Honda Hall of Fame is updated, let the Smack Talking begin!
June 17, 2003
Miscellaneous Update
Honda Hall of Fame Stuff, etc.
Honda Hall of Fame is updated, let the Smack Talking
begin!
Here's a quick update. I got one of those Dell 8500 laptops that does 1920x1200 screen resolution, which makes it a hell of a lot easier to update pages, edit images, copy from other sites, all on the same screen. So I got motivated to do an update. Sorry, no Real Racing Stories for this chapter.
I finally got off my ass and updated the Honda Hall of Fame, which is designed to find out what the fastest Honda cars are at each track in the North America, (and thanks to Wolfgang, around the world also). To make it more "interesting" for readers, I am asking anyone that submits a lap time to also send a picture of their car to be posted. It used to be that only the fastest car for each Honda model had their picture there. What the heck, if you took the time to get your car prepped to go on the track, send me a picture and a lap time that can be verified via AMB transponder, Hot lap, or Video camera. I don't care if you have the slowest lap time at every track, just send me your info and a picture. No hand held stopwatches allowed.
The drivers that were actively running with Speedventures the past 18 months or so have set some INCREDIBLE lap times for Honda cars at the Open Track Challenge. Full "unbiased" OTC story is in the last chapter. Since the drivers at Speedventures events have the option of using transponders, AND they post the results of ALL THE LAPS for each driver on their webpage, it encourages "friendly competition" among all the participants. It also PROVES definitively who is the fastest at that event for the day. Everyone is searching for the best Cheating Bastard parts/techniques to be the King of the Hill. It quickly escalated into WWIII between all the participants, as you can tell by the lap times that people are throwing down.
Categories include Fastest NSX/S2000 in Supercharged, Normally Aspirated, and Street Tire configurations. No longer can people say that us Honda folks drive "Ricer Bling Bling" cars, as we got some pretty damn good lap times posted. Check out the lap times at the links below:
1. Pahrump - Rupert's track in Nevada - Technical track, low speed
2. Derek Daly Track - Medium speed track
3. Buttonwillow CCW#1 - Technical track with high speed sections
4. Thunderhill - High speed, awesome track
5. Thunderhill in Reverse - High speed, scary track
6. Willow Springs - Fastest Track in the West
No lap time is too slow.
Put your name in lights on this website. Info I need to put a picture of
your car on the website is:
1. Track you were on, and the date
2. Lap time, and timing device used
3. Tire type
4. Engine mods
5. Suspension mods
6. Weight of car with you in it.
7. A few sentences on your sponsors/excuses/links about your car
I hired a new Pulp Racing PR Spokes_babette to promote the Honda Hall of Fame. Her name is Jenna J. Some of you may know her from other appearances on the Internet. See her in a "video" and all the tracks records in the Honda Hall of Fame.
So the Speedventures guys are calling out all you Supra, Mitsubishi, Subaru, and Nissan drivers. Especially you folks out there that actually paid money to see "Fast and Furious 2". Bring those blingy/NOS/10 inch exhaust pipes/drilled rotored cars out to a real road course and let's see what you can do when we put a clock on your ass! I think the Honda Speedventures drivers can whup on 95% of the Viper drivers, and 100% of the Vette drivers that are out there. And 100% of you Fast and Furious fans out there.
So if you think you are fast and live in California, bring your car out to a Speedventures event. (Or a NASA/TCRA/TrackQuest/Alfa event). For you folks that are new to taking your car on a road course, the clubs above do provide instruction for newbies. Just come out with a humble, polite attitude, and you will have a great time. Don't expect to be fast your first time out, just like you ain't gonna play the guitar like Jimmy Page the first time you touch a guitar. Drive your car at 70%, and you probably won't crash. If you try to make it to the podium the first time out at the track, there is probably a 50% chance you will crash your car. And remember, one car per weekend probably crashes because they didn't recognize their limitations.
Yeah...I know....most of the lap times above are Time Trial lap times, and are not at the top of the Pyramid of Speed, but many of the folks there are prepping their cars to do some ass whupping in the wheel-to-wheel race groups in the near future. I pity the poor fools who are gonna be in the TCRA race at California Speedway in August. <grin>
Ready, aim, fire! - picture by Mark
It's been about two months since the OTC. I've been taking it slow since then. My wife and I were expecting a baby around May 11th, so I pretty much just hung around the house waiting for the baby to pop out. We are both new at this baby thing, so we are kinda clueless about the birthing process.
Anyways, on May 8th, I go with the wife to the doctor's office for a checkup. This is only the second baby doctor appointment that I have attended with her. I went to one a few weeks back to see the ultrasound, and ended spending about two hours waiting for various doctors/nurses. What a pain in the ass. Can't these guys run on schedule? Anyways, I decide to go with her to another appointment. During the fetal stress test, the nurse said that the baby's heart beat was slowing down some during the test. She mentions it to the doctor, the doctor takes a look at her, checks the chart, and says, "Well....there is nothing to be gained by waiting since you are at full term.....let's induce. Go directly to the hospital, let's get this started."
We uh...weren't really prepared to go to the hospital right now. I mean, we sorta packed some bags, but we didn't finish packing all of them. We quickly went over a list of things to bring to the hospital. I dropped my wife off at Irvine hospital, and then bolted home to get the stuff. I told her I would be back in 90 minutes with:
1. Wife's luggage
2. My luggage
3. Baby's luggage
4. Digital Camera
5. Camcorder
6. Laptop
7. Sprint Wireless PCS card
8. Magazines
9. Extra pillow
10. My backpack full of stuff
11. Install baby seat in truck
After frantically gathering up all this stuff, I head to the truck and dump it
by the door. The truck is full of car parts, softball stuff, dirty
clothes, etc. I throw all this stuff on the garage floor, and then quickly
throw the other stuff in truck. The food at the hospital SUCKS, so I
stopped and got three roast beef sandwiches from Subway. And I stop at the
grocery store for eight raspberry Snapples.
Right outta da womb
I get to the hospital exactly 90 minutes later. Damn, I am good. It takes about four trips to move all my crap into the delivery room. They induced labor via drugs, and my wife isn't feeling too comfortable at the moment. I start unpacking all the stuff......and realize that I must have left the baby's luggage on the garage floor with the rest of the crap that I threw out of the truck. Shit! My wife rolls her eyes....."so you brought your laptop, sandwiches, snacks, Snapples, huge suitcase of your clothes, etc, but you left the baby clothes/diapers/blankets/etc at the house?". Yeah.....what can I say...I am a moron.
The contractions by now are starting to hurt quite a bit, and my wife is saying, "I'm gonna need that epidural". And she never complains about anything, so if she says that the pain is bad, it must be excruciating. The nurses try five times unsuccessfully to stick the IV into her arm. She isn't upset, as she said that this is gonna be minor stuff compared to the actual birth. The nurse are wigging though, as they look like amateurs trying to get the IV in her.
Dreaming of fast red cars.....
In the meantime, there is nothing I can do. I mean, the doctors are female, the nurses are female, etc. I am about the only guy on the entire floor. And while the hospital staff is nice, it is that kind of nice that a female would get when they take their car to the dealership to get fixed. You know what I mean, when a female takes her car into get serviced, and and they guys working there look at her like she is clueless about cars. But they are "cordially nice" to her. Well, it is the same in the delivery room...it is the Revenge of the Females.
But hey, I am came prepared. I brought that Sprint PCS wireless card and my laptop, so I am on the web the entire time I am stuck in the corner of the waiting room, surfing at 120kb or so. The nurses in the room probably figure that I am some computer nerd husband.....what they don't know is that I run the biggest website in the entire world for Real Life Racing Stories. And I gotta get that OTC 2003 story finally updated and posted to the Internet, and I am gonna finish it tonight.
Anyways, about 11 hours after they induced labor, baby Kayla pops out, healthy and screaming her lungs out. Childbirth is really amazing.....it also seemed pretty easy. What's the big deal about women complaining about having a baby? If guys had babies, we would pop them out in 20 minutes flat.....
So I have been just hanging out at the house, taking care of mom and baby the past few weeks. It takes a lot of time, but it is pretty fun. I am changing about 85% of the diapers. It ain't that bad, it is way easier than cleaning up spilled motor oil. Plus there is virtually no odor at this point, until she starts eating solid foods. I figure the more diapers I change....the quicker I can get the wife's approval to get back on the track! What I cannot figure out is how single moms/dads raise kids.....I mean, with two of us at home, it is a handful!
Erik gets in a car accident
Some moron Asian dude in an SUV hit Erik's Geo Metro in the parking lot, and spun the car around. SUV drivers suck. Both doors are screwed up, the hood, the engine bay, the frame is bent, etc. He got the car real cheap, and was buzzing around in this as his daily driver. Hey, it gets 48+ miles per gallon. It will probably be totaled, which sucks. Especially since we were thinking that if we dropped a 200 hp Hayabusa motor in it, with a Quaiffe tranny, some Penske triple adjustables, slicks, and a big ass FRONT wing (hey, its front wheel drive, you want the front end to stay down), it coulda been a killer U4 or T4 car for OTC 2004. We might have even been able to whup on the U1 and T1 cars with 1300 lbs and 200 HP. The search for next year's Cheating Bastard car/strategy takes a 90 degree turn......
No Virginia City Hill Climb this June. Bummer.
This past weekend was Father's day. Good to be with the family and relatives, but this weekend is usually the Virginia City Hill Climb, which was cancelled this year. No one was willing to step up and take control of the event after the the two deaths from last year's hill climb. Who knows, maybe we can get it resurrected next year, as I think my car is setup to run 3:16, which should get me to the podium. I figure since we got the car running 5 seconds faster at Willow, and the Hill Climb is twice as long as Willow, and my previous best was a 3:26 at the Hill, a 3:16 is within reach.
Wayne's new Honda Rice Rocket
Wayne is spending most of his time buzzing around on his new motorcycle. So much that the Ferrari 360 Modena sits in the garage quite a bit now. He gets more of a "racing buzz" being on the bike. He is being careful with it, as he hasn't taken it to the 14,000 RPM redline yet. Hopefully he won't hit a deer like Keith did at over at corner-carvers.com.
I read a ton of magazines. Get them here at www.discountmagazines.com. Check it out, $5.95 for a year of Car and Driver(12), Rolling Stone (26) or Time Magazine (52). Order something educational, and learn something!
I took my 17 year old cousin out driving around the neighborhood in preparation for her driver's test. I think most parents wig out when their kids start driving and hate to be in the car with them, so I volunteered to be in the passenger seat with her. I don't scare easily, after all, I've been in the passenger seat with some of you at the track at high speed and you know how bad your driving is! I did put a sign on the back of her car before we went out driving:
Warning sign that I put on the car before we did her driving lessons
On another good note, the Pulp Racing Coed Softball team is now 5-0, and it is looking like we are gonna win the Huntington Beach Coed C-5 Championship this year. There are about 280 teams that play in various leagues in Huntington Beach, which is the largest city league in America. They stuck us in C-3 for the past 4 seasons, and we have been getting our ass kicked. I have been telling them to bump us down to C-4, so we can have a chance at having a winning season, and for some reason they bumped us down even further to C-5. We also picked up a new guy, Keith, who has played on sponsored teams that flew around the country playing softball. He hits the ball farther than I have ever seen a softball hit...heh heh heh....kinda like picking up a pro driver on your team for the race track. I made sure he didn't play in the qualifying game that they use to set league classification. Once a sandbagger, always a sandbagger.....
The softball team in the dugout. (no, it isn't the Rikers Coed Prison lockdown)
Next event will probably be The Touring Car Racing Association with VARA at California Speedway on August 2/3. Race groups only this weekend, no time trial groups. I ordered a HANS device from Gary Milgrom, who now works for them. My HANS device arrived the other day, so I am not gonna have to lift coming around a few of those dicey turns next to the big ass walls.......I'll be indestructible!
Hopefully this will save my ass if I crash
Support the website and buy the NSX-Files Volume 4 DVD or a T-shirt, so I can pay for bandwidth, hosting, Jenna's monthly salary, and some tires so I can get material for more stories! Info on the DVD here, and special intro offer for ordering DVD is at the new Go-Fast Lab website. The Go-Fast Lab is the store that serves the Biggest Go-Fast User Base BBS in the world, with 25,000 registered users and 76 million hits a month. They just went online the same day that this web story went live. Go-Fast labs is now the first website deemed good enough and important enough to become the exclusive distributor for Volume 4. (well, I should say exclusive distributor until someone else antes up some cash up front!) <grin> Pulp T-shirt ordering info click here.
Go Fast Lab! Serving the S2000's Need for Go-Fast Since Today