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Knife to a gunfight

That pretty much describes me in my class at El Paso.

The drive out was uneventful. I brought along a good selection of cd's, though I knew they wouldn't last me all the way there without some repeats. In no particular order:

• Zwan - Mary Star of the Sea


• Sublime - Greatest Hits


• Garbage - Version 2.0


• White Zombie - Supersexy Swingin' Sounds


• Reel Big Fish - Turn the Radio Off


• Smashing Pumpkins - Machina II/Friends and Enemies of Modern Music

It was a cloudy night, which made things weird, as it was always very dark. It really didn't feel like I had been driving that long as I went from Tucson through New Mexico, as nothing changed - it was always just as dark as it was 10 minutes ago, and the road is pretty much the same the whole way there. Doing this for four hours made it that much more interesting when I crested a hill above Las Cruces, and just saw the sea lights that made up the town. Not dense lighting, like in a big city, just lots of little lights across the desert. From there, it was onward to El Paso, which wasn't very far away. Mentally, I tried to make the trip easier by thinking of it in terms of sequential "Tucson" trips, since I've made that drive a number of times. It's about 110 miles to the middle of Tucson, from my place. Then from Tucson, Lordsburg was only 150ish miles - a little more than one Tucson drive. From Lordsburg, Las Cruces was 120 miles away - about equal to one Tucson drive. El Paso was only 45 miles beyond that, and that's only like a drive to Casa Grande. Not bad at all. It really didn't feel like six and a half hours of driving.

The Radisson in El Paso is actually a pretty decent hotel. At the very least, the tv in the room at rear RCA inputs, and some of the better rooms even had them on the front of the tv. Fancy. Two free drinks per night and a free breakfast in the morning made it a pretty good deal. A nearby Applebees and a steakhouse made it that much better. The RCA inputs were used, of course, to connect my PS2, so we could play GT4 during free time. As a result, I only watched the 70+ channels of cable in the room for about 10 minutes. If I ever had to go to El Paso again, I wouldn't mind staying there.

Friday's practice day didn't start out so well. Just as people started making practice runs, it started to rain. Still not having much rain experience, I took my practice runs during the rain to get a feel for tire pressures in case it rained the next day, which was what the forecast called for. After an hour or so, it dried up. I still didn't like the fact that it rained at all, as autocrossing in the rain is my absolute least favorite type of autocrossing. Just incredibly frustrating for me. Oh, and have I mentioned that I don't have any rain gear? That's fun, too. At least I now have a tarp to go above/below my stuff, so it doesn't get all wet when it rains. Overall, I'd say the practice day went ok. At the very least, I got my car tech'd, and came back later to check in for registration, and to walk the course.

Walking the course, it looked like it was going to be fun & fast, and that proved to be true on Saturday. No rain, fortunately, spare a few drops in the morning before we started running. Everything seemed to flow nicely, except for one tricky little turn about 2/3rds of the way through. Average speed was pretty reasonable, and top speed was probably in the upper-60s I'd guess (at least, for my car). I really could have used a lot more power for maybe 3 to 4 sections, but there's not much I can do there. The fast car in the class was so much faster, I wonder why anyone would even try to compete in an Integra. Obviously the driver was far better than me (national champion at least once, I believe), but 5 seconds on a 60-second course is a pretty huge margin to try to overcome. If I ever want to attain that level of ability, I'll need to be driving at least as fast as our local SM drivers in my car, or in other words, top pax by a nice margin at just about every event. Yeah, that's a little ways off. :-P

Sunday's course was just Saturday's course run backwards, with a couple modifications to the start and finish. It definitely had that "course run backwards" feel to it, as I didn't think things flowed quite as smoothly. It was fun, but for me, not as much as the previous day. Maybe that's why I went so slow the second day. ;-) I just didn't drive well. Coned my first run, DNF on my second. The third run I thought I was doing ok, but I hit a stupid cone that just shouldn't be hit. Even worse, the time wasn't all that good. I was still a couple seconds off of where I should have been. I knew I had to have a good clean run on my third attempt, but I'm wondering if that didn't slow me down some. So there you go, my co-driver and I finished last and second-to-last. Hooray.

The drive home was equally uneventful, but driving during the day, I actually got to see what New Mexico looked like, other than the 20ft-wide stretch of asphalt. Turns out I wasn't missing much. It's like Arizona, but with no saguaro. I shouldn't say it was uneventful, really. There was some periods of really hard rain, where I couldn't see more than about 50 feet out of my windshield. Fortunately that only lasted a few minutes. Then I ran over a few massive tumbleweeds, which I'm sure scratched up the paint a bit. :-( Then I ran into some massive traffic in Tucson, where I was pretty much idling along in first gear for about 45 minutes. That was pleasant. >:-O

Overall, I came out of the event a bit discouraged. For one, I knew the fast car in my class would be faster than me, but I didn't expect the margin to be so huge. At this point for me, it's like standing in front of a smooth 20ft wall with no equipment, and having someone tell me to climb it. It feels that insurmountable. I can make up all the excuses I want regarding the fact that I'm so much less experienced, that the car is underprepared, whatever. Even if you account for all of those things that I would fix if I could, there's still that wall that I just don't think I can climb, and it's disappointing. It has kind of made me re-think what I want the car to be, and how I want to spend my money. If the goal is a locally-competitive car that I drive every day, then the high-dollar items are out. ITBs, standalone engine management, maybe even the LSD. I'm wavering on the race-valved shocks, but those will probably happen anyway, as my current springs aren't adequately controlled as it is. Money spent on the expensive items can go to other things, like the cost of traveling to other events, or even non-autox items I'd like to buy. After all, I'll need to buy the next playstation and xbox, and those won't be cheap. Especially if I want to play them in the full glory of a high-definition projector. If I'm ever convinced that my skills are at a level where my car is seriously holding me back, maybe I'll look to get something more competitive. Whatever car that may be is anybody's guess though. I don't really like the lack of modifications in stock, and race tires are too much fun to go back to street tires in STS/STX/STU/STS2. That pretty much just leaves SP classes, which can be expensive to do right, and for a top car, often leaves you with something that's not suitable for street use.

In closing, never attend an autocross without chapstick. Ever.

Hope the rest of the day doesn't go like this...

So I'm going to Costco for lunch, figuring I can cross a couple things off my El Paso todo list. When I went to charge my camera batteries last night, I found they won't hold a charge. The camera takes 4 of them too, which is no good. It's not the latest and greatest sample of digital photographic equipment, that's for sure. Costco.com shows a 4-pack of NiMH batteries with a 15-minute charger for $25 - it sounded good, and I know I had seen it in the store before. So after my hot dog, I go battery hunting. And I can't find them. For 15 minutes. I know I've seen them there before, and now I can't find any batteries at all. I even had to go so far as to ask someone where they were, which I absolutely hate doing. So, where were they? Right up front, as you walk in the door. About six pallets of them. >:-O They didn't have exactly what I was looking for, but it was close - a 6-pack of NiMH AA's for $13, but no charger. Fine, I'll use the charger I have at home. Hopefully the batteries were the problem, not the charger!

While I'm there, I check out the various language learning programs on audio cd, thinking it would be a good way to pass the time both driving there and back, plus an actual activity would probably do a better job of keeping me awake. At $19, the price was right as well. Eight cd's per language, and at 75 minutes per cd, that's about 10 hours of content. Perfect! Unfortunately, I wasn't really interested in the languages they had at the moment - Spanish, French, and Japanese. Obviously Spanish could have been sorta useful, given where I'm going, but I wasn't interested for whatever reason. French, no thanks. They don't even pronounce half the letters in each word it seems. Those letters can't just sit there and be ignored, they demand to be heard. Japenese could have been cool, but every account I've heard says that it's a really tough language to learn, and I wasn't up for that sort of challenge. I know in the past they've had German and Italian as well. I was kind of hoping they'd have German there. Despite taking 4 years of it in high school, I don't really know much. Perhaps a different leaning technique would lend itself to better results? Who knows. For $19, it would have been worth it to find out I think. Maybe some other time.

So let's review the todo list:

1. Buy GT4. Priorities and all.
2. Get front end aligned after suspension work last weeked. Hopefully that'll be done today.
3. Pack a bag, remembering that it should be a little cooler there. Almost done
4. Check fluid levels.
5. Check tires (for things beyond the terrible wear pattern).
6. Bring enough cd's to get through the 12 hours of driving, round trip.
7. Stop at the bank for some road cash.
8. Mail in the Kumho liability waiver (made my magnets yesterday).
9. Find camera, and charge the batteries for it.

Looking good! Just have to finish up those last three before I head out. :-)

Longest day evar?

It's 6:50am. The sun is almost up. On a normal work day I'd be brushing my teeth about now, but today, I've been here for an hour and a half already. Woke up three hours ago. Even worse, I was awoken by the sound of rain gushing off the roof at 3am. I should be leaving work early, but alas, it won't be to play GT4. I can only hope that I'l get out of town at a reasonable time today, so I can make it to El Paso and get some sleep before the practice day tomorrow. My confidence level has dropped a bit lately, as my class has seem some additions in the last couple weeks. After a little research, I think the only people in my class that haven't trophied at nationals are me and my co-driver. Great. I plan to bust out the "underprepared" excuse BIG TIME. :-D Even if I don't finish well, it's looking to be a fun event (well, provided my car stays on this side of the border).

Alignment hilarity

So - went to pick up my car after getting an alignment yesterday. $94 out the door, more than I expected, but they did a 4-wheel alignment, rather than just the front. Probably best that they did, as rear thrust was a bit out of wack. Toe is now near zero, car drives straight, and the steering wheel is well-aligned. Funny comments on the receipt though - camber on the right side wasn't within factory specs, so they recommended offset bushings to "correct" that. !!!! I've been looking for offset bushings for a couple years now, and NEVER found any for my car. I mentioned that to them, and they seemed quite surprised. :-P I think my camber now is a pathetic -1.2° on the front left, and -1.4° on the front right. :-(

GT4 has landed

I was only able to play for a couple hours last night, but it's proving fun so far. Definitely having to adjust to the GT-world controls again, after playing so much Toca2 a month or two ago. I started out braking too early everywhere. I've also noticed that the steering seems really sensitive, but that might just be me.

Since I had some GT3 game data, I was able to start with the first two licenses and an extra 100,000 credits to spend. First stop - used car lot! Picked up a red '95 RX7 Type R-S or some such nomenclature. Even came with some great wheels. I want to say it was around 19k credits or so. Off to the tuning shop! Race exhaust, lightweight driveline, chip, , semi-race suspension, intercooler, and stage 1 weight reduction. A couple nice changes from GT3 - at least a couple clicks have been removed from the modification process, that's nice. Also, before you do a weight reduction, it'll tell you exactly how much weight is being reduced. In addition, it looks like you can install a roll cage to stiffen up the whole car. Nitrous is now an option, but I haven't tried it.

So, off I go to the beginner races, and enter the Sunday Cup. Each race is worth a certain number of "A-Spec" points, depending on how fast your car should be compared to the rest of the field. Faster car = fewer points. The thing is, I don't think the points count for anything. :-P All of my Sunday Cup races were <5 points. Finished up those 5, then on to the FR races. I think the most points I had here was 47 or so. Well, that's pretty much all I could race with my RX7 for now (at least in the beginner hall), so I picked up a used Civic Type R for the FF races. I did pretty well, but one race I kept getting killed at Midfield by an SRT-4...by several seconds. Quit and entered again, and it wasn't there. :-) Maybe halfway done with the FF races right now.

Both of my cars felt like they were understeering a LOT. Part of this may be due to the lack of the fully-customized suspension that I'm so used to on GT3 cars. The game is also probably a big more realistic about trying to turn under braking, maybe that's the only problem. ;-) Both of my cars are on "sports" tires as well, as you can't have race tires in the beginner races, so the grip really doesn't feel that good. :-\

Now I just need someone to explain arcade mode to me. In 3 there was an obvious progression of races at several difficulties, and at the end, you won a car. It seems like there isn't any point to arcade mode in 4, as everything I've read indicates that cars/tracks are unlocked by playing in GT mode, rather than arcade mode.

Underwhelming

Did I spell that right? Perhaps.

Went to Capistrano's for lunch today, as my car is having that alignment done, so I can't go anywhere that's not within a reasonable walking distance. This place is right across the street, and the only place available besides the cafeteria. The sandwich was good, and I like the fact that they use Boar's Head meats and cheeses. My sandwich was a bit smaller than I expected, unfortunately. I was expecting something in the 6" range, and this was maybe 4", 4.5" tops. If I go back, I'll have to get the full size. Also, I asked for the italian, and it looks like I ended up with turkey! Maybe next time.

Underwhelming.

Mmmm...tilty.

One more thing. As is obvious from this picture, I either need (a) stiffer springs, (b) a fat front swaybar, or (c) less lateral grip. Well, maybe not (c). :-P I really need to get more of Brandon's pics up, and there are plenty of good ones.

Oh yeah, that.

I mention suspension work in the previous post, yet don't talk about it. Fantastic. Brian and Clint helped me change out my adjustable control arms and replace most of my front suspension bushings with poly equivalents. I think the only rubber bushings left up front are on the swaybar endlinks.

Control arms: the car definitely doesn't look as good without 3° of negative camber, but there's no way around that at the moment. Hopefully one of these days I'll get some control arms out to someone that can make offset bushings, and I could get a little of that back. My tires should thank me though, as I should get more than 10k miles out of a set. Of course, if I wasn't so lazy, I just would have had them flipped a few thousand miles back, and I'd be ok.

Poly bushings: these weren't so bad to install, once we got the process down. Fortunately the new bushings came with tons of lube, as (a) you definitely need it to get them in, and (b) it's supposed to prevent/lessen the squeaking. Right now I do notice them squeaking still, but mainly over larger bumps, and usually the radio drowns it out. One of us didn't get the "put grease on all poly surfaces that will touch metal" memo until halfway through, so maybe that has something to do with it, too. ;-) I've heard people complain about increased vibrations and noise from these bushings, but since I already have the motor mount inserts, I didn't notice anything above and beyond the vibration that was added from those. After driving on them a few days, I can say it was definitely a worthwhile change, even if it makes no difference for autox. The front end feels MUCH better going over bumps and such. Reactions to bumps are better/faster, and with less noise (other than the occasional squeak). With 132k on the stock rubber bushings, they were definitely overdue for a change.

A countdown, if you will

The trip to El Paso begins in approximately 32 hours now. I'm sure I still have plenty of stuff to do by then, so I think a checklist is in order.

1. Buy GT4. Priorities and all.
2. Get front end aligned after suspension work last weeked. Hopefully that'll be done today.
3. Pack a bag, remembering that it should be a little cooler there.
4. Check fluid levels.
5. Check tires (for things beyond the terrible wear pattern).
6. Bring enough cd's to get through the 12 hours of driving, round trip.
7. Stop at the bank for some road cash.
8. Mail in the Kumho liability waiver (made my magnets yesterday).
9. Find camera, and charge the batteries for it.

That's about all I can think of at the moment, though I have to be forgetting something. I'll probably end up forgetting something stupid that I won't remember until I get there, too. Like, I don't know, one wheel or something.

A future in meteorology

I didn't think it would happen two days in a row - forecast shows rain, leave the sunglasses at home, and the sun comes out. As a result, I was sneezing all during lunch. Who needs the weatherman when I can determine rain or shine by my eyewear for the day? :-P

Sunglasses vs rain

Bah. I don't know how I do it, but apparently I can control the weather. It seems that any day where rain is in the forecast, all I have to do is leave my sunglasses at home, and the sun will be out all day. Happened several times this weekend alone. Now I'm all squinty. ^_^

Beer, shoes, shocks

I planned to do this over several entries, but as always, I got lazy. Imagine that.

The El Paso tour is about 10 days away now. I felt pretty good after the autox this past Sunday, as I wasn't hitting cones all over the place like my last couple events. I thought the time was pretty decent too. Brandon was out there taking pictures, and he got a bunch of good ones of my car. If I can overcome the laziness, perhaps I'll post some of the better ones. Here's a sample of what he took that day. Still have some work that needs to be done before the tour, but that's what next week is for, right?

Went to BJ's the other night. One of their special beers that day was called "Quad", described as a "strong Belgian ale". It was pretty good, I'd definitely have it again.

My brown docs have finally been retired. Served me well for almost 9 years. Money well spent.

Koni has finally started making race-valved, pre-shortened shocks for Civics/Integras/CRXs. Front shocks are 25mm shorter, rears are 15mm shorter. All have the SPSS3 (I think that is) valving, which I guess is how they valve most Yellows for racing these days. Hopefully they'll hit the street at about $1k/set. A tempting product for me, as I would have zero downtime in going to a shortened/revalved setup...wouldn't have to go back to stock shocks for the several weeks my current shocks would be out for service. That valving would let me go to higher spring rates as well....hmm....maybe 600/750 sounds good. :-D

And the most recent thing...we had a power outage at home for a couple hours this morning. I woke up to an occasional beeping noise, which I recognized as the UPS for my computer in the other room. I looked up to check the time....where'd the clock go?? Turned out our entire building was dark, and this was around 5:15. After stumbling around in the dark, I set the alarm on my phone for 6:30 so I could get up for work, still having no idea how I would shower in the dark, or get my car out of the garage. :-P Fortunately the power came back on at about 6:40, and I made it out the door in time. Now I just have to go reset all of the clocks. >:-O

Tennis Superstar

Not really. I did, however, win my first match in as long as I can remember last night, which was great. More importantly, I made a couple significant changes over the course of the match, and they both helped a lot. The final score was 1-6, 6-4, 7-5 I believe. After figuring something out with my serve, my first serve percentage went up significantly (from maybe 10% to 50%), and everything that was in, was fast. My weakest spot by far was the one-handed topspin backhand, something I usually do fairly well. Yesterday, it was just terrible. Balls were hitting the ground before the net, that's how bad it was. I think it's from using a new grip with an old swing though, so maybe I can fix that in the future.

A new ice age is upon us

Check out the forecast for today. I think I'm going to need a bigger jacket. :-o

Ugh....sugar overload

This is why the Super Bowl is in January - because you eat enough junk to last you the rest of the year. :-o What was on my list? Let's see...
- M&M's
- Chewy Chips Ahoy
- Oreos
- Nachos
- BBQ potato chips
- Sour cream & onion potato chips
- Pineapple upside-down cake
- Some mash of random mexican food flavors all in one dish
- Sandwich with 2 cheeses and 3 meats
I didn't just have a little of each of those, I kinda had a bunch of all of them. ;-) The game itself I thought was pretty boring. Though that might be just because it's the only pro football game I've seen all season. Whatever.

Things...and stuff

Another Tucson autocross last weekend. Not nearly as cold as I expected, and way more sunny. Result? Captain sunburn. >:-O Even worse, I didn't do particularly well, and I think I hit more cones in that one day than in the last 4 (5?) years of autocrossing combined. A whopping 19 on the day, including 7 on my first run. I was fortunate to get a single clean run, even though it was slow. Slightly more successful, Teresa and I went bowling last night with some friends, and both did quite well:

	Game 1	Game 2	Game 3	Total
Teresa	120	145	170	435
Ben	153	215	163	531

And finally, in the tradition of worthless internet quizzes, I present the following:

Which Website are You?