Two Days before the Competition begins
April 16th, 2004
The Travel Day - Viva Las Vegas!


5
Tracks in 5 Days to determine who really is the fastest driver/car/team


Autowave is maintaining and tuning the Flamemobile


This is not the "Official OTC" page.  It is my "unbiased" (heh) interpretation of the events prior to the Open Track Challenge, and a diary of what happened during the event.

April 16, 2004
So the plan is to leave at 9:00 a.m. for the RV Central, which is located in Corona, California.  My life consists of herding cats that don't necessarily want to be herded, getting everyone to a certain point at a certain time.

Since this is Friday, and it is still spring break for some people, and every hotel in Vegas is sold out due to a broadcaster's convention, I want to get my ass on the freeway as soon as possible.  The last thing I want is to deal with a 7 hour traffic jam getting into Vegas.   I was up until 3:00 a.m. the night before trying to hack up the last couple of chapters for the website.  (Don't forget to send those faxes in!)  So I figure if we leave at 9:00 a.m., we should be good.

Wayne is behind.  He didn't get his tires until late yesterday, along with trying to get his alignment checked, decals finished, Stone Guard clear plastic on the front of the EVO, etc.  Since he re-bought what was left of 1-800-Phoneguys, which is essentially the desks, empty shelves, and the phone numbers, he has people screaming at him.  The old owner apparently bought a lot of equipment on credit the last couple of months before he went bankrupt, and appears to have resold it to get the cash.  But he didn't pay back the stuff he bought on credit.  Thus, people call the 1-800-Phoneguys, demanding to talk to Larry, the old owner, but he is out of business.  Then they talk to Wayne, and demand that he pay the $12,000 bill for equipment purchased.  Wayne has nothing to do with that, as he sold the entire business in a stock sale, so Larry owned the business, and Larry ran up the credit the last few months, and Larry is now not paying.  Wayne tries to explain that 1-800-Phoneguys is a dead entity, and he is restarting up a new company using the old phone numbers that he purchased.  However, people who are owed money don't see it that way, they are screaming that Wayne should pay them the $12,000, and if he doesn't pay, they are suing Larry, 1-800-Phoneguys, and then Wayne until they get their cash.  Wayne said that they got burned for $12,000, but Wayne himself was burned for $430,000.  But these suppliers don't give a shit.  All they know is they sent stuff out on credit, and they never got paid.  So now Wayne has to start a new business up, deal with the remnants of 1-800-Phoneguys suppliers demanding payment, etc.  So he is all stressed out, trying to do a hundred things at the same time, AND trying to get his vehicle ready for the OTC.  I tell him he shoulda started the new business the day AFTER the OTC was finished.

Anyways, Wayne is running late, he says he will meet me at my house at 9:30, and load the EVO in the trailer.

Brent is helping out driving the rental RV that tows the karting trailer.  The plan was for me, Wayne, and Brent to all be at RV Central at 10:00 a.m., then head up to Vegas, leaving Brent's Jeep at the rental place.  But Messley wasn't ready with all his shit, like his driving suit (at the cleaners), alignment scales(still being used to align a 240Z car), and trying to fix stuff on the 240Z car that has been at his shop for weeks, and he had to be in Orange at 8:00 a.m. to pick up parts (thus missing the opening time for the cleaners, etc)  He started to drop the splitter on the NSX down another 1.5 inches on Wednesday night, but he had to throw the ABORT switch, as he wasn't going to finish that in time, so he rebolted the old splitter setup back on the NSX.  Otherwise, I would have been sitting in front of Messley's shop with the trailer until 4 hours before the OTC like last year.


The rental RV is used to kick back at the track, cook, and tow the kart trailer

Now Brent has some female cruising into town for the weekend from back east, and he wanted to "say hi" to her before he left.  So he talked with Erik about logistics (ha!), and Erik said to pick up the RV in Corona, head back to Huntington Beach where he should be done with the alignment scales by 10:00 a.m. (ha!), say hi to his friend, take a nap, and then drive to Vegas.  Except that puts him in the heart of rush hour trafffic.   Doh!

Erik has to finish the Z car, and he also has to be in Long Beach on Sunday late afternoon to meet with a potential sponsor who will be at the Long Beach Grand Prix.  So Erik is thinking that maybe he will use a motorcycle to buzz into Vegas, throw down a smoking first session in my car on Sunday, then hop back on the borrowed Hayabusa and thread his way back to Long Beach (another 20 minutes past Huntington Beach) in Sunday rush hour Vegas-to-SoCal traffic in time for his meeting.  And then he will meet us Monday at Willow.

Me, all I want to do is beat the traffic, get into Vegas, relax for an evening, get some sleep to prepare the body for the OTC week.

Wayne calls and say he is later that he thought he would be.  So I tell him to drive to Corona in the EVO, and we will pack it in the trailer there.  I leave the house at 9:30 for Corona, and after 20 minutes the wife calls and says I forgot the power supply for my laptop.  SHIT!  I call Wayne, and he still hasn't left the shop.  I ask him to stop by my house, pick up the power supply, then head for Corona.


Here's Wayne's car, looking all glammed up!

Picking up a rental RV takes about an hour.  You fill out paper work, insurance waivers are faxed, etc.  They video tape the RV (in case you damage it), they explain how to use all the stuff on it, etc.  We do that, and then hookup the karting trailer to the RV.  We discover that diesel RV is on empty, and it is so big that it will not fit in the local gas stations. We fill it up using the auxiliary tank on the truck, and Brent heads back to Huntington Beach, and finally, at 12:00 noon, Wayne and I are heading to Vegas with some traffic.   Five hours later, we make it to the hotel, where I take a nap, and Wayne heads off to find a gym and a Wells Fargo bank.  Unfortunately for us, we lost our hookup that was able to get us adjoining suites with wetbar (total of about 3000 square feet) at Bally's for about $79 a night, so now we are stuck in the 300 square foot rooms at the beautiful Best Western Nellis hotel, and paying $100 bucks a night.

The town is packed.  We go to our hotel, and Wayne said that he heard there is a run-what-ya-brung event at the Vegas dragstrip, about 5 minutes from our hotel, that runs from 10 p.m. to 3:00 a.m.  Ten bucks per run.  Hummmmm......we look at each other with the same idea on our face...we could take our OTC cars over to the 1/4 mile, take some pictures, and see if we can run in the 11 - 12 second range....but then realize that we would probably blow up our clutches right before the OTC trying to chase down some 11 second Civics.  Plus, since we don't do 1/4 mile events, we would get crushed like we do in autocross.

9:00 p.m. -  I wake up, we grab a bite to eat, lose money at Bally's casino, (note: a lot of the damn strip hotels are playing single deck, but only paying 6-5 on a blackjack.  Sucks!) and then head downtown to the Golden Nugget.  Wayne bails out of there around 11:30 p.m., losing cash.   I stay until 1:00 a.m. at the same single deck table.   After 2.5 hours of playing at the double deck table, I am up $700 bucks, making up for the $150 I lost at Bally's.  I had it up to $1100 profit, but then lost a couple of heart breaking big hands.  Shit, I thought I was on my way to $2000 bucks.  I grab a cab, head back to the hotel, where I write this chapter.  Hayashi Out! (Stern Parody)

 
Five Mitsubishi Evolutions are entered in the event, four in Touring 3, one in Unlimited 3

 


Performance Parts by Comptech USA

 

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