September 1st weekend – Saturday was ANOTHER
rallycross; the third one in four weeks.
Another early day for us though this time Pebbles stayed at home. We were almost the first on site and I helped
drop cones from our pal Dan Hipwood’s truck as he drove around in an
approximation of a course. Afterwards I
was able to help Susan set up the bus equipment and I assigned people their
work duties. We knew it was going to be
a lightly attended event so I preassigned everyone and split the group into
three run to allow for more course workers which would allow for a longer
course. This plan worked well for the
most part as we had adequate course coverage all day.
The event was a blast and I got to work a couple of corners
which I haven’t done in a long time.
Being my babbling self I kept those around me entertained/annoyed. Rain threatened from the south but the clouds
stayed away and it remained dry all day.
The dust was tough as the wind couldn’t decide what it wanted to do and
blew every which way. The event ran long
but I was ok with it as everyone had a good time. We locked the gates on our way out at 6:05.
On the way home we stopped at Qdoba for dinner. Once home we unpacked what we had to,
showered, and dropped onto the couch. We
were very tired.
Sunday I slept in until 8:00. Susan was up a little bit later and made
coffee. We left around 10:30 to get my
hair cut and get lunch. I believe it’s
been about a year since the last time and I had the hair stylist at Fantastic
Sam’s cut off around six inches. It felt great!
Lunch was at Texas Roadhouse which was oh so yummy. Susan’s steak was a tad rarer than normal but
the accompanying shrimp made up for it.
We stopped at Walmart for a few things before going home. It was at this point I got a text about
another Miata.
On Friday I saw an ad on craigslist for an inexpensive but
nice-looking Miata with a hardtop.
Usually such cars sell fast so I thought I had no chance as the ad had
already been up for a couple of hours by the time I saw it. I texted the guy anyways and he told me if
the person who was going to look at the car Sunday didn’t want it that I had
second dibs. Well, it turned out the
other guy wasn’t interested enough so Susan and I drove up to Buckley and to
check it out. While not perfect the car
was in great shape and drove well. As
the ad said “OBO” I offered a bit less than the asking price and we settled in
the middle. I gave him some cash to hold
the car and Susan and I drove back home smiling.
The rest of the day was spent on the couch where I edited
footage we took at the previous day’s race.
Dinner was Domino’s which was alright.
Labor Day Monday I slept in until 8:00 again and Susan was
up at 10:00 for coffee. The only
definite plan was to clean out Slayer’s shed as we hadn’t done so much as sweep
in there since we adopted the little guy months ago. Thus we spent some time moving stuff out and
cleaning up. One thing led to another
and we also cleaned up and organized the garage. With another Miata in the pipeline and
Scrappy going to need permanent indoor storage we had to make floor space. We were productive and by the time we were
done there was plenty of room and the garage looked nicer to boot.
We were finally attaching the gate to our dog fence when
Jeff dropped by for dinner and conversation.
I BBQ’d hamburgers and chicken and we sat outside mostly talking about
car stuff. He stayed until around 8:00
before taking off and Susan and I then hung out with the pups on the couch for
the remainder of the Labor Day weekend.
We both agreed it was a good weekend indeed.
Tuesday after work we picked up the new used Miata. I think my third naming attempt “Bean” will
ultimately be accepted by Susan but we’ll see.
Super-excited about the car. Lots
of fun to drive. I had it through
emissions and plated in a couple of days.
September 8th weekend – Saturday began with an
alarm at 8:00 and coffee. After a quick
stop at Walmart for food stuffs we drove up to John and Karen’s for lunch and
to work on making rallycross trophy bases.
Once at their house I made salad and watched as Susan finished prepping
the chicken. It takes a lot longer to
prep chicken than to make salad. The
food turned out yummy and we ate our fill. After food Susan, John, and myself
headed to his workshop in the basement to work on the trophy bases.
I had a clear idea of what I wanted and, after some
discussion, we were off. John did the
cutting and I did most of the drilling and sanding. There was some excitement with the sander as
the glue on the sand paper separated and sparks were literally flying as it
rubbed on the machine. Not a crisis and
it didn’t delay things too much. When we
finally emerged from the basement we found that Kari and Alvin had dropped by
for a visit. We all chatted for a time before
finally heading home at around 5:45.
On the drive back we picked up Jimmy Johns for dinner. This is somewhat normal event but I found out
on this particular trip that the sandwich I always ordered was nicknamed “super
max”. I wasn’t sure I should be proud or
horrified. The rest of our evening was
spent on the couch with the pugs.
Sunday I was up bright and early and fed Bella. I ended up playing games on the couch until
Susan was up and made us coffee. Soon
enough we were both in the garage and working on the trophy components. Susan used the dremel to rid the drive holes
of excess wood fibers and I organized and cleaned the valves. Once done I drove Bean with Susan to pick up
paint and brushes before stopping at Qdoba for lunch. With a glimmer in her eye Susan asked if we
could stop by Pet Smart for Halloween costumes.
Because I’m weak we went and picked out a Wonder Woman outfit for
Pebbles. Immediately after we arrived
home and Pebbles assumed her role as a super hero – her costume fit
perfectly.
The afternoon consisted of Susan and myself painting the
valves cool colors. I drilled holes in
some scrap wood so the valves would all stand up for ease of painting. We found the paint from Michaels did not
stick well to the metal so Susan sprayed them all with white primer first. It didn’t take long for this to dry before we
were sitting in the garage with brushes in hands. The fact that the more expensive paint we
purchased looked nicer on the first coat wasn’t so much a surprise as it was
annoying. We painted on two coats before
pausing for me to BBQ dinner. We decided
to layer on one more coat of paint and the valves all looked awesome.
Slayer had been in and out of the garage as we worked. He wandered off at some point and when he
finally decided to come by for his dinner we found him approaching from the
west along the road. He seems to roam
far and wide during the day. As is our
usual we finished the weekend on the couch with Bella and Pebbles. Twas a nice weekend for sure.
On Monday, September 10th a guy named Frankie
texted me about Pitt (the WRX I’ve tried selling a couple of times). This is the first time someone real and not a
scammer had reached out about the car. He
was interested and after a bunch of back and forth planned on meeting on Wednesday
afternoon for a test-drive and for him to likely buy the car. He and his girlfriend showed up via Uber as
he had sold his other car the night before.
Frankie liked the car but we found out after we walked into the bank
that he’d neglected to submit everything he needed to secure the car loan and
it was then too late in the day. Me
being the nicest guy in the entire world accepted the cash he was to give me
(the loan didn’t cover the purchase price) and let him have the WRX for a few
days until we could meet at the bank to finalize the deal. While all number of bad things could have
happened with this arrangement nothing nefarious occurred and we met on
Saturday morning to sign papers and whatnot.
We are SO immensely glad to have sold that car. I spent an inordinate amount of time and
money fixing and replacing stuff on Pitt.
So long Pitt; we don’t miss you at all!
September 15 weekend – Saturday began early so Susan and I
could have our coffee-time before heading to the bank to finally sell Pitt. After we said our goodbyes and exchanged
high-fives we drove to Mile High Stadium for the 2018 Rocky Mountain Subaru
Festival (Subi-fest). While it was
interesting to see the several hundred Subarus and many vendors in attendance
our purpose was to rep for rallycross and so we did. Todd Briley had a booth for The Subie Doctor
and let us use one side of it to hand out cards and generally annoy those poor
souls who wandered too close. It was
brutally hot on the asphalt but we managed to survive. We met and spoke to many potential
rallycrossers and hope it was worth the effort.
Susan and I took off around 3:00 when the festivities were winding down and
drove home.
Alvin, Kari, and Jeff were to come by for BBQ and
conversation and arrived a bit after 7:00.
I made beef and chicken burgers and there were a couple of sides. We hung out in the garage chatting mostly
about our upcoming foray into Lemons racing which was fun. They stayed until past dark before dessert
was served and they went home. Jeff is
currently renting a room in Kari and Alvin’s basement so they all left
together. Susan and I spent the
remainder of the evening with the pups on the couch as is proper.
Sunday was an early day as the alarm went off at 6:00. After several snoozes we finally rolled out
of bed close to 7:00 to rush through a couple cups of coffee before we had to
leave for the Colorado Pug Rescue’s annual Pugs in the Park. As we’ve done for the past several years we
lent them our PA system to use for the event.
Usually we’d both also volunteer at the Pug Rescue tent but I was not
feeling it this year and opted to set up the PA equipment and go back
home. Susan stayed to woman the tent and
did so for the majority of the event. I
spent my time at home researching Lemons stuff and painting varnish on the
trophies we’d been working on for the upcoming Grand Junction rallycross.
Mid-afternoon had me driving back to Central Park to pick up
the PA equipment and Susan. We stayed
for a few minutes and took down a couple of tables before leaving. Once home we spent some time assembling the
trophies before heading inside more-or-less for the evening. Susan was very tired after being in the hot outdoors
for two days in a row and showered while I ordered and picked up Chinese for
dinner. The food was great and we
finished the weekend as we generally do, hanging on the couch with the
pups.
September 18th – finally paid off the last of our
student loans. There really wasn’t much
left but it felt good to finally just make them go away. Crazy to think it was so long ago we were at
school. Time certainly does fly.
September 21st weekend – Friday began early as
normal but on this day we were to drive to Grand Junction for a
rallycross. We drank our coffee and then
finished loading up the Suburban with last minute stuff, including the pups,
and headed out around 7:30. The drive
through the mountains was mostly uneventful though we did discover gearing down
when going down hills was a must, gas is ridiculously expensive at the ski
resorts, and the Suburban struggles on the steeper climbs.
We arrived in Grand Junction in the early afternoon. First we dropped off some stuff at our hotel
along with the dogs. Unfortunately Bella
was upset and we could hear her crying far down the hall. We were to be busy though and didn’t have
much choice in the matter. Off to the
site we then went to unload the evo and disconnect the trailer. There was a bulldozer flattening out the
course area for a while and then Susan and I drove around picking up strips of
metal. Once the Utah contingent arrived
with cones I set up a practice course and tech’d cars. Susan helped run the practice course while I
took videos of the driving with our little GoPro camera. Folks trickled in throughout the
afternoon. After 6:00 we stopped the
practice runs and I set about setting up the next day’s course before we drove
back to the hotel to take care of the hounds.
We ordered room service for dinner, showered, and fell asleep on the
overly firm bed.
Saturday had us up at 5:30ish. It was at this point we discovered our hotel
didn’t serve a free continental breakfast so we settled on coffee on our way
out. The pups came along (no need to
repeat the previous day’s doggy-sadness) and we picked up ice for the coolers
on the way back to the site. I gave out
the worker assignments and tech’d a few cars before running the drivers meeting
and getting the event on its way.
We were in the first run group and found the course tight
but fun. The conditions were incredibly
dusty and the cars kept digging further and further down into the earth. I convinced timing to let us have six runs
but this turned out to be a mistake. The
wind wasn’t blowing hard enough to clear out the copious dust so there were
serious delays in running the cars due to the bad visibility on course. It was really too bad because we could have
had many more runs if the conditions were better. I recorded the other run groups at all
different locations around the course.
Unfortunately I dropped the camera and cracked the lens. It still worked but I found out later that
any footage after the fall had a blurry line down the right side of the
image.
Lunch came around 1:30 and I busied myself changing the
course. I wish I was more trusting of
the other folks there but I had specific thoughts on what it should be and did
all the course-work myself for the whole weekend. I made the afternoon course more open and
faster which was fun but ultimately led to shorter run-times.
The run order repeated in the afternoon and instead of
recording the driving I helped Susan with timing in place of Valerie. Valerie and Todd had experienced a
catastrophic car failure in the morning and decided to go home early. The wind was blowing harder in the afternoon
and we all managed another four runs which was better than expected.
I decided to treat everyone to pizza and called up Dominos
for delivery. We dined on the food in
the karting building a bit away from where we were racing. Did I mention we were rallycrossing on land
owned by a karting track? We were
rallycrossing on land owned by a karting track.
After eating some of us hopped in karts for a couple of races. It was fun but I got hosed in two ways (Susan
absconded from joining me): the first kart I drove was less powerful than most
of the others and the second kart’s seatback got so hot that my back was
literally blotchy and red from the heat burns (yikes). It was still fun though. Afterwards we went back to the race site so I
could set up the next day’s course.
We left right as the sun was setting and drove back to the
hotel where we gratefully showered off the dust from the day and watched some
of the videos I took from the day.
Eventually we fell asleep along with our tired pups.
On Sunday we were able to sleep in a little bit which was
super-nice. We packed up our stuff and
attempted to get coffee in the lobby. We
found that the hotel staff didn’t put a high priority on maintaining a steady coffee
supply so we opted to get our morning fix at a gas station where we also
refilled the ice in our coolers.
The dust was again an issue in the morning so we only got
five more runs for each run group. 15
runs for an event is something I would normally consider fantastic but if the wind
had cooperated we probably could have squeezed in several more. Such is though. I again helped Susan with timing when the
other groups ran.
The event ended around 12:45 and we planned to have
everything packed up and then to award trophies at 1:30. We mostly kept to this schedule and I had fun
passing out the metal to the deserving drivers.
I ended up in first and Susan in third place in our class (one bad run
dashed her chances of second). After the
awards were awarded we ventured out to a pair of giant tanks for some group
photos before folks started their journeys home. We drove around making sure everyone was gone
or about to leave and then made our way out of town.
The drive back was a bit more exciting than the trek out as
the uphill sections were much steeper.
We learned that the Suburban really struggled when the going got tough
but would keep slogging on albeit slowly.
We encountered bad traffic halfway up the pass to Eisenhower Tunnel
which persisted for the rest of the journey to Denver. I almost forgot to mention the beautiful
aspen trees which were changing colors.
Folks visiting the mountains to look at the pretty colors probably
didn’t help the traffic situation.
Eventually we made it home by around 8:00.
We were oh so tired and only unloaded a few important things
before heading inside the house. Dinner
was Dominos again and then we took care of Slayer who had been locked in his
shed while were out of town. It was then
when our neighbor came outside to tell us an unfortunate story.
As a result Susan thought it best if we quarantined Slayer
for 10 days and so we kept him locked up in his shed. What a barn cat means appears to be
permanently lost on our neighbors.
Monday we both stayed home from work to recover from the
race-weekend. Susan worked via her work
laptop while I edited the footage I took at the event (I had close to 200
clips). I found this enjoyable but it
took a lot longer than I expected to finish up what ended up being a four and a
half minute video. Midafternoon and I
was done and uploaded the video to YouTube.
Hilariously uploading took over three hours with our horrible
internet. While this occurred we
ventured out for dinner at Qdoba and to pick up groceries. Susan found a guy selling new Miata knuckles
so we made a quick trip down to Castle Pines to buy them. We finished the evening on the couch with the
pugs which was its usual awesome.
September 29 weekend – Saturday I unnecessarily woke up
early and played video games and watched YouTube until I felt like being
productive and got dressed and went outside.
Slayer had been locked up since the week before and I finally released
him from his shed. He seemed happy
though his time of forced solitude seemed to have added inches to his waistline. I then unloaded the evo from the trailer and
gear from the Suburban. At some point
Susan came out bearing coffee and helped me finish up. We had an appointment at The Subie Doctor to
have some rally tires mounted and stopped at Qdoba for lunch and FedEx to
return a box of racing gear on the way up to the shop. Todd and his tech were able to swap out the
old Pirellis for newer Hoosiers in short order.
I let the tech keep the Pirellis as it saved me the effort of disposing
of them and we headed back toward our part of town. On the way home we stopped at Walmart for
food stuffs.
Back at home we got busy doing a few things. We first drove the evo to the car wash to
spend over 20 minutes cleaning off the dust and dirt. Then I changed Tia and the evo’s oil and
swapped out the wheels. Susan helped me
load up the evo and our extra wheels in the trailer. Dinner was BBQ’d chicken for me and
hamburgers for Susan. It was nice
sitting outside with Slayer being his silly-self. The evening was finished on the couch with
the pups.
Sunday I again woke up early while Susan slept on until
almost 10:00. She had to get up at that
time as we had a conference call with the other CORX committee members. We all agreed I’d be the Director for another
year and talked about a few other things.
I kept the call short as I find the cell phone delay almost unbearable
in conference calls. The plan after the
call was to go up to Brad’s to install the quick release steering wheel on
Scrappy but he had family plans so we found other stuff to do.
Susan has wanted to get Pebbles some clothes for the
upcoming cold weather so we grabbed her and headed to Pet Smart to buy a coat
and some other pet-related stuffs. We
briefly went to Home Depot where Pebbles cutely walked by Susan’s side. Susan remembered a sweater she liked at
Walmart so we stopped there quick for Susan to buy it before driving back
home. I then changed the Suburban’s oil while
Susan took Tia to the car wash. We then
repurposed a long 2x8 board to be a ramp for Slayer’s shed and spent some time
installing a work bench Dan Hipwood had given to us. We loaded the bench up with spare Miata parts
we’d been accumulating and reorganized that side of the garage a bit. I had fun cutting Scrappy’s old dash in half
using our newish handheld reciprocating saw so the pieces would fit in the
garbage can. After cleaning up the
little plastic pieces generated by said cutting we went inside to prepare
dinner before taking care of Slayer and then feeding the puppers. September ended with us together on the couch
watching TV and YouTube.
It feels like September absolutely flew by! Susan and I were so busy every weekend with
this and that. Our pups are doing
well. Pebbles has changed this last
month in a good way and we think she’s finally feeling comfortable in our
home. Bella is such a sweetheart and,
while she’s slowing down, is still her Bella-self. Slayer had a rough month but is back to his
routine. He visibly gained some weight
when we quarantined him for a week and we’ll see if he slims back down. We’re still happy to have Slayer around. Scrappy the racecar is still a thing and
we’ve been accumulating spare parts here and there when we find them. I still can’t believe that Pitt sold. I just wish I would have tried last summer as
I believe I would have gotten a bit more cash in the sale. Such is though. It’s crazy we bought another Miata. We’re nuts.
October will be another busy month for us as we have the rallycross
nationals, our first Lemons race (we’ll be spectators), and the final local
rallycross of the 2018 season to run. Can’t
wait!
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