out even better than the day
before. We discovered that tortillas aren’t to be found in truck
stops in Nebraska. A couple of us ended up having omelets
instead of burritos when we ran
out of tortillas. More racing occurred later in the
morning and the Evo did admirably. It was a close thing but a
couple of really fast runs at the end were not enough to overcome me
hitting six cones (12 seconds of penalties) throughout the event and
I came in 2nd place. Again a meal was provided by
the organizers and I received a cool metal I wore around my neck the whole way
home. After the event was through we took our time packing up and
drove home.
Miscellaneous – the
pugs are still cute, I still jam once a week or so, the house is still
standing, and we’re both still employed.
We hope this finds you
happy and healthy!
