buckle-up

We are home in Boulder. We have one furnace not working and all the while, the snow keeps coming down. I have lit the gas fires but the air has a distinct chill to it – this time, I can’t wait to get back to California. I have pulled out the maps to look at routes and I25 north to I80 “across the top” seems to be about the only option, and we will leave Sunday before lunch with hopes of making it back to the West Coast by Tuesday. The picture above is looking out our back door, past our BBQ and into a small grove of Aspens, and it’s a picture I shot with little enthusiasm to walk any further from the warmth of the house. Viewing weather maps, and looking up small townships to check the local conditions, have become part of our routine these past few months. As the time for our first outing with National Auto Sport Association (NASA) program, High Performance Driver Education (HPDE), approached there was no question about it. I was getting concerned. We had paid our registratio...

Where did 2009 go? It’s a cliché, but the years seem to be flying by and while I was assembling my thoughts and preparing to write, a check of my calendar tells me there’s only a week to go before we begin a new year of track events. At least we had some down time during the holidays to pull corks from some good wine and the picture above shows a couple of fine Australian wines – a 1998 Henschke Cabernet Sauvignon alongside what turned out to be an even better 1996 Lindeman’s Padthaway Shiraz. The wines had developed wonderfully as they had aged, and it was difficult not to feel sorry that the number of bottles I had on hand were limited. The past couple of years has seen the cellar become somewhat depleted as we have failed to replenish the inventory as often as we have helped ourselves to our stash. Then again, we wouldn’t want any of the wines to go off and turn to vinegar either. The aging of wines, on the one hand, brings with it the promise of better things to come and ...

It wasn’t to be, after all; we missed the final weekend of NASA’s Southern California (SoCal) region’s 2009 program. It was going to be touch and go anyway as we had just returned to Los Angeles, having spent a week in Sydney, Australia. On arriving in Simi Valley, a family emergency arose that saw us spending the weekend navigating the Interstate system instead, as we drove back to Boulder. However, we had spent a weekend at Buttonwillow Raceway in October, and had really enjoyed it. I am very pleased to write that we are both showing signs of improvement and the good form we had demonstrated at Cal Speedway the previous month turned out not to be an anomaly. The picture above is of the Corvette before heading to Buttonwillow, leaving the car wash, where it had caught the attention of the local Simi Valley constabulary – the new black and blue color scheme suggesting to the officers present that it would make the perfect backup for their mobile command center. In case they need...

National Auto Sports Association (NASA) events take a break over the summer months as attention switches to the annual NASA Championships. This event is for racers, and not for students like us participating in the High Performance Driver Education (HPDE) program, so we just have to wait. After the successful weekend at Auto Club Speedway at the end of July, our next weekend with NASA will be in early October when we return to Buttonwillow. We are planning on continuing using the Infiniti for the last two weekends of the season, as these will be held at Buttonwillow, and we have become better drivers at this track following the switch to the Infiniti coupe. But the weekend at Auto Club Speedway has fueled our enthusiasm for getting even more track time, so we decided to explore opportunities outside of NASA. Our good friends Brian and Jan, who have joined us for several weekends with NASA, have spent time on the track with Speed Ventures, and as this club’s next event was planned ...

The weekend before last saw our return to Cal Speedway, which is better known these days as the Auto Club Speedway. This is a major facility that hosts NASCAR and Indy Racing League (IRL) events, and is a far cry from the usual tracks we drive. The centerpiece of the track is the banked oval familiar to all who watch NASCAR events, and the photo above is of me, on the banking between turns T1 and T2, during a late morning session on Saturday (photos by CaliPhotography.com ). “The oval (that you will drive on) is, technically,” our instructor Fulton later explained to me, “NASCAR 1 (entry) and NASCAR 2 (exit).” For groups like National Auto Sport Association (NASA), we use the “Roval” configuration that combines part of the NASCAR banked oval with a road course laid down within the infield. What Fulton was telling me was that we would be driving down the main straight of the oval – shaped more like a “D” than a true oval – and rounding turns T1 and T2 before exiting part way down the ...

This weekend we will not be at Buttonwillow, after all. A family illness necessitated our return to our home in Boulder, Colorado, where we will be spending the next couple of weeks, and we have no chance of a quick dash back to participate in NASA’s HPDE event at what has quickly developed into our favorite track. We hear this weekend the cars will be circulating in a counter-clockwise direction, whereas the previous time it had been clockwise. Check out the post of April 30, ’09: Are we humans? Or are we dancers? Perhaps the saddest sight to see is both of our cars sitting in the garage hooked up to battery charges, as pictured above, where they will remain until much later in July. With the arrival of the July 4th weekend we head to Copenhagen for a much-anticipated cruise, courtesy of Princess Cruise Line, around the Baltic that will take us to a number of Eastern European cities, including St Petersburg, Russia, Tallinn, Estonia, and Gdynia, Poland. In the meantime, it tr...

The weekend at Willow Springs International Raceway (WSIR) proved to be a great experience for Margo and me. We had been looking forward to it and the circuit didn’t disappoint. Our first outing onto a race track back in 2008 had been at Willow Springs and now we consider it to be our “home track.” At the same time, we always associate Big Willow with our ‘Vette and it seemed a little odd to arrive, early Saturday morning, driving something other than the big fella! The ‘Vette remains Margo’s daily drive and there’s rarely a weekend in Southern California when we can’t be found driving along the coast or up through the canyons. The photo above is of a recent drive along Mulholland Highway where the resident photographer from “RockStorePhotos.com” happened to snap us on a descent into the local watering hole. The ‘Vette is limping a little these days, battered from six weekends of track duty but as we arrived at the track, fate would intervene and the ‘Vette wouldn’t be left out,...