Yeah. It's been a while.

Like when I was waiting for the Atom, I stopped blogging for a while. Well, I'm still waiting on the MINI... but have a little extra time. LOL or not... phone is ringing. To be continued?

Yeah ok, Chili's was good.

So, I went home for Christmas... good stuff. It was nice to finally have a Christmas home again. :) My big gift was a Chase Cam system. SWEET! No tapes and no converting. It's all done one the fly in the box and records to Compact Flash cards! I've got two 4gb cards and one 2gb card. That'll be plenty for a long weekend at the track.

My flight back on Christmas Day was canceled. Ha, I kind of expected it. Who wants to work on Christmas day? Dude at the counter said everyone called in sick. Riiiight. It took the folks at the counter 45 mins to find me a flight back to the Springs. I ended up going to Atlanta with only 20 mins between touchdown and takeoff. I bolted up out of my seat as soon as the flight landed in attempt to pass as many people as I could. Geez, I swear... perhaps it's because I always check my luggage and never have a carry on... but I HATE people that bring a ton of stuff onto a plane. Really... just go to sleep or read a book. It's so annoying to wait on that guy with 2 bags, a laptop, coat, newspaper, backpack and a blanket while attempting to make a connection. Ugh, just get up and GO! Anyways, I ended up running from A to B (really... running from Terminal A to Terminal B). It reminded me of that old OJ commercial - Go CJ go! I really wanted to hurdle something. And if I didn't make it, I would have probably stabbed something. Made it... and for my troubles I was given seat 2A. First Class. Sa-weet.

New Years was... um... hectic at first. I'm not going to go into details, but I'm never planning for other people again. It turned out great at Vinyl in Denver. Totally worth the money for VIP, Bottle service and our own table. Next time I go, I'll do the same. Everything always works out.

Birthday! Twas a Pub Crawl. 5 bars in 6 hours. Good stuff... there are some pictures... somewhere?

Annual Ski Weekend: Success. Again; back to the theme of not wanting to plan for everyone else. This year we stayed in Keystone. 20 people, 2 condo's, 2 hot tubs, 2 much fun! My skis were in desperate need of a tune... the first day I was struggling even on the greens. What!? Yeah... I put it off long enough. There was a Ski Shop right across the street from where we were staying. They had me back on the slops for some night skiing in no time.

NASA Rocky Mountain awards banquet: Traffic from Keystone to Denver was typical for a Saturday, nasty. But, I made it to Dave & Busters just in time to get the 2007 NASA Rocky Mountain HPDE Driver of the Year award. WooHoo! But what does it all mean, Basil? I guess I didn't mess up too much, played by the rules and tried to have fun. Mission Accomplished!

Argh, I left a pillow in Keystone.

Hopefully the Tahoe won't need any new more stuff. Tranny drain, refill, filter and cooler. Fuel pump and filter. Oil filter housing seals. Trailer wiring. I should take a look at the brakes soon just to make sure that's all good to go. Maybe throw in some new spark plugs, distributor and rotor too. But, the Porsche is hogging all the automotive maintenance attention. I've got about $4k of parts to put in it so that it'll be all Spec'd out. It came back yesterday from Hanksville Hotrods, one of our 944SPEC sponsors. So the Cage, Seat and Window Net are complete. I've got suspension, fire suppression, oil cooling, rod bearings, harness, hoses, brakes and ignition items to upgrade. Who knows what I'll find that needs replacing while work on it. I hope not much!

Something I heard on the Radio today: Choices vs Control. You can choose to wear your seatbelt and have insurance. You can choose to be a good driver and follow the rules. You can choose to be careful. But, you can't control an accident. You can't control what the other guy is going to do. Just be prepared and deal with it.

... and I love it. Vail last weekend was amazing. 30+ inches of fresh snow made for a healthy workout in the back bowls. The drive there was a little exciting. The new (old) Tahoe almost ate a Honda Ridgeline for breakfast. Apparently, he could come to a stop and avoid the roll-over accident on I-70 quicker than I could. I ended up on the shoulder to avoid the collision. Whew! That incident led me to get the tires siped on the Tahoe. Wow, what a difference. Worth every penny of the fifty bucks spent.

So, the MINI is on a boat today. It's a three week journey across the Atlantic, thru the Panama Canal, and to Port Hueneme, California. Once there it goes thru some MINI/BMW prep work. Then it's onto a truck and delivered to Ralph Schomp. As usual, I'm waiting for a car again. In the mean time, the Tahoe is doing daily driver duties.... and getting far better gas mileage than I expected!

Christmas is almost here. This year I'll be spending it at home (Florida)... which I haven't done in well, I can't even remember the last time I was at home for Christmas. Needless to say I'm totally looking forward to it.

Skiing... ahhhh! So far I've been up there 4 times already! I really need to work on form, and strengthen my legs so they don't get burnt out in the powder. I can ski the groomed stuff all day... but holy crap the deep powder leaves me drained. We've got a couple 12 person condo's reserved for Mid-January. That's gonna be a blast! And, I've got an Atom Friend coming up in the beginning of January to ski Keystone. I swear, the dichotomy of Ski Season and Race Season totally owns me.

Aruba? Still undetermined. I haven't even called yet to make reservations. Perhaps a mid-February tropical vacation is in order. Occupancy is still available. Call now, Operators are standing by.

The Atom is sold.
Today I ordered a 2008 MINI Cooper S. Silver, LSD, HID's, 6 Speed, Turbo... I got just about everything but the Nav.
I'll start ordering Porsche stuff soon.
When the MINI arrives, the Amigo goes bye-bye. I'm looking at a Tahoe for snow duty and towing duty.
I'm going skiing tomorrow for the 3rd time this year.
Life is good.
... But that one thing is missing.

The Atom is for Sale. :) 944SPEC here I come.

So I try to look at my web stats once a year to update the little counter at the bottom of the menu. Geez, it's kind of interesting to see what IP's are constantly viewing my site. Well... since March of 2004 I've had 5,293,903 hits. Hello there.

Halloween has past, and Aruba is in the future! Long story short: I was in a costume contest where the winners were judged by the crowd cheer-o-meter. My friends cheered me to a win. Thanks guys!!! So I've got a 3 day, 2 night Hotel stay and Air Fare to Aruba! All that from a little dick-in-a-box. So, who's coming with me?

I hit the slopes for the first time of the season last weekend. A-Basin. It was a bit stuffed at first, but it cleared out as the day progressed. After a long lunch at the Dillon Dam Brewery we enjoyed near empty lift lines. Chair up, Ski down.... repeat until your legs burn.

This weekend is the final NASA event of the year. Hopefully with all the seat time I've gotten since the beginning of the season I'll pull a decent time at Pueblo.

What a trip. What an amazing bunch of people. What more could I ask for?

AtomFest was held at Hallett Motor Racing Circuit in Jennings, Oklahoma. It's just about 30 miles outside of Tulsa. Randy Lamp, creator of AtomFest put an amazing pile of effort into planning and organizing the event. We all thank Mr. Lamp for his blood, sweat and happy tears given to AtomFest. I left on Tuesday morning to a chilling temperature of 32ºF. Wrapped up in my Ski pants, jacket and mittens I headed south to Amarillo to meet Bolus (Eric), DarthChicken (Adam) and McFred (Jesse). We had the official largest Atom caravan in the US! No trailers for us, just 4 enthusiastic Atom owners with more time off of work than sense. It was a long drive for me... but a much longer drive for Eric and Adam. They came all the way from Portland!

The 5 days I spent at AtomFest absolutely flew by. I met many fellow Atom Owners and made quite a few new good friends. I saw HotShot (Randy) again. He's the guy that conquered Pikes Peak in his Atom. Randy even let me drive his car again! This time on a track... not down the Pikes Peak toll road. Of course I saw Terry Kennedy... Mr 14,000 miles. That's a lot of street driving! On my return trip (after visiting the Fam in Florida) I stayed with Silver (Aaron) and met up with Spanky (Dennis) for a drink or 4.

The whole event was superbly planned and executed. Catered food, club room Internet access, Live entertainment, excellent Atom repair service... um... yeah. The repair theme for the week was 'Exhaust Gasket'. A gasket just south of the header would get a wee bit too hot and totally disintegrate. Lucky for me... mine stayed put. Instead of blowing out gaskets, I broke a couple pair of glasses and goggles. Thankfully, after 3000+ miles of driving and 2 full track days, that's the ONLY thing that broke! Yahoo!

On my second session out, I managed a 1:28. That would prove to be my best lap time of the event and allowed me to enter into the 'Advanced' driving group. An equally equipped Atom with a better (er... best) driver and slicks pulled a 1:26. I'm plenty happy with a 1:28. TraqMate was one of our official sponsors and provided GPS data for everyone. I now know what 1.93 Lateral G's feels like. This car handles like NO OTHER!

What more could I ask for? Only one thing. The strength and patience to keep the Atom until the next AtomFest.

Gallery pics are HERE.

4:42am, 32ºF. The Journey Begins.

There's more.



You just sang 'U Can't Touch This' and 'Ice Ice Baby' in your head, didn't you? Or was it 'Super Freak' and 'Under Pressure'? Some things are better left alone... but I guess it's all personal preference.

Today I was lucky enough to be invited to a preview of the Genoa track. A BIG thank you goes out to Kevin Rogers for letting me come to the land and check out the area. I was allowed to take pictures, but any picture that I took would not do the land justice. Although the land is on the eastern plains, there is nothing flat about it! A still camera can not capture all the elevation changes. This race track is going to be simply amazing!

Kevin took us out on a drive/survey of the West Track. We did two laps... one clockwise and another counter-clockwise. Everything changes depending on what direction you're driving. A 3/4 mile (estimated) straightaway is uphill while going clockwise, and inversely changes to a downhill speed demon on the counter-clockwise direction. A blind uphill turn in one direction becomes totally visible the other way. It's fantastic! With each of the 3 tracks (West, East and Combined) being able to be ran in either clockwise or counter-clockwise directions, you're guaranteed to get an ever changing adrenaline rush each and every time out. I love the contours of the land... it will be a first-class complex.

The Club House will be built on a nice hilltop providing excellent views of the West Track and most of the East Track. The whole place is huge... so you'll have to bust out the binoculars to see everything! Plans for on-site estates, garages, showers and separate paddocks (one for Club Members and one for the public) are built into the complex design.

An hour and twenty minutes. From Colorado Springs it's an hour and twenty minutes away. From Denver it's an hour and twenty minutes away. From Goodland Kansas, you guessed it... an hour and twenty minutes!

Spread the world people. Genoa Motorsports park is going to be a supreme race track. Their website is constantly updated: Genoa Motorsports Park. I hope to see as many people as possible enjoying Auto Racing next summer!