The last two weeks have seen a good 7000 miles get added to the odometer. It started two weeks ago when I left Baltimore for the Packwood Prosolo, in Washington. I went hiking at Mount St. Helens first.
Packwood's site was an old lumbar mill that has since seen the operations move five miles down the road to Randle. The buildings are now used as an indoor paddock and covered impound/tech area for events. The locals are really friendly and supportive, as I guess the participants don't do stupid things to shed a bad light on the autocross activities. I had a lot of fun hanging out at the Blue Spruce for karaoke on Friday night, but three days of driving and then a 9 mile hike in the mountains had taken its toll on me by Saturday, some I missed the fun at the Peters Inn on Saturday night.
The car felt amazingly good on Saturday. I'd had the front struts replaced, and I think that may have been a good thing, as the car was finally handling the way it should have been since the ESP conversion. I'd go off course my first left side run in the morning, and then was tentative on the second left side to figure out where I'd screwed up, so come the afternoon runs, I had a lot of time I could drop. I moved from 5th in class at the start of the Saturday afternoon runs to second after improving 2.5s overall (most of which was on the left side).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHRxbmhOnYo&feature=player_embedded
I got greedy and overdrove on Sunday morning, and didn't improve. Tom Kotzian -- a multi-time National champion who was driving an SMF Mini Cooper -- dropped a few tenths on one side and got by me, so I finished in the third and final trophy spot in class (I was in the Bump 2 class, since no other ESP cars were there).
On the way home, I decided to make a four hour detour to Wendover, Utah. If you don't know where that is, let me give you a hint :
I knew I'd be upset with myself if I didn't make that side trip. I'd last been out there three years ago, and it's just as beautiful as I remember.
So, I get home Wednesday evening, go to hockey class, then Thursday, take the car to IAG for the 90K service. Before I can leave, however, I'm shown a disconcerting problem; the timing belt tensioner is pretty much dead, and the timing belt had been actually scoring the inside of the cover. I have to leave the car there for the night so that the 105K service can be done on Friday.
I drove to the Northeast Divisionals at the Seneca Army Depot in the Finger Lakes area of New York after picking up the car on Friday... actually, I took a nap, then left at midnight. I've never been up there before. Knowing it was a "runway" type of site, I wasn't particularly looking forward to it, but it exceeded my expectations. Strano set up some non-runwayesque type courses, and the car continued to work better than it has in a long time, even though I went to the "old" tires (the ones on the purple rims that I last used at the NJ ProSolo).
Still getting used to how the car is handling, and trying to trust it more in the slaloms/offsets. It sucked that I had no one else in ESP to gauge off of (much less to push me). Dave Newman was gridded next to me, and we discussed our runs during the downtime on Saturday, and that helped a bit, I think. I was dead tired on Sunday (had been up 23+ hours the day before), and actually fell asleep in the back seat between my last two runs. I didn't do as well PAX-wise on Sunday, and my exhaustion likely was part of the reason why.
Saturday :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewPXk-RWDtA
Sunday :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Zul1r7Sp0Y
Results are at :
http://autox4u.com/nedivsolo/index.htm