June 1st weekend – Saturday began sort of early
with Alvin coming by to pick up their camper.
Susan and I supervised with coffee mugs in hand as he attached the
behemoth to his truck and drove away.
The grass seemed longish so I decided I’d mow before it got too hot
out. Susan spent her time cleaning up
and organizing the suburban.
My plan to finish the lawn quickly evaporated as the reality
of owning a push mower sunk in. I didn’t
mind the work but it took a few hours to complete. I admit I made it harder on myself than may
have been necessary by mowing a good deal up the hillside, farther than I’d
ever gone before.
While the sky had spit on me a few times while I was manning
the mower it really came down immediately after I was finished. Susan and I took the opportunity to take a
break and watch it come down. The
vagaries of the weather patterns in our area seem to keep the crazy stuff just
north of our neighborhood and this was once again the case as the DTC had storm
alerts whereas we were simply pummeled by rain and tiny hail.
Once the storm had passed I decided to spend a couple hours
finishing up the slope with the weed whacker.
I mostly finished what I’d started when the final battery ran out. Both Susan and I were famished at this point
so we went out to eat and pick up fried chicken for the next day.
Back home again I found the batteries had finished charging
so I again went to town on the various grasses I felt needed trimming. Susan took the opportunity to walk Oliver
this way and that around the property.
At some point I swapped out the RS’s summer wheels for
winter wheels and Susan pumped their pressures up. She spent some time accumulating various rallycross-stuffs
in anticipation of the following day.
I was tired and dirty when we finally sat down with the
pups.
Sunday the alarm went off at 5:30 and we were soon out of
bed. Susan was rallycrossing while I was
to stay home and do this and that.
I went out to the bus to start it only to find that we’d
left something electrical on since the last time and the battery was virtually
dead. So dead that the charge pack
wasn’t strong enough. So dead that
hooking up to the RS wasn’t immediately enough.
After a few minutes of being connected and the RS running the bus did
start which was a massive relief.
Of course it was low on fuel so when the driver eventually
showed up Susan had to follow him to the gas station to put in $95 worth of
diesel in the thing (that’s the maximum allowed but didn’t quite fill the
tank). To avoid any further battery
issues the bus was run for the reminder of the day.
After Susan left I plopped on the couch to catch a few more
winks of sleep. I failed in my endeavors
and instead watched YouTube for a time before making coffee and getting on with
things.
I spent some time in the garage rotating Scrappy’s wheels
and replacing the front brake pads and rotors.
The cheapo pads we bought at the local parts store only lasted for two
open lapping days before they gouged out a band in the driver’s front
rotor. That’s a lesson learned!
After a quick shower I went to Costco to fight the crowd and
buy this and that. Once home and
unpacked I spent another hour or so draining the batteries on the weed
whacker. There is so much to trim!
I had just sat down to take a break after exhausting the
last battery when Susan came home. She
told me that she had a good time and the event ran well. I was very glad.
I decided to swap the winter wheels back to the summer
wheels and was mid-swap when the bus arrived.
The day’s rallycross course was rougher than usual and several drivers
debeaded their tires. The bus driver
almost debeaded his and dirt and other detritus was packed into the bead on one
of his tires, slowly letting out air.
We helped out by lending tools and our small air compressor
to his plight. After about an hour of
fiddling he declared that he’d probably get home alright and finally left Susan
and myself to finish the day alone.
In no time we had the bus back into its spot and most
everything back to where it needed to go.
We settled on leftovers for dinner and spent the remainder of the
weekend hanging with the pups on the couch – me watching internet videos and
Susan auditing the results from the day’s event. Another great weekend in the books!
B. F. E. GP
I make a write up of the weekend for FB and pasted it below:
The B. F. E. GP from the perspective of Flat Face Racing
Thursday
Susan and I arrived at the track a bit around 4:00 to find a
few other teams already on site. We found our covered parking spot and,
after a few attempts, managed to place our trailer where we wanted it.
Unloading was more of a chore than we expected as we didn’t realize the area
wasn’t exactly level. One of the big harness bolts installed in the floor
pan snagged on the wood of the trailer door and left a notch despite using 2x4s
under Scrappy’s front wheels. We live and learn.
After unhooking and roughly leveling the trailer we spent
time unloading and setting up our big ole table and temporary shelving.
The covered parking spot was clean and had plenty of space for our tires, bins,
and whatnot. The power box was unlocked so we plugged in the trailer to
power the fridge, lights, and the radio chargers.
The sole non-family member of our team, Brad, arrived at
5:30 to take to the track and get used to piloting Scrappy. This was
Brad’s first foray with Scrappy and the two seemed to hit things off in a good
way. It was during Brad’s second stint that I realized I’d left two cases
of adult beverages in Scrappy’s trunk. After calmly asking Brad to stop
in the hot pit lane I met him with our rolly cart to thankfully find no broken
glass when the trunk was popped. We shared a laugh and Brad finished his
stint.
In the evening we met several teams walking up and down the
covering parking area. Two out of state teams dropped by: CEL
Racing/Meowgical from Tulsa and property devaluation racing from Texas.
Nice folks all around. Many conversations were had and it wasn’t until
after midnight that we finally closed up our trailer for the night.
Friday
This and that happened before we drank our morning coffee
and officially started the day. After many hours of testing I was
confident that a quick swap of the brakes and wheels would have Scrappy ready
for tech. Unfortunately I found the rear brake pads were completely gone
and had left some neat grooves in the rotors. Also one of the rear
caliper pins was rusted solid and with its hex head mostly rounded off.
Awesome! Luckily we had packed many spare parts including all the brake
components that attach to the wheel hubs. It took some time but
eventually the brakes and wheels were in order.
With tech sheet in hand and bribes in Scrappy’s trunk we
queued up for tech and BS inspections. Even being 20 minutes early the
line of un-tech’d cars was already long. While we waited we talked with
the owner of Team Lemo’ktoberfest’s Saturn about his cage and previous Lemon’s
woes. He took his own car out of a 2018 race when the engine started
knocking on heaven’s gate. Now he was back with new bits and pieces to
hopefully see the green and checkered flags (spoiler – he did!).
We failed tech due to issues with our cage foam but were
luckily classed in A with zero penalty laps. We scurried back to remedy
the foamy-situation and soon we were compliant. Finally we checked in for
realzies and picked up our transmitter. Holy smokes we made it!
Alvin (our brother in-law and fourth member of the team)
broke in the race pads while we hung out with our pups. Oh yeah, we
brought our three little dogs to the event.
A fawn Pug named Mel, a tiny black Pug named Bella, and an
itty-bitty Chihuahua named Pebbles accompanied us. All were relatively
content throughout the whole ordeal with the exception of being a bit freaked
out by the excessive engine reving a few of the teams apparently needed to
do. Seriously, it sounded the same the twentieth time you rev’d to redline
with your horribly loud catless exhaust as it did the first time you rev’d to
redline with your horribly loud catless exhaust, enough already.
It was in the late afternoon that the rain and wind rolled
in. We battened down Scrappy with a tarp and waited out the storm which
lasted around an hour.
Susan noticed a gaggle of cyclists on the hot pit lane so we
leapt on our own bikes to head out onto the track. We’d purchased
Goodwill bikes in the previous weeks just for this occasion. Riding
around HPR was a really chill experience. Several folks rode bikes and a
mess of others walked around. Susan and I rode around most of the track
but skipped the second hilly section to preserve our legs in order to be able
to walk for the remainder of the weekend. The sun was setting around the
time we got back to the paddock.
For some reason several of the teams were furiously working
on their cars. Weird.
Saturday
We awoke early to find the pit area relatively quiet.
After our coffee rituals we attended the drivers meeting. We sat on the
floor right up front to soak up the info which was delivered in a relatively
succinct manner. Then it was “drivers to their cars” and
whatnot.
The driving portion of the day went well for the four of us
on team Flat Face Racing. Scrappy is easy to drive and can corner with
the best cars out there. We received a sole black flag for passing under
yellow. Considering the number of cars breaking down and the seemingly
random nature of some of the flag-waving I think we were lucky to only get one
such violation.
Susan was out finishing up the day’s driving when the sky
got dark and the lightning came down. A big strike right before 6:00
ended the racing portion of the day’s proceedings with our team somehow situated
in sixth place overall.
We had just enough time to cover Scrappy with a tarp and
take shelter in the trailer when the rain and wind arrived. Undeterred,
teams around us worked through the gale, pulling busted engines and tinkering
this way and that.
This time the rain came on heavier with some small hail
mixed in. Again it the weather blew threw in an hour or so leaving
massive puddles here and there.
We contented ourselves chatting about the day and watching
the other teams scramble about. Fortunately for us, Alvin was on our team
and remembered to check the oil and tires. In true Miata-fashion Scrappy
was only down a bit less than a quart of oil and the 200TW tires only needed to
be rotated crossways to be ready for the next day. This after eight hours
of track time. Zeus bless stock Miatas.
With the skies clear the pit potluck got into gear.
I’d started chicken slow cooking earlier in the day and soon finished whipping
up my signature inoffensive chili. I worried I was too late to the party
but by the end of the evening the crock pot was scraped down to chili-dregs and
most of our (store-bought) brownies were gone.
We’d heard good things about the Lemons HPR potlucks and
this one certainly didn’t disappoint. There was a wide variety of foods
to choose from and we were stuffed before we had walked the whole thing.
We met a lot of great folks and shared many a laugh as we shared our
food.
After purchasing excess fuel from another team we closed up
the trailer for another night of sleep.
Sunday
We were up before our 6:30 alarm to again find a quiet
paddock. The racing was to resume at 9:00 and we were ready in plenty of
time. I have to admit I felt a bit special pulling into the top-ten
line.
Racing was quite enjoyable on day two. Passing seemed
easier and the cars seemed more spread about. There was one
self-reporting incident but otherwise the day went as smooth as silk. We
finished eighth overall and seventh in class A after completing 318 laps.
As our goal for this event was simply to see both the green and checkered flags
with zero breakdowns in between we were ecstatic with the results.
We all attended the awards ceremony to watch Alvin and his
other team, Team Other Options, receive their trophy for first place in class B
(Alvin drove for both this team and ours). The other awards seemed to go
to deserving teams.
Susan and I were in no rush to pack up and thus took our
sweet time. When we finally made our exodus there were only a few teams
still on site. We genuinely can hardly wait until the next event at HPR!
Driving Thoughts
Miatas are fun in the twisties but I think we would have
been happy with a little BMW-power in the straights. The other drivers
were certainly a mixed-bag in experience-level but we saw zero contact
incidents during the weekend. More point-bys would have been nice but the
lack thereof led to us having to figure out how to make safe passes which was a
good thing. In the end I was turning laps only a few seconds off my personal
best while passing traffic.
Lemony-stuffs
Balkan Express – spray-painting their livery immediately
upon unloading their car from their trailer. We were shocked with how
well it turned out.
Dirty Racers – they dealt with bad gas, brakes not working,
pedal box problems, and other assorted issues and still managed 157 laps.
Petrosexual Racing – one of their drivers went so far off of
turn four (the right at the end of the long straight) that he re-entered the
track down by turn six. We have footage of him making his triumphant
return to the course.
Connections
Crazily we happened to reserve a covered parking spot
between teams with peeps we know from our RallyCross lives – Will (The
Gunbarrel Cobras) and Diego (Balken Express). I don’t think we could have
planned this if we tried. Three of the Dirty Racers (Brian, Jonathon, and
Ryan) are also Rallycrossers. We’d also met the drivers from Savage
Orchid Racing, Sew So Fast, and Rainbow Unicorns at open lapping days.
Pretty cool.
Conclusion
That was super-duper fun and we can’t wait until next
time! Also, we brought way too much food. Oh so much food.
Some asides not mentioned above
The pups were very good over the weekend. They generally stayed quiet and didn’t get
into much trouble. For some reason both
Bella and Mel decided to pee on Susan’s sleeping bag right before bed on two
separate occasions. No idea what that
was all about.
We had purchased a new air mattress for the weekend and it
looked great once pumped up.
Unfortunately we found the extra-tall sides to be inadequate to keep me
from feeling like I was slipping off the side of the thing all night. Susan actually did fall off sometime during
the first night. Not sure what we could
do about the situation. Otherwise the
mattress was pretty neat as one only had to plug in its built-in pump to air it
up or down.
During the first day’s racing a team had their motor blow up
and somehow finagled using the covered parking spot next to ours to try to fix
things. This was no problem for us as
they just did their thing. The bummer
was that the team was large (10 people I believe) and they only had gotten 20
laps or so before the engine spectacularly let go. This was the second year that the team had
experienced such calamity. It was from
this team that I was able to purchase gasoline which saved us a trip to the
nearest gas station. For their sake I
hope they are better prepared should they come out to another race.
Successfully completing the race was quite gratifying. Over the preceding months many hours and
dollars were put into preparing Scrappy.
Stripping, wiring, sanding, painting, wrenching, and replacing this and
that. We even bought a car just to
harvest its parts as spares. We attended
many track days testing the car and getting familiar with the track. Hours were spent upgrading the trailer and
probably too much time was devoted to thinking through this and that, just
trying to come up with solutions to potential problems. Most everything we did have control over went
well and we were fortunate enough to avoid bad luck.
June 10th – I was up early for a doctor’s
appointment and back home again around 10:30 to find Susan on the couch with
the pups. We unloaded a few things from the
trailer, ate leftovers throughout day, relaxed, and I edited footage from the
weekend. What a crazy weekend!
June 15th weekend – Saturday started with an
alarm. After coffee we zipped over to
get our eyes checked out. It was busy
but we both were examined an acceptable amount of time. Then it was off to Kari and Alvin’s
house.
The point of the visit was to upload footage from the Lemons
to YouTube. Our horrible internet would
take a week to upload any one of the several I’d edited so Alvin volunteered
his bandwidth. It turned out that the
size of the videos was still a problem for his connection but we left his
computer running to finish uploading eventually (it took four days).
We all were hungry at this point so Alvin drove us over to
Qdoba for lunch. Soon after we were back
at their house and then on our way home.
Once back at the Dogwood Estate we finally unloaded the
enclosed trailer and suburban. This
seemed an arduous task beforehand but really it didn’t take us a long
time. Soon enough and we were in Tuna
Bean again and driving back up to Alvin and Kari’s cul-de-sac to attend a BBQ
one of their neighbors was hosting.
These neighbors were the ones who’s pug Sammy we had dog-sat
some months ago. The very same one that
bit Pebbles. By now Sammy had also
tussled with a few other dogs so no pups were allowed to be in attendance save
for one tough Chihuahua named Poncho that knew how to handle Sammy. There were probably 15-20 adults and children
in attendance and we sat and chatted about this and that. The food was yummy and we stayed until dark
before hopping in Tuna Bean for the drive home to our needy pups.
Sunday we were up around 9:00. I had bought new weed and grass killer stuff
and wanted to spray the driveway long before the forecasted rain came. While I did my thing Susan helped out by weed
whacking the pups latrine pen and cleaning up the house a bit.
It was a bit after noon and a half when John and Karen arrived
at our house for our planned BBQ. While
we had originally wanted it to be a Lemons celebratory BBQ we found many of our
fellow Lemons-participants not able to hang out. Since it was also Father’s Day we figured
John and Karen would be excellent guests as well (they were).
I cooked up meat and veggies on the grill while we waited
for the others to arrive. In the end
Kari, Alvin, Will, Kris, and Grace also came by for food and conversation. Kari brought Piper who was well-behaved the
whole time. Pebbles and Mel made a couple
of appearances while we were hanging out too which was fun.
John and Karen were the first to leave with the others
following suit a little later. The last
guest (Will) drove off around 8:00 and Susan and I cleaned up and went inside
to plop our tired selves down on the couch.
All in all it was a nice weekend.
Thursday night had Susan and me catching a nice dinner at On
the Rox on our way to Fiddler’s Green.
Susan had snagged Goo Goo Dolls tickets there some months ago. We were pretty early which was nice and
parked relatively close which was also nice.
Our seats were on the left side and only 16 rows back from the
stage. The air was warm but an almost
constant slight breeze kept it tolerable.
There was only one opening act and then the Goo Goo Dolls did their
thing. While it was a good show it was a
bit weird as they weren’t the headlining act so there was no encore and the
energy felt lower somehow. We vacated the
premises before the final act went on which meant our walk to the car and drive
out of the area was swift. It was a nice
time.
June 22nd weekend – Saturday began earlyish with
an alarm followed quickly by coffee. The
plan was to sell a set of Miata wheels and tires to a guy from Facebook first
thing in the morning. As is often the
case with such things the guy overslept and was very late. In person he was a nice enough fellow and did
buy the wheels so all was forgiven (by me, at least).
We decided to go junkyard scouring for a few parts and
caught lunch at Firehouse Subs on our way.
We arrived at Colorado Auto & Parts to find it closed for the day
(the second time this has happened to us recently) so drove up to Denver
U-Pull. The clouds were threatening but
we managed to find what we (thought) we were looking for just as the rain
started to fall. The line to pay was out
the door so we got a little wet but not as much as those who got there later as
the rain really started falling as we were leaving.
Once home we found that the non-returnable parts we’d bought
weren’t going to work. We had purchased
seat belts for the RS but apparently there is a difference in design between
the wagon and sedan. Whoops! We didn’t mind terribly as we enjoyed looking
around the junk yard.
As further evidence of my insanity when it comes to cars I
agreed to buy a built race car from California.
I’d seen a posting about the car some time ago but the deal had recently
gotten sweeter. I talked to the seller
and he was accommodating and flexible so it was hard to pass up. Susan reluctantly agreed. The plan is to have the car, an 1987 BMW E30,
transported to our home sometime during the next week.
For dinner I picked up Chinese takeout and we watched
YouTube and Netflix with the pups on the couch.
Sunday was another early day with an alarm, this time
because Liz was coming over. Susan was
to show Liz how to assemble the RallyCross timing hoses and hang out. It was a touch after coffee that we found out
she wasn’t coming over when expected. As
the day was nice out and I didn’t have much else to do I started mowing the
lawn while Susan took Bella to the Parker farmer’s market.
Almost immediately after I started the mower ran out of gas
so I did some weed whacking instead.
That was tedious so I ventured forth to get gas so I could resume mowing
again. It’d been three weeks since last
I mowed and there had already been quite a lot of growth so I was happy to
knock it back down.
Susan returned home and eventually Liz dropped by. I was going to BBQ chicken for lunch but didn’t
want to interrupt my mowing so Susan ordered pizza instead. I took a short break to help scarf down the
cheesy-goodness and got back to it.
Susan and Liz assembled a few timing hoses and tested their
veracity before retreating into the house to chat and pet the pups.
I finally finished mowing and moved on to edging which went
alright as our weed whacker is pretty stellar.
After Liz left I wandered around the yard spraying
weed-killer on suspect plants Susan pointed at with her plant-killing broom
handle. She also vented a little on the
several large ant hills we had. It was
decided to try our neighbor’s suggestion which was to dump some gasoline on the
hills. Evidently this is supposed to be
effective and I happened to have just bought gas. What the heck, right?
Once we were finished potentially poisoning our water supply
I declared that my feet ached enough that I was done being productive for the
weekend. We retreated to the couch for
another evening filled with YouTube and Netflix. A great weekend for sure.
The next day we finally assembled a new door for the cat
shed. With each of our frequent rain
storms the old door would swell up and become wedged in its frame. It only took a few dozen comments, a little
begging, and some extortion to get me into the mood to make a new one. We purchased our supplies from Lowe’s and let
them do the majority of the wood-cutting.
Once home we found that their cutting prowess was only marginally
acceptable. I had to resort to the
saws-all to get the assembled door to fit in the frame. While sketchy we had the door mounted in
little time. The sun was going down at
this point so Susan began painting. Me
being me I went about putting away tools.
While Susan was briefly away I managed to unknowingly knock over the
paint can and dump all of its contents on the ground. Susan was the opposite of pleased but was
able to finish painting the first coat by dipping the brush in the rocks where
the spilled paint had pooled. The end
result looked alright enough and, more importantly, the new door functions
better than the old one.
June 28th weekend – Friday I left work early so I
could help Susan finish packing for our trip to Kansas. We were efficient and were finished and on
the road around 3:30. The drive was
uneventful and we stopped at a Comfort Inn in Hayes for the night.
We weren’t in a major rush Saturday so slept in a bit before
luxuriating in the Comfort Inn’s continental breakfast and inoffensive
coffee. Over the next two hours
countless bugs were splattered against the windshield and I managed to hit a
small bird and a raccoon. The bird may
have just been stunned but I don’t think the raccoon made it. I was a little traumatized when we finally
arrived in Hutchinson.
Our first stop was our hotel to check in (Holiday Express
this time). The front desk was empty so
Susan took the opportunity to call Norita at the care facility. As is the way of such things the call was
loud and lasted longer than I expected due to Susan having to frequently repeat
herself. Eventually Susan finished up on
the phone and managed to check us in. We
were unpacking the car when a guy from the hotel came by with new key cards for
a different room. Apparently the people
in the room we had reserved wanted to stay another night so we were upgraded to
a different room. Yay for us!
The upgraded room was a floor lower and huge. We decided we could stand the
inconvenience.
After unpacking and settling Bella and Mel we scooped up
Pebbles and went out. Lunch was at Chick
Filet. It has been many years since I’d
eaten their food. For all the hoopla I
hear from others Susan and I agreed it was ok.
We picked up pizza at Pizza Ranch and a few things at Walmart before
driving up and over to the assisted care facility.
Norita was in her chair when we arrived bearing many food
gifts. Much chatting occurred and Norita
ate a couple of slices of pizza. Susan
had printed off many pictures of our latest exploits which was fun for her to
show Norita. We visited for a few hours
before heading back to the hotel to tend to the pups.
I was inexplicably exhausted and napped while Susan went
back to Walmart to buy more goodies for Norita.
Once finished she returned to wake me up and we drove back to the car
facility.
Once there Susan busted out the brownies she had made and we
happily munched away. Susan had prepared
for us to not finish the whole pan of brownies with aluminum foil which we used
to wrap up the leftovers. We stayed
until past 9:30 before making our goodbyes.
We finished the night in our hotel with pizza that took over an hour to
arrive.
We were up around 8:30 to take care of the dogs and get
breakfast. We were missing the plain
coffee from the day before as the Holiday Inn coffee had been sitting too long
and was a bit sour. Oh how we suffer.
The drive home was largely uneventful. We’d taken Flo for the trip and its air
conditioning was barely up to the task.
Thus we weren’t the most comfortable but survived. Susan got a few hours of sleep in during the
trip and Mel made sure to remind us of her presence whenever she could.
We got home before 4:00 and unpacked before plopping on the
couch to relax. The dogs were so tired
and were clearly happy to be in a familiar setting again. We lazed about and ate food we had around the
house. It was a nice way to end a busy
weekend and month.
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