buckle-up

Now there’s no need to plan for the trip back to Boulder - after nearly five years of commuting to Omaha, Nebraska, and then Simi Valley, California, the wheel has finally stopped spinning and we are able to treat our house in Boulder truly as our home. Yes, the garages are full as we went about consolidating what was spread across multiple locations, and while I had done my best to join Margo as often as I could at her townhome in Simi Valley, neither of us ever felt really at home there. As for the blue Vette, number 116, we finally were able to enjoy it once again. In the last post, “We need (more) new pumps!” the team at Rocky Mountain Competitive Research (RMCR) determined that our fuel pump was on its last legs and simply couldn’t keep up as revs rose, so a replacement pump was ordered and this time it would be the fuel pump normally reserved for the C6 Z06. When I was advised of its arrival I took the Vette once more to Colorado Springs. What a difference! So, where do we...

The drive to Colorado Springs is now becoming a routine event for Margo and I, and from Boulder it’s just over 100 miles. Each way! More trips than I had anticipated, of course, but then there are some early signs that progress’ being made. The photo above is of the ‘Vette on the dyno at Rocky Mountain Competitive Research (RMCR), generating some new numbers for us to check out. So much has happened since the last post that it’s hard to know where to start. Readers may recall however that we had taken the nearly mortally-wounded C6 Corvette Coupe to A&A Corvette Performance, following a rather traumatic incident while on track at Spring Mountain Motorsport Ranch (SMMR), just west of Las Vegas, Nevada. A simple puff of whitish smoke was all that was required to see me heading for the pit lane and as I approached my parking space, I dropped oil everywhere. The friendly GM mechanics at SMMR, normally assigned to maintaining the Corvettes of the Ron Fellows Corvette performance ...

Well, if it wasn’t that darn snow again! Yes, it’s the middle of May when every other sign screams spring and yet the weather map suggests winter isn’t about to let up anytime soon. The mountain passes high up in the Rockies were still wrestling with the icy fingers of winter and, apparently, failing to regain control. There would be no way to safely traverse the continental divide in our Corvette. Interstate 70 would be a no go. We had committed ourselves to a tight schedule as I had business to attend to on the west coast, but prudence overruled and we headed south on Interstate 25. I had thought about renting a trailer and towing the Vette behind the Escalade SUV, as we had done so often last year, but the trip would be long and the Vette would pass as an adequate touring car. Not the first time we had driven to a weekend track day and not the first time we had to be watchful of the weather. Fortunately even though the snow began to fall in the early morning hours, Interst...

Sitting on a rickety chair inside a shack that could just as easily be described as a man-cave, dotted as it was with pictures of mechanical paraphernalia typical of an old-school auto repair shop, I was trying to stay warm as I inched the chair closer to the wood-burning pot-belly stove that occupied pride-of-place in the center of the room. Looking out through the large windows, I could see the pavement of a race track, scaled-down from what I was used to driving, although it was easy to pick out the course elevation changes and tightly grouped turns – this was a circuit designed for Karts and we were a long way from our home in Boulder, Colorado. While the calendar told us it was Sunday, and it was April with spring only two weeks away, outside it had begun to snow; again! It’s now a little warmer and three weeks have passed since that Sunday morning, just outside of Laramie, Wyoming, and we have just arrived at our hotel in Chicago. We have just checked in to the Westin hot...

It’s raining heavily and there are rivers flowing across the circuit, with several pools collecting in all the wrong places. We are looking out across Infineon Raceway, formerly Sears Point, and there’s a major pond, Sonoma Lake, across the approach to the back straight and everywhere there are chunks of turf littering the track, evidence of where participants have spun and left the track! Yes, the weather puts a whole different spin on track weekends! The forecast had been for a wet weekend at Infineon but all the same, looking at weather maps and watching brightly colored circles move across the charts didn’t fully prepare us for what we were now encountering. Driving cautiously that Friday afternoon, as we picked our way around the pools of standing water scattered around the paddock behind the grandstands, was depressing and yet, the sound of cars accelerating past the start-finish line reminded us that track weekends were held in all weather conditions. Adapting to what we fo...

We’re returning to Colorado, and we realize just how much we missed the change of seasons, the view of the mountains from our front porch. Yes, even the periods of snow we are subject to represent moments of tranquility we have really come to miss! We hope that although this change in location will definitely put a damper on the program we had planned for this year, we will get our C6 Corvette coupe onto tracks for a couple of outings this year. As much as we grew to appreciate Southern California and enjoyed the friendships we formed during our time there, as the saying goes, there’s simply no place like home! Pictured above is the blue ‘Vette, #116, being unloaded from the trailer that brought it across the continental divide. With winter very much a force to be reckoned with, it was a tad too risky to attempt driving the western interstate system with the ‘Vette set up the way it is – no doubt, its ability to plow through snow is a capability we just don’t want to put to the ...

In winter the blue Corvette takes on a completely different persona. Pictured here, parked outside our neighborhood Starbucks, stripped of all the trappings of racing and bereft or any numbers, glass roof removed, it looks like any other daily drive. But oh, how looks can be deceiving! With chrome wheels and road tires installed and nothing in the body work to detract from its “I’m just a coupe” demeanor, it rarely gets a second look. Yet what lies beneath remains so delightfully wicked and, at times, flat out scary! After another year of taking it out onto the race tracks of Southern California and Colorado, of enjoying enumerable quick laps among the many friends we have gained, it’s time to look back at what’s transpired over the past twelve months and to take an early look into what may transpire in 2011. This past year certainly proved memorable. In terms of the number of weekends spent on the track, 2011 represented a significant step up over either of the two prior year...