Auto-X II

Last weekend was the second auto-x for the T/A. Unfortunately none of the professional pics are online yet, but these are mine. The weather was very hot, but the turnout was still a little over 60 cars. That gave us enough time to get in 6 runs per car. I was again in the afternoon group (which I prefer anyway, cooler work time and the track gets cleaned in the morning). This auto-x marks the first time ever I have had an instructor ride with me (this is my 3rd auto-x as a novice). I had the instructor on the first run, which made me more nervous than usual. There was a gate at the end of the course that I missed on that run ( I think a pointer cone there would have been nice, these people here are fans of the pointer cones for some reason), so I ended up with a
1. DNF (62.394) I was taking it a little slow and let off when I didn't know where to go. Her (the instructors) advice to me was "hit the cones," referring to the gate (made up of 3 cones on that side). I see her point in that if there was an error I would have gotten a rerun, but oh well.

2. 60.322 After this run I decided to go get some gas, the car was cutting out a bit after the longer turns and the gauge had dropped 1/4 tank over the first 2 runs. I think I put in 7 gallons, bringing it around the 3/4 mark and allowing it to run good the rest of the day.

3. 59.172 This turned out to be my fastest of the day and I can't explain why I couldn't get close to it again. I added 45 lbs of fuel and Angela also rode with me, I will give her the credit for the fast run.

4. 60.023 Added a second??? I did have one rough turn during the run, but I didn't think it would be that bad. On the other had I got a standing ovation from all the other people there for my stop at the end of the run. This track had a stop box (new thing for me) and I went into it hard with all the tires locked, a few people whoo-hooood, I figured it was because I didn't take out the entire box like the RX-7 in the morning that went through it sideways. I thought for sure I took out at least 4 cone by the time I came to a stop, as they had disappeared under the nose of the car. I put it in reverse and backed up and everyone started cheering more?? Well apparently I had pushed several cones to nearly 90 degrees and then when I backed off, they all stood back up - no penalty...sweet!! Angela rode with me this time also.

5. 59.681 Yay, back in the 59s, but I was hoping for 58 something with this run with no passenger. Ah well.

6. 59.907 This was the last run, Angela rode with me again, it was a pretty good run I felt despite the time.

Well I still have yet to take out any cone with the car, I guess I am not pushing it hard enough. My time was good enough to beat 2 novice Miatas, and an 03 Mustang GT. If I had ran STU, I would have lost to the other two in the class (a 04 WRX STI and an 04 Evo).

Race stats:
Drivers:63 Runs:377 Average Lap: 57.755 Cones:118 DNFs:19
FTD: EM 53 David Seybold 06 Lotus StalkerV6, Black 49.658 Run 5

On the cars that were interesting or out of place note. There was a guy running a Crown Victoria with a best time of 59.838 which I thought was pretty good considering my times. There was a guy from a dealership that brought out a Solstice GXP, the lady he was with said that he was used ti driving front drive cars...and it showed with his last 2 runs having more than a 4 second variance, but it was a nice car. I think that is all for now...hopefully I will get some pictures up.

Denver Trip

Last weekend was a trip to Denver with Angela to go see one of her long time friends get married. We left early (~7:30) on Friday and arrived at our hotel at around 2:30 with only a stop for Dairy Queen along the way. We rested for a bit before heading out to a concert.

The concert was Blake Shelton at the Grizzly Rose. We were told to get there early because it would be a full house. Here is the schedule they had:
6:00 Doors open
8:00 Opening band
10:00 Blake Shelton

Well we arrived at about 5:20 with a few cars in the lot and a few people in line at the door. We sat in the car far a bit and walked to the door at around 5:45. Blake Shelton was there in the parking lot playing catch football with his setup crew and band. at 6 we went in and sat and ordered some food-which by the way I believe was directed toward the people that are to drunk to taste their food. They had music playing loudly and by 7 or 7:30 there were a bunch of line dancers out on the floor.

At 8 the opening band came out I think they were local, he sang most of the popular songs, although there were a few he should not have. At about 8:30 he started asking if everyone was ready for Blake between each song-this really started to piss me off after about the third or fourth time. His music resulted in a lot more line dancers, one of which was a goth girl. WTF??

So, finally at 10:00 Blake comes on. Mind you, we could have walked in at this point and been better of then we were, because now we were half deaf and tired. The crowd got larger-more line dancing-more other dancing-more women screaming at the front of the stage...Lets turn the sound up some more... We enjoyed the music and danced some (not line) and saw a women throw up on the edge of the dance floor. When we left ~11:30 both of us had ringing in our ears and were dead tired. -->hotel-->bed. I don't think we will be doing that again.

Saturday we got up-continental breakfast (quite a good one too)-took off to go visit Angela's Aunt and Uncle and cousins. We were there through lunch talking about all the goings on (she hadn't seen them in ~10 years). After that was a quick stop at the mall and then a rush to get ready for the wedding and get there on time-which we did.

It was at the Phipp's Mansion-very nice- that is owned by the University of Denver (?). It was a beautiful wedding.

The next morning we decided to leave early to go to Colorado Springs to do some sight seeing. We ended up going to the Miramont Castle. It was pretty cool, built in the late 1800's by a French Priest. The lady at the reception desk was all about the ghosts in the castle, apparently they appear in photos all the time as orbs (read: like lens flare (sp?)). I did have an orb in 2 photos, but not enough to make me believe anything (see to the left, center of picture).

After we were done at the castle it was food time. We went to a place called Old Chicago, it was a recommendation of one of the other wedding guests. We had some pepperoni rolls and split a calzone (it came as 2 smaller ones, but still plenty for each of us) and finished off with a giant cookie ala mode. It was a great meal, and the price was good too. We then headed home, and got back to Abq about 8:30 and returned our rental car and that was it.

By the way, Rental Car: 2007 Hyundai Elantra-Full power, Sunroof, CD, XM(no subscription of course), MP3 player and I-Pod port, Auto (will they ever rent a stick car here?), the best part was the trip average 38 mpg-given the car was no powerhouse, it had a low good starting first gear with a big jump to second that killed any acceleration you were doing. Anyway that was the trip, and the longest blog so far I think...there are still some pictures to come.

Set Trans Am to STUN!!!

I know, that was a lame title, but it goes with the picture. Went Autoxing yesterday at the San Felipe Casino. When I arrived there were people maddly cleaning the course since it was completely covered with dried mud (I think it is also the pit for the dirt track guys). Everyone in a rear drive car is looking at the dirt (not to mention the hydraulic fluid in one of the faster turns) and thinking "well crap!"




Here is uncle Rob, kicking up the dust that was still on the track. This is after at least his second run, so appx 60 cars minimum have been over this already (30 cars x 2 runs).


I somehow ended up in the afternoon driving group (read: almost every other car was wearing racing shoes while I was on normal tires). The setup was for all cars to get 5 runs to be done in time, there were ~60 cars.

Run 1: No time-apparently the sensors were not ready, I didn't feel bad because I had overshot a corner anyway and had to back up. The drifting action was extreme, the front held suprisingly well, but between the dirt on the track and 350 ft-lbs of torque the rear tires decided enough was enough.

ReRun 1: I was thinking if I could post a 65 I would feel really good about it because the best a guy I met with a 03 Mustang GT got was 67.426 and I figured he might be about my skill level, plus he was also running street tires. Still with major drift action I managed a 65.931. Score!!!

Run 2: Much the same as RR1 Time: 64.694 whooo...improvement.

Run 3: Same drifting...I think I may just like drifting. 64.479

Run 4: I decided to see if my drifting was hurting my times, I ran it felt good...wheres my time?

ReRun4: Try same thing again, I wasn't as smooth as I was on the previous run, oh well...Wheres my time? Apparently the wind was blowing trash past the sensors and screwing things up.

ReRun4-2: Try the same thing again, the smoothness was pretty good this time : 64.066 Sweet...almost half a second.

Run 5: Decide to try smooth again, went pretty well, but the geo sized turn at the end of the track went badly for me (not cone wise, just big car-tight spot wise): 64.363, still better than the drift runs.

So yes, I got 8 runs for the price of five, it was pretty awesome. Just for reference of how fast the course could be done FTD was a Stalker V6 with a 53.063 and the average was 62.066. Another thing for me was I didn't realize all the novices were 1 class. This put me against some carrs that fit the track better size wise: miata, focus, civic, etc. If I hadn't been novice I would have won my class...being the only car in it :) There was another STUN car, it was an 05 Legacy, I believe he was running some sticky tires-best of 60.885, so he would have beaten me. Oh well.

This is what I referred to as the Geo sized corner, there were more cone casualties here than anywhere else on the track. Believe it or not there is actually a third cone on the inside of the corner, somehow my car never met any of the cones on the track.

I owe thanks to the guy who let me use his magnetic 16s and my friend in the GT for his blue tape. More of my pics at http://s149.photobucket.com/albums/s73/wolverine350r/

Bear Cross, Bear Shield

This took place only a few blocks form where I live now, about 30 minutes after I left for work. Source: KRQE News 13

Bear drops by for checkup
Source: KRQE News 13

Cell-phone video caught bear in lobby.

RIO RANCHO -- A young bear wandered into a health-care center in Rio Rancho this morning causing quite a stir but no injuries before he was darted and returned to the wilds.

As one wildlife officer observed, if you're going to be darted with tranquilizer, you might as well get it done in a hospital.

And the 125-pound black bear had already gotten the attention of some residents and the Rio Rancho Department of Public Safety as the 911 calls came in:

Operator: Regional 9-1-1. What's your emergency?

Caller: There's a bear in my back yard.

The bear was running around the neighborhood all morning long, but DPS and New Mexico Department of Game and Fish officers didn't catch up with him until he arrived at the Presbyterian Medical Group building at Southern and 38th Street.

And, well, let himself right in.

“The automatic doors opened,” DPS Officer John Francis said. “He got caught in between the automatic doors.

“Once the interior doors opened, the bear made his way inside.”

Employees at the health center said the bear did knock before entering.

“He was right in front of the glass doors there, banging on them, trying to get them open,” nurse Sean DeLoach said.

Employees at first they tried to keep the bear from getting through the doors but then thought better of it.

“When the first set opened, there was a bunch of us in the lobby area,” DeLoach said. “We all decided that was a good time to leave.”

Eight employees and two patients quickly vacated the lobby.

DPS officers cornered the bear and held him until game officers arrived to tranquilize and capture it.

DeLoach said he didn't mind the surprise visit adding the bear didn't threaten anyone and was very courteous.

“Yes, he was very neat and tidy," DeLoach said. "We were trying to get him to schedule some more patients for us, but…"

Game officers believe the bear made his way into Rio Rancho from the Jemez or Manzano mountains after he was displaced by his mother or a more dominant bear.

Once the bear slept off the tranquilizer, he was released back into the Manzano Mountains.

The New Mexico CW guy

I saw him today, corner of Central and University. I was suprised that he hadn't caused an accident yet. Although this guy on the power-chair was poised to take him down. Sorry for the cell phone pic.

Land Rover: 1, PT Cruiser: 0

This was recently causing a rather large traffic jam as I drove home the other day. This PT had rear-ended a Land Rover (which I was unable to get a picture of (similar to pic on the right). I would call the Land Rover the winner as the only visible damage was a broken lens on one of the bumper tail lights. I think the guy in the picture was the owner of the PT, it was still smoking a bit...

Feeling safe at UNM

Ok, so the university has this new alert system for emergencies after what happened a few weeks ago. It sends a text message to your cell so that you can be alerted of danger.

So the other day I was leaving the me building and stopped on the grassy hill area to send a few last e-mails out. While I was there a fire truck showed up, then another, then another. This continued until there were 5 fire trucks (at least one labled Hazmat and one Heavy Rescue), one fire department ambulance, and at least two of their SUVs. Apparently there was no danger, because I never got a text.

I was reading in the paper where the bomb squad had been called to one of the parking structures about a week ago, and there had also been a hazardous chemical spill in the area of the pharmacy building--again, no text messages/e-mails, nothing. The response to this was that "there was no danger to the majority of the campus."

At least I received an e-mail several months ago after an appartent car thief fired shots at campus police and then ran into the campus to hide...of course it was a minimum of 3 hours after it happened that I got the e-mail.