TSD

Today is our first TSD rally to do a shakedown of codriver duties and learn the car a bit on gravel.  I will try to post some photos of the event tonight.

Stage car's first RallyX

Well Zachary Valentine and Elliott Sherwood were able to get the car out and some shakedown done.  apparently it was sorely needed since one the way to the event they blew a front brake line!  Thanks to help from Zachary's uncle in sourcing parts they were able to replace it and run most of the event on Saturday and the entire event on Sunday.  More info and some pictures coming soon!

Some changes..

So I haven't been updating this very much and I hope to change that soon. The focus will shift from my personal STI to a recently purchased 1996 RS stage rally car. Here are a couple shots from the car at its most recent event (Sno*Drift 2010). Thanks to Tim Williams for the photos.

Hopefully I can update this with some pics at the garage this weekend.

Btw, if your reading this, thanks for the car Matt. :)

100 Acre Wood, 2010

So I'm a little behind on posting updates on here.  I'll try to be more prompt in the future.

I spent the weekend of February 24-27th staying with friends outside Salem MO for the yearly Rally in the 100 Acre Wood.  This event is the 2nd on the Rally America calendar, and one of the closer (about a 6 hour drive from Cincinnati) and easier events for me make time for.


I ended up hitching a ride with a media crew and getting some amazing photos and videos starting friday morning at the shakedown stage.  Lugging a Nikon D700, Canon 7D and a Canon 5DmkII for photos and videos I was well equipped but pretty packed with gear.  Here is a great video compilation of the footage Matt Conte, Tim Williams and myself collected over the weekend, Matt did the editing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjHOPZ_8xnY


And now for the photos!:


Chris Greenhouse on the shakedown stage:

Ken Block signing some autographs:

Ken Block sliding around a hairpin:

And a full slideshow of all the images from the event can be seen here:

New radio install!

Yesterday I installed a great new headunit, a Kenwood dnx6140. The install went super easy. Much easier then the Pioneer install in my wife's Honda civic the week before (not Pioneer's fault.).

Here are some photos from the install along with a great link for getting the thing apart:

All Apart.

See that black mini-usb cable?  Plug that in and run it under the dash into the passenger seat or the glovebox and keep it hidden. It makes adding POI, voices, icons, and other garmin updates super easy.

Best spot for the mic.  Nice and clear for the people on the other end.

Testing everything before I put the dash back together.

More install pics, plus colors match!

 

The LCD image actually looks much better in person, but those shots were at 6400iso in a dark garage.  You either expose for the bright LCD or for everything else. The lens also picks up glare you eye doesn't, you can see examples of that in the top most images of the unit that were taken outside (I saw no glare until I looked at the photos).

I'm very happy with the unit.  The Nav is excellent and *very* fast, the USB features are great, having RDS data for radio is very nice and hopefully I'll have a ipod here soon to test those features out.

And now for something completely different...

So another of my favorite ways to waste time, that also happens to be vastly less expensive then anything to do with cars or motorsports, is play boardgames.  Not those crappy trivial pursuit games you play when your drunk, no, I'm talking about cool board games (and card games) fitting for a proper geek.

Well, recently a very good friend of mine got married and my gift to them was to photograph their wedding.  The bride wanted to get a gift for Brenda and Me so we suggested some board games, and boy did we get them!  A nice big stack of them!

So far we have played Catan: The Card Game (about 1:30-2:00 hours play time!), San Juan (20-30 minutes, great game, easy to learn and fun), and Samurai which is very interesting and has a bit of chess feel to it.  I just got Memoir 44 in the mail today and am *really* excited to give it a try.

Catan: The Card Game plays a whole lot like the board game for those of you who have played it before,only with just 2 players.

 I found it takes a whole lot of table space to play.  It was alot of fun and if your a fan of the board game but finding more then 2 players is difficult, then its worth picking up.

San Juan has ended up being my wifes favorite new card game.

It plays much like Race for the Galaxy (which is based on this games mechanics) and is alot of fun.  You use the cards in your hand as resources and discard them to "purchase" upgrades and production farms.  Its often a balancing act between discarding a bunch of your cards to bring out larger upgrades or saving your hand and only building small stuff when your forced to build by your opponent (you can skip the build phase if your opponent selects it, but I think doing so puts you at a significant disadvantage most of them time, and quickly).

Samurai probably plays the quickest of the all the games we have played so far.  You can finish a game as quickly as 15 minutes as long as someone isn't suffering from analysis paralysis.

Your goal is to capture the little black pieces seen in the photo.  You do this by placing tiles around it to "capture" it, each taking a turn to place a tile.  Some tiles are specific (can only contribute to capturing a Buddha,  or a rice patty, etc) while some are universal and can apply to any type.  Where you use each type is a major part of the strategy and can make a big difference.  We played it twice and it was a lot of fun and plays quickly.

I have quite a few more I have to get around to testing.  I've managed to pick a lot of them up really cheap on Tanga.com since they run a deal just about every day so a few times a month they end up having something I think I'd like for a pretty good price.

most of the current collection

We still have to give Memoir 44, Neuland, Feudo, Blue Moon City, Kahuna and Blue Moon (card game) a try here soon.  So many fun games!

New tires!

Picked up some 245/40/17 Blizzak LM-22 performance snow tires this week!

  Tire rack had them on sale for 65$ each!!  So now I ended up with a set of brand new snow tires for only slightly more then what I expected to pay for used ones!

Look at the tread on those monsters!  They should be a blast when it starts snowing!