So did Joe get new wheels for his caddy?
Yes
Ok, SSHS9 rocked!!!
A few thoughts about the trip and event...
Total mileage round trip 2597 and there was even an award for longest distance driven, which I totally won,
which was funny, at least to me, because I spend the whole weekend joking about how there better be a award for my 1200+ mile drive down there, having no idea that there was one, and being nowhere near the trophy area when they were giving them out, thank you Sharon for calling me and telling me to come accept my award...
As for the drive... I can't remember if I mentioned that I have this issue with deer... yeah... um, probably right up there with my hatred for flying is my fear of hitting a deer... (Sharon can tell you all about picking me up at the airport after a flight... I'm tons fun)
So of course as I make my way south, the number of deer seems to increase. (Perhaps deer like to live where people don't...) Ok, the number doesn't seem to increase, there are #%&*@$! deer everywhere... and for a while they seem to be little deer, so I at least take solace in the thought that with a little deer, I mean, how much damage could hitting one of those really do when your only traveling at 80...
Lest the trip down not be filled with enough deer fun to satiate my appetite for highway carnage and intense scanning of the sides of the road, we did of course have to return north... I've often joked that the deer and the fog and the State Police work together as a team in Pennsylvania. Those Pennsylvania deer are mere amateurs. There were so many deer on the way back JP likened it to, and oh yes... I quote... "driving through a slaughter house"... I myself felt more like it was driving through a Jackson Pollock painting that had been commissioned by Steven King...
Also, the deer continued to increase in size...
Then it happened... one of these clearly genetically altered giant Volkswagen size deer tried to kill JP and Tammie.
I think I saw the deer a fraction of a second after JP. I caught a flash of angry devil rabid deer from the left side of JP's Navigator's headlights, and instinctively swerved into the left lane. JP driving like a Navigator Ninja rollin' on 24"s moved left at the same time trailer and all. I thought "$#@&"... I saw the same angry devil rabid deer from the right side of the Navigator's headlights. It was so close I couldn't tell if they had collided or not, but I could read the bumper sticker on the back of the deer... "Guns Don't Kill People, I Kill People"... Suddenly deer hunting made all the sense in the world to me... As the deer continued on, foiled in it's plan to take it's own life, and that of a perfectly good Lincoln Navigator, I focused my attention back to said Navigator realizing that I'm once again still directly behind it, and hoping that the trailer doesn't start rocking after that physics defying lane change. Yet, without any further drama from the trailer, we both moved back into the right hand lane.
I still hate deer...
Drag racing is a blast...
If you've never done it, you should. If I can do it, anyone can do it...
The hotels were all literally right next to track, I don't think anyone had more then a 2 minute ride, and even that was only if you hit the stoplights when they were red. The Marauder clan and Impala club were a blast to hang with. On a personal note, I was disappointed with the moonshine... I was expecting it to really have much more of a kick... but that not withstanding the partying was fun.
Friday racing under the lights was a blast, I got a good rhythm going.
Get beer from cooler
Drive to staging lanes
Drink beer, wait to race
Race
Get beer from cooler
This system proved invaluable on Sat, as who knows how much time I would have wasted without it.
Sat was the big day, and after looking for a party Friday night (any party would due) there was not a living soul out who wasn't riding in my car by about 12:30 - 1AM... So here I am at the track Sat morning, before 8, it's freezing cold, like mid 30's cold... there is dense fog that was clearly there for the sole purpose of hiding gigantic killer deer, and the waiting began. Once through the gate and into the pits, we picked a spot, waited more (I had of course started drinking), the staging lanes were opened, more waiting... and the finally race time baby. (test and tune time actually)
So the real racing begins, and while I do wish I had my MK8, the Saxmobile did make a lot of people smile. Sure they might have been saying, "is he really going to race that thing"... and "isn't that car front wheel drive?"... but I didn't care, I wasn't going for fast (because I'm not fast) I was going for comfort...
1st race, won it...
I had a 15.90 dial in and ran a 15.936...
R/T .141 (I'm no Sharon)
MPH a blistering 87.56
2nd race... not so lucky...
It was only the second time in the two days of racing that I spun the tires off the line and that did me in...
15.90 dial in, ran a 16.060
The guy who raced me had a 16.01 dial in and ran a 16.112
He also beat Sharon in the 5th round and actually won for our class...
I would like to think that if there hadn't been any wheel spin I would have taken him in the second round and then obviously won the class myself...
I also had a chance to race JP twice
My very 1st run (there is video of this somewhere) on Friday night
JP is in the left lane, I'm in the right...
R/T .087 - .659 (I literally thought to myself 'he seems to be leaving, I better hit the gas')
1/4 13.680 - 15.996
MPH 101.68 - 87.33
My second JP encounter...
JP is again in the left lane, I'm in the right
R/T .358 - .197 (who was asleep that time huh
)
1/4 13.635 - 16.064
MPH 102.35 - 86.71
All and all, I got 8 runs in on Friday night and another 10 in on Sat
My best R/T was .047 (Sharon territory)
Best 1/4 was 15.856
Fastest MPH was 88.55
So Sat night... perhaps this had been too built up in my mind. I mean, I know how "WE" party, and lets be honest, LOD set's the bar pretty high...
Yes there were burnouts, and impressive ones, but there was not nearly the amount of complete beer and gasoline and moonshine infused chaos I was expecting. This was surprising since people had brought extra tires just for Saturday night, and we were hanging out with the club that so badly damaged the parking lot of 'a different' hotel, that the club was charged $4000 for the lot to be resurfaced... (that right there sounds like my kinda' partying) As the evening seemed to be reaching a tipping point of either potential insanity (what I was hoping for) or mellowing out (what wound up happening) I thought I would try tip the scales in my favor and with the help of Trixis8 did what I thought was a very respectable burnout... alas, the police eventually rolled through, caused everyone to laugh at them, and the night wore on into melancholy drinking in the cold. There was only one additional burnout that we could identify the next day.
This was a great event, I had an absolute blast, thanks again to Mike, JP and Tammie, and Sharon and Mike...
And now here are some PICS!!!
The whole album -->
http://rides.webshots.com/album/575611600ikrrSO
-J