rick comes to town

(l-r) me, unnamed mazdaspeed girl and rick
photo courtesy of mazda

my friend, rick, was here a couple of weeks ago (yeah, i know: it’s about damn time!).

how great it was to hang with him for a few days!

rick (rrinnv to you geocachers) was my primary inspiration and driving-force (or driver) in building the final two rallies that i put together in nevada. rick and i spent untold hours in the deserts and mountains of northwestern nevada plotting, designing and refining the courses that we used in 2006 and 2007; the two best rallies that i have ever put together. not that the 2004 and 2005 were not good rallies. but, by the time he and i started working on the last two rallies i had refined them to the point that the concept was just about perfect. of course, there is always room for improvement. and i now know how to make the rally even better and more effective.

if it were not for rick there, most likely, would not have been rallies in 2006 and 2007! not only did rick invests hundreds of hours in crafting the courses, he also spent well over $1000 of his own money to make those rallies realities, only to have the gbes board of directors stick their collective middle finger at him!

gbes is now just (barely) a social group and, by the look of its website, out of the rally business. i’d be out of the rally business too if i put together a rally with fewer than a dozen entries, as witnessed by last june’s disastrous attempt at feminizing and taking all the competition out of what i spent years perfecting.

you get what you deserve!

but, enough of that crap!

lmp1 audi

rick came for the american le mans series finale races at mazda raceway laguna seca and there we did, indeed, spend most of the weekend courtesy of the good folks at mazdaspeed. thanks dean!

that's me kneeling down in front of a group of playboy bunnies and
spca mascots on pit row below the mazda vip suite
photo courtesy or rick

during the races, and a few days before rick arrived during a western automotive journalists event in san francisco, i was able to conduct interviews and gather sound effects for a story for ron’s radio show: wheel talk coast to coast.

hear it here.

as per usual, the racing was exciting at “mazda raceway laguna seca” (as a responsible journalist i am supposed to tell you that it is “mazda raceway laguna seca” and not just “laguna seca”) despite all the yellow (caution) flags due to crashes. but, if you’ve ever been to laguna, as most of the racers call it, you know that it is almost always exciting racing at the famous track. as far as road courses go, it is a fairly short track at just under 2 ¼ miles in length. but, with the track’s trademark corkscrew turn and hilly-terrain, it is quite a track on which to drive and compete!

in addition to the racing we got in some obligatory sightseeing around the cypress coast’s formidable scenery, rang the bell a few times and even got in a brief exploration, albeit a paved adventure, up robinson canyon that heads south, toward big sur, out of carmel valley’s mid-valley region. what a great road this is! the first half of the road winds through dense redwoods and up into rolling hills where, i am told, one can see wild boars.

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it was not as adventuresome as some or our previous journeys. but, it was fun nonetheless!

we were even able to find a quick geocache on one or our trips over “the grade” (laureles grade) between the valley and the track, which is just north of california scenic highway 68, between monterey and salinas. rick also logged my cache here at the pad: “when you’re a jet you’re a jet all the way!”

all too soon, rick headed back to his home in carson city and the wonderful state of nevada.

with “the silver state” being my second favorite state in the country, behind the beehive state (utah), you never know. i may end up back there some day and rick and i, and/or mark/ivan, and/or willy, and/or kathryn can continue our adventures.

my new, soon to be, short lived ultra-short hairstyle
photo courtesy of rick

pitstops and packing for sema

i’ve been trying to get this post out for a week. i’ve been busier this week than i have since we painted the castle. we’ve been getting ready for the sema show in las vegas and the american film market in santa monica. some people can only handle one convention in one week. we, on the other hand, prefer to tackle as many as possible.

ron flew down to newport beach thursday to a luxury condominium villa where susie and barbie have been staying since sunday. i’ve been going back and forth between the castle and the dollhouse taking care of landyn and logan and shitsus and running the show here at the castle.

lemme tell you: it’s a good thing landyn isn’t my child or i’d be in prison for her death!

enough about the 16-year-old monster!

i did just get back from logan’s game. mpc won 26-3.

susie and barbie drive back tomorrow, so i’m off the hook at the dollhouse.

helen is driving down from san jose to get me tomorrow afternoon. i think we’re going to go to the haunted house at the american tin cannery on cannery row (she says she doesn’t like scary things but the haunted house was her idea). then, we’ll drive back to her place to spend the night. on monday morning, she’ll drive me over to the airport. i fly down to orange county where ron will pick me up, after lunch with my lifelong friend alan, whom i have not seen for around 5-years. from there, we will drive into vegas for the sema show. after a couple of days there we’ll drive back to the peninsula and ron will fly down to l.a. for afm for 2-days, fly back for a make a wish foundation banquet with clint and dina eastwood and he and i will drive back down to l.a. the next day for the rest of the show.

i heard from my friend gary who lives, hopefully still, in rancho santa fe, where one of the california wildfires has been raging. he was evacuated and he, his wife and their great danes were staying in the del mar hilton. they live on the golf course (i think i saw video of a helo drawing water from one of that courses water hazards for a drop). gary said, the last i talked to him, that flames were within ½ mile from their home. those fires are a very sad and scary situation and my heart goes out to him, his wife and everyone else affected by the fires. besides a ferrari, lambourghini and maserati, they have many other lavish items, including the house itself, they have been worried about.

i spent most of last weekend at laguna seca for the american le mans series finale as guest of audi, north america. they really know how to party! i spent most of the time in their luxury vip box eating great food and being treated like i am the dude that i am.

i also got to put on a firesuit and stand in the audi pit (the eventual race winner and season champions). this was a very cool experience! i had on a lightweight suit with a headset so i could hear what was going on.

i was placed just behind the wall about 20 feet from the nose of the car when i came in. i was able to take video of the experience. it is, however, unedited as i’m having so much trouble with the editor that came with the god-awful video camera that we have (advice: do not buy a camera called supacam! your life will be much better if you do not have it. the image quality is horrible, as you will see if you watch the videos, and it is cumbersome and a technical nightmare. according to ron: even i would have bought one after the demonstration by the long-legged-large-breasted-doe-eyed-viking-chick who sold it to him. i doubt it since my tastes in women run more toward the non-synthetic type. but, we have it so we use it from time to time.). the pitstop did not go well as they had trouble with one of the rear tires. at least it was under a yellow flag. they lost ground to the penske porsche team (you can see the two penske cars get out before the audi), but gained it back for the win at the end of the 4-hour endurance race.

in the first video, we are leaving one of the team’s travelers after suiting up and walking over to the pit. you can see several of the other teams getting ready for their pit stops as we make our way over to the first pit stall. i tried to narrate as i walked and during the stop, but you can only
hear me occasionally because of the noise.

after the stop, in the second video, i get a look at the tires that came off of the car. but, because i could not see the screen to tell what i was shooting my aim was a little off. same when i tried to
get shots of myself.

in the third video i get a few seconds of interview-time with andy, the pit tour guide and give you a little bit of a tour of the pits as i walk back to the vip box to hook back up with ron and say thank you to stephanie, who was my personal contact with audi while i was there. you can actually hear me in most of this video.

the audi people were very nice! i got to meet the president of audi, north america and a few of the other mucky-mucks.

one of the things that really impressed me with the audi cars is: they are all diesels! they were the quietest cars out there and had the most horsepower; a winning combination if there ever was one!

there have been a few interesting developments in the last week: i was invited to attend the grammy awards with one of ron’s friends, alison freebairn-smith. alison is in the music biz. her father, ian freebairn-smith, is a composer of note (no pun intended, but it was convenient) . alison’s boyfriend played all of george harrison’s licks in “concert for george.”

it looks like i may also have another chance at being in the movies. another of ron’s friends, whom we will see at afm, is filming two movies with chuck norris. maybe chuck will kill me in one of these. that would be too cool!

speaking of being in the movies: we’ll stop in at david heavener’s movie ranch on the way back from vegas to take a peek. he won’t be there or filming as he’ll be in l.a. for the afm.

i got notice the other day that, after all the years of living in northern nevada and trying to get adrian belew to play somewhere in reno, carson city or up at the lake, he’s doing a show on the south shore (lake tahoe will never be the same once he and the slick siblings rock 'em out! btw: julie's and eric's mother, robin, has a blog of her own listed on the sidebar in my "blog rollcall".) before coming down to slim’s in san francisco. not sure if i’ll be able to catch the tahoe gig or not. but, i’ll make it to slim’s for sure. this will be my third time seeing ade at slim’s and my first time to catch the adrian belew trio mark II.

well, i need to get packed and back up to the dollhouse for shitsu patrol.