buckle-up

I’ve been enjoying a relaxing week back home in Boulder, Colorado, where I’m surrounded by the evidence of the changing seasons. Every now and then, the clouds pull back and I can see the continental divide covered in white: the snow is certainly falling in the high country. And later today, I will be starting on yet another trip to California to wrap up this year’s program – returning to NASA So Cal for their event at Buttonwillow, and then closing out with a full weekend with Speed Ventures at the Auto Club Speedway. Only a few weeks ago, I was in California, for a weekend with Speed Ventures at Willow Springs International Raceway (WSIR) a return to the circuit better known as Big Willow! The picture at the top of the pages was taken by our friend Mark, who had driven up first thing Saturday morning and had brought with him another friend, Kevin. All the pictures of Saturday’s action included here were taken by Mark. Saturday, we were sharing the track with the participants in ...

For nearly two weeks Margo and I had been driving around Europe on business and yet we still found time for some much-anticipated downtime. As chance would have it, we were able to spend a day and a half at Germany’s Grüne Hölle, the world famous Nordschleife, or North Loop, of the Nürburgring! The name Grüne Hölle, or Green Hell, is a reference to how it was once described by former F1 driver, Sir Jackie Stewart. Located within the Eifel forest that separates Germany from Belgium, the Nürburgring winds its way through dense woodlands for 21 kilometers, or 13 miles and, with elevation changes of almost a thousand feet, it’s an absolute must for anyone with an interest in cars. The picture at the top of the page is of our first evening in the township of Nürburg. This adventure started at Frankfurt airport where we had landed ten days earlier. We rented a car, as I was to meet with business colleagues in Munich and Mainz, and wanted to visit Lake Garda and Lake Como in Northern Italy...

It’s becoming quite a pattern, and one I am more than acutely aware of, as it’s an indication that progress is being made. Each Tuesday before a track weekend we are finding ourselves in the shop at A&A Corvette Performance, the big Vette up on the lift, and either Jessie or James busily working hard on last minute adjustments. We are now driving the Vette much harder than we ever have before, and components are beginning to wear out fast and the stress this is generating on some parts requires almost constant attention. This past Tuesday however, we were still trying to track down a gremlin that was kicking on the Check Engine Light and throwing up the message “Engine Hot / Air Conditioning Off” in the two line Driver Information Center (DIC). It had first appeared as we were driving to the track at Laguna Seca, but after saving the ECU program, installing a GM fix, and reloading the program, we thought we had it licked, yet barely a day later, up came the message again. Swap...

Tucked into the rolling hills, only a few miles from Monterey Bay, is the Laguna Seca track – known worldwide as the venue for the United States round of the MotoGP World Championship. This is now the only true Grand Prix held on American shores. For car enthusiasts like myself however, this has always been among the elite road courses where I have wanted to drive. In the post of September 18th, 2009 “ Give me a “brake” – concentrate! ” I wrote of how we really enjoyed the opportunity to participate as spectators at a Speed Ventures event held at that track. We were at Laguna Seca “not as participants, but as observers to see how other clubs ran track days. But we still had a lot of fun,” I had explained in last year’s post before remarking on how “Margo and I certainly enjoyed the opportunity, as passengers, to familiarize ourselves with the circuit from the right hand seat, we still wanted to get more track time ourselves!” When Speed Ventures published their calendar for 2010 w...

Just two weeks after our outing at High Plains Raceway in Colorado we found ourselves trackside, once again. This time we were spending the weekend at a track we have grown to really like, the venue for our very first adventure onto a track anywhere in the world, Willow Springs International Raceway (WSIR). Also known simply as Big Willow, this track looks relatively simple on paper, with only nine turns, but the more familiar it becomes the more every driver comes to realize how difficult it is to master and how much punishment it hands out to the cars that tackle its pavement. It was Ernest Hemingway who said “auto racing, bull fighting, and mountain climbing are the only real sports ... all others are games.” While we are still participating in sessions established as High Performance Driving Education (HPDE), where our cars are not officially timed, it doesn’t stop others following us with their iPhones – yes, there’s an application for that! But strap yourself into a modern c...

It was a relief to finally be in cooler weather. The mountains of Colorado came as a welcome break after two days of driving through the high deserts of the western half of America. The late afternoon climb out of Simi Valley up through the Mojave desert, the early evening run across to Las Vegas, the passage next day south of the Grand Canyon and the increased desolation that leads to the “Four Corners,” with the final run through to Farmington, New Mexico where we spent the second night, saw temperatures routinely climb through three figures. Standing as we were, snapping off pictures, along side the twists and turns of the “million dollar highway” as it descended into Ouray, we just let the cold mountain air wash over us. The picture at the top of this column is of the blue ‘Vette framed by high, snow-capped peals of the San Juan ranges. We needed to get the Vette back to Colorado to have her smog tested, and to pick up the new tags that Pyalla Technologies was happily sponsori...