UTCC/NASA @ VIR

Hyperfest may have been NASA's big event, back in June, but nothing on the year's racing schedule touches the grandeur of the Pirelli Ultimate Track Car Challenge presented by Grassroots Motorsports. It holds a special place in my heart because last year I was there becoming an instructor and competing for the first time in Time Trials.

Since then, I've missed just one NASA Mid-Atlantic competition weekend, and my results have steadily improved to put me in 3rd place for season points (up from 5th last year, and only 5 points out of 2nd this year!).

This year I intended to go and do my usual Time Trials & instructing weekend, but I got a call about a month ago asking if I'd like to drive someone else's prepared vehicle in the UTCC on Friday. It was this:



Obviously the only possible answer was "yes", followed by "hell yes". It was an opportunity to learn how to pilot another vehicle, get some additional track time, and maybe possibly build a bit of name recognition since the magazine does a blurb on every vehicle and its associated team & driver.

And what an experience! The Wreckless Abandon crew made one hell of a fast truck. With a bulletproof motor that could pull almost anything in a straight line, NASCAR cup brakes, the widest slicks I've ever seen, and a suspension that was remarkably capable, I was able to pull times that were competitive with my best ever times in the Miata.

I managed to haul that 3900lb beast to a 2:22.339 lap, 8 seconds faster than the truck had ever turned laps at VIR, and considerably faster than the last place finish the guys were expecting (you don't show up with a $500 vehicle to a super-car shootout with much hope).

Even without the quick laps, it was the talk of the paddock. The tech inspection crew didn't want to approve it to go on track at all, but there was hardly a moment all day when there wasn't a small crowd around it. The Grassroots Motorsports guys spent a good amount of time chatting us up about it, and a data-acquisition company called RaceKeeper decided to volunteer their system for one of my sessions. They came back later and told us the video will be featured next month as Grassroots Motorsports' video of the month, and that they were shocked at how much steering was required to get it around the track.

I did have two off-track excursions in it (one of which may be part of the video), once as a result of boiled brake fluid, and once when fuel was starved from the pickup sensor under heavy braking, but all in all it was a solid setup that I'd drive again in a heartbeat.

Saturday & Sunday brought a return to normalcy with TT and instruction, or so I thought... It turned out that my first student was a Grassroots Motorsports employee, and the car was a one-off factory concept Subaru. Called the Legacy GTk, it was an Outback with a Legacy GT drivetrain, but with an enlarged cargo area specifically for a child's shifter kart. The actual concept was that you would take your kid to the track, drop him/her off at the kart track, and then go turn laps on the grown-up side. Not a bad concept.

We had a great day in the car, which surprisingly featured almost 100% working accessories (extremely uncommon in concept cars), the most important of which was the AC. With temps hovering just above 100F, any relief was welcome.

My other student did not fare so well. I got sick from the heat and had to solo him early. Fortunately he's a great learner and a fantastic driver, so I wasn't too concerned.

But somehow in the fray, and in spite of turning good laps, I managed to lose an hour of my day. Just gone--no idea where it went or what happened. I invented a very convincing story in my head, that I'd gone out for a 2nd session with my group 2 student, and can still vividly remember that phantom session, but evidently heat can do some horrible things to your brain.

Fortunately the day ended with a thunderstorm shortly before my last session, and I had a very convincing run that was good enough for 2nd place. It helped having a rabbit to chase...



Sunday, however, was an exercise in futility. Hoping to beat the heat with a solid early run, I overdrove and went off in Turn 5 in the first session, then overdrove and went off in Oak Tree in the 2nd.

That meant my 3rd session would be automatically disqualified (so I turned one lap at an abysmally slow pace for a 2:37), and I had no choice but to stick around for the 4th and final session if I wanted to post a time.

That sucked harder than anything because ambient temps were back to about 100F by that late session, and the two offs had not done my alignment any favors. The best I could manage was a 2:23.5, a full 3 seconds off my best lap from the previous day, and just barely good enough for 3rd place for the day.

Ultimately the weekend was a success, bringing me up from a 20-point deficit to a 5-point deficit for 2nd place, two free tires, two fantastic students, riding in a car that doesn't properly exist, and piloting a truck that's just too freakin' awesome to exist.

Shout-outs to the guys at NASA Mid-Atlantic, Hoosier Race Tires, Grassroots Motorsports, Wreckless Abandon Racing, and my beautiful fiancee who endured the heat all weekend and whose car got mauled by a trailer late Sunday afternoon. I love you, babe!

Phases of My Adulthood as Viewed from Wine Selection

Under age: Wine? Gross; it's like drinking sand. Who does that?
21 years old, living at home: No bills! Freedom! No wine: BEER ALL THE TIME! WOOHOO!
22 years old, living in an apartment: Can't really afford wine. Go to Olive Garden; take remains of enormous bottle home; drink for a week! Woohoo!
25 years old, living in a house: Must have wine for special occasions. Never drink it because it cost real money. Pretend to understand what constitutes "good" wine; attempt epic wine snobbery.
30 years old, owning a house: I make decent money. BUY ALL THE GOOD WINES AND DRINK THEM! WOOHOO!!
35 years old, with a child: Bills! School fees! Retirement planning! Drinking with friends is a long-forgotten treat. Fuck it: I'll take the box.

Shall I tell you about my weekend?

Hello. It's been a while. How are you? Yeah? Kids doing ok? They enjoying the summer? Good...good.

Alastair and I had a pretty big weekend. Well actually, we've had a pretty big month. We started it off with a trip to VIR, where we had something of an engagement gathering of my parents, K's parents, the boy, the dog, and well: us. Twas fun, if a bot hot.

Then, because I'm a lunatic, I decided to approach a very minor oil leak in the race car by tearing the motor out of the car and completely disassembling it...in 12 days. With an overnight out-of-town trip in the middle. It was dumb, but it paid off: with 1 day left, it all got put back together in time to make Hyperfest (a big madhouse of car enthusiasts at Summit Point in WV), where I drove the untested motor, new clutch & flywheel, and hexagonal used tires to 2nd place. Yay!

So this past weekend, because I'd spent so very much of June dedicated to racing, I decided to dedicate entirely to my boy.

You may have heard about it, but Pixar had this new movie come out last weekend called Cars 2. Defying all of my personal rules about lines and crowds, I decided that this was one movie that must be seen on opening day. Surprisingly there were no major crowds to speak of, which was great considering how vocal Alastair was through the movie. He wasn't talking over it or being rude, but giggling and cackling like a loon at all the awesome. And it was awesome. The movie itself was ok, with some jokes for grown-ups tossed in for good measure, but watching his little face! My heart was bursting with joy.

So then Saturday morning we capitalized on that joyful attitude and made our very first ever day-trip to the beach! We took the Miata at his behest, packed to the gills with toys, food, and beach paraphernalia. All the way down he kept telling me that he wasn't going to get in the water--he was just going to play with his sand toys. I told him that was fine, but after 5 minutes of digging in the sand, he asked if we could go get wet for 'just a minute'. 2.5 hours later, I had to drag him out of the water. He loved the waves crashing over us, and went underwater innumerable times.

Even when we got out, he was clamoring to go back in. Which of course we did, high tide be damned! We weren't even 5 minutes out of the parking lot before his head drooped and he was out. I've never seen anyone sleep for an hour with the top down at 70mph.

And then, in spite of the sunburn (letting him spray my back was maybe not the best idea ever), we got up and went to King's Dominion on Sunday, where we met up with one of his pre-K buddies for a day of roller coasters. I hadn't realized how much of an adventure freak Alastair can be until I watched his buddy.

No disrespect to him at all, but that kid just did NOT want to have anything to do with speed or heights. Ghoster Coaster: ruled out. Swings? No thank you. But Alastair didn't mind one bit doing the slower / lower rides, and they had an absolute blast together.

Then, on top of everything that had come before, Alastair got to spend 2 days at his grandparents' house while I went on a last-minute business trip.

And lemme tell ya something...

THE NEXT PERSON TO TELL ME HOW EVIL CORPORATIONS ARE CAN KISS MY ASS.

My company has a manufacturing facility in a small rural backwater. We employ roughly 90 people at this facility, which was moved there to take advantage of lower real estate prices. Not the most noble of reasons, but the benefits are immediate and immeasurable for this community.

The town that hosts our plant is so small there are functionally only two last names. They plaster everything for a several-mile radius as you enter and exit the area. I joked with someone that that would make dating difficult, and she confirmed that they are facing a situation right now where an ENGAGED COUPLE is having to cull county records to see if/how they are related. Personally, I'd rather establish that before getting down on bended knee, but...

The area is so economically devastated that people cannot afford to feed themselves, let alone their pets. This has evidently lead to problems with people abandoning or downright killing their dogs. In response, the community has held "ugly puppy" contests just to keep the dogs alive.

The only other sources of income in the area are tobacco, a smattering of corn, and travelers with busted tires. And my company. There's no local* McDonalds. No Walmart. It's a choice between making a salary working for my company or scraping by. They do not even produce the raw materials that go through their machinery. It's all trucked in and out.

So let me re-iterate: we are giving 90 people a chance at a better life. No, let's rephrase: we're giving 90 people the ability to put food on their table.

That might not seem like a lot of people, but in an area as desolate as this one, it's huge.

*these things exist a couple of towns over, so while they may be accessible by car, I didn't see a single car in the employee parking lot made in the past decade.