Hey cats & kittens, it's time to rename the dusty ol' blog. Can't really cling to the past because the future's coming like a freight train. I'm getting married in two weeks pretty darn soon (remember: if you're looking to thieve my junk, the wedding is in June 2014--you might want to write that down) and some light cleaning is in order.
I won't pretend for even a moment that Amanda's influence on my life is gone. It will never be gone. I spent 14.5 years with her and we produced one amazing little guy, but daggone am I excited about the next phase of my life.
K is beautiful, intelligent, funny, dorky, nerdy, and perfect. Alastair adores her almost as much as I (and has frequently told me that he'll marry her too, once he grows up).
People have been asking me if I'm nervous. I'm not. I'd be a fool to be blithely walking into any commitment without fully vetting my fiancee, and we're incredibly compatible. The minister performing the ceremony says he's never (in over 20 years) seen a couple so compatible--at least from our standardized couples' test scores. She may choose to believe it has nothing to do with us both being Year-of-the-Rabbit Virgos, but I know what's what.
Nor am I sad to end my bachelorhood. Dating is horrible. Everyone has games and walls and baggage, or worse. K brings none of that. Since the majority of our relationship has been from a 140 mile distance, we've had to be extremely open and honest. And she's astonished me every step of the way.
I love you, K, and I'm so ready to be your husband.
Remember this? Way back when...? Well I went and got all criminalistic again. Back in July, I was coming back to work from lunch when I apparently decided I absolutely needed some trifle from Target. Taking an exit I'd not used in many moons, I found myself pulling up to what looked like a yield, stopping (or maybe not, who knows any more--it was July forgodsake), and pulling out to the flashing of blue lights. Yay me! I'd been stopped for running a stop sign!
I of course told the cop I was certain I'd stopped, and he told me he was certain I hadn't, but that it wasn't his job to argue with me. I got a citation and a court-date of last Friday.
It rattled me for a number of reasons. One was that I was absolutely certain I'd seen a yield sign. Two was that I felt like I remembered there being a stop sign where I thought I'd stopped. Three was that I try not to do things to fall afoul of the law.
So later that day I went back to the scene of my murderous spree of gang violence traffic citation and took lots of pretty pictures. I then talked to another cop on the scene who remembered the intersection the way I had before I'd been caught. He was just as surprised as I'd been that the only visible stop sign in the intersection had been replaced by--not one, but 8 smaller yield signs for a new pedestrian crosswalk. Of course, for as much as he agreed that the new traffic pattern was confusing and probably not proper, he refused to be a part of my court case and told me that my beef was with Officer Mason, who'd written the ticket. Great, thanks.
So I took the pics I'd snapped of the intersection, compared them to Google's street-view pics, and determined my memory had been impeccable. Yay memory! Then I looked at some satellite pics and realized that, based on where the old stop sign had been, there could not have been any way for Officer Mason to see me stop where I believe I had, which technically was still the only safe place to stop in the whole intersection.
Armed with my evidence, I prepared myself for the impending date with the Richmond Court system. And then they took away the only remaining stop sign and changed the whole intersection to a yield. I took pics of that, too, and added them to my arsenal of defense materials. I printed my spotless driving record, I wore a suit, and I drank all the coffee. I was ready.
When I got there, people began mistaking me for an attorney. Apparently most people don't take traffic court seriously. When the time came for my case to be heard, I approached the bench with my packet of glossy 8x10's in hand. I greeted the judge with a smile (which was returned--she was in a good mood!), and the DA spoke up. I'll paraphrase...
Your honor, the intersection in question has since been changed from a stop sign to a yield sign, which is what I'm guessing Mr. Amos has pictures of there... In the interest of fairness, we're asking for null process in the charges against him and the 5 other people in here for same offense.
I had no idea what that meant, but it sounded good. Then the judge smiled at me and said, "Have a nice day, Mr. Amos." I even turned to Officer Mason and the DA and told them to have a nice day on my way out. I was honestly a little disappointed I'd not even gotten to open my bag of pics.
But it occurred to me later: he'd busted a minimum of 6 people in there at the same intersection for running the same invisible stop sign. And that was just the people who'd shown up! How many just sent in a check? And then I looked up 'null process'. It's not the same as 'case dismissed' at all. It just means that the DA isn't interested in pursuing the charges at this time. Granted it'll likely never come up again, but if I get pinched for speeding tomorrow, this null process ticket could be used against me.
But in the end, I still walked away from court with only a Kinko's fee for printing 6 8x10's, and that ain't bad.
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BTW--for those who don't know, I'm getting married soon. I'd go into further details, but I'm told thieves would just love to hear about our honeymoon plans, so you'll all just have to wait for details until after the wedding (which for you criminals out there is expected to take place some time in June 2014).
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.
