Though its quite a bit late. Due March 26th. Life changes ahead!
Other than that little detail we’ve been to Targa Newfoundland for the 8th time. Daphne’s 3rd time competing. She received her Gold Plate which is quite an achievement. It means she’s completed every Targa stage for 3 years straight. Not a lot of people can say that!
2011 was Targa Newfoundland’s 10th running. It brought out some interesting faces old and new and some high dollar toys.
One of them decided land was boring. You may have heard about it. (International News at the time!)
We also helped out at the 42nd running of the Rally of the Tall Pines in Bancroft, Ontario. We figured the time was now since it will be more difficult to rally hop in the very near future. This rally also brought out some big guns as it was the last event of the season after both the CARS and Rally America Championships were buttoned up. RA Champ David Higgins used the opportunity to test some modifications on his car for 2012.
In personal competition news I finished out the 2011 ARMS Road Racing series having raced in 3 of the 5 for the year. Didn’t take home any big trophies but all the cars I drove came back in one piece and I don’t think anyone’s pissed off at me, so I call that a win! Hopefully I’ll get a chance to run some next year! Thanks to Dave, James and John for the use of their cars for the season!
I’m going to hopefully do a whole post about 2011 Rallying in the near future. That’s what I’m telling myself at the moment anyway. Maybe even while its still 2011! I’ve got lots of time, right? height=
Went to the 2011 Rallye Baie de Chaleurs in Quebec at the beginning of July. We helped out by running the start timing for Stages A1 and A4 (Started a national rally! Nice!) and spectated on Day 2. Perfect weather and a good time.
Video from Steve Qugley and Dana Nauss of Bridgewater who finished 13th overall.
I started Road Racing at Alantic Motorsport Park in May. I took the race school with 8 other students in a rented Hyundai Accent and went on to race both events of the June double header. One more race and I drop my novice triangle. I’ve been having a great time duking it out with John Davies in his Saturn. We’ll see what the rest of the season brings. I’m not ready to give up rallying for road racing yet!
Rallying starts up next week with the first RallySprint of the season. Can’t wait to get back to the dirt!
Another vehicle has left the garage. In October I posted the Miata for sale half-heartedly. I still enjoyed the car but I just wasn’t driving it enough. Keeping it in the garage seemed like a waste even though it wasn’t costing anything to do so. When the times came that I did decide to drive it I remembered that its very much a car of 1990. Light and nimble, sure, great on a tight slalom course, but 116 horsepower really doesn’t make for a real adrenaline rush in day to day driving. This has been particularly exacerbated by my successive fire-breathing Subarus. I kind of wanted to hang onto it until it qualified for Antique plates (3 years!) but again, reality wins.
Last week the Miata moved on to its new owner and its new home in Cape Breton. I didn’t have the same emotional reaction to selling it as I did the Civic. I enjoyed the Miata, but I never really ‘clicked’ with it. I hope it will be driven and loved more than what I gave it in the 7 years I owned it.
The week I bought it.
The last time it was driven in anger, Slalom at Slemon, 2010.
I didn’t post before the year was out, now its the second month. I’m not going to try and recap everything, thats most of the reason why I haven’t posted. The thought of writing it all out is daunting. Stuff happened, I’ll hit the hilights.
The most immediate hilight is another tale of motorsport achivement for Daphne. This past weekend she participated in her first non-Tarmac performance rally at the 2011 Rallye Perce Neige Maniwaki. She navigated for Bruce Beveridge of B2 Tuning in his first full stage event. Perce Neige is the first event in the Canadian Association of Rallysport calendar and is known as being an incredibly tough event with conditions varying from zero grip in snow to zero grip on ice with a little bit of zero grip at night thrown in. In the end they did a phenomenal job, finishing 24th of 42 cars overall, 6th overall out of 16 in the Ontario Provincial Regional championship and an impressive top novice placement for the entire event!
Unfortunately I couldn’t make it up to share the fun, so I don’t have any flashy pictures to show off for the achievement. There may be some video to come, however. Definitely gives me the serious rally itches. The first RallySprint of the season isn’t until May or so, seems like forever! Though considering the To Do list on the Audi, that’s probably a good thing.
Speaking of the Audi, we had an EXTREMELY successful first full season of RallySprint in 2010. I guarantee nobody would have expected the Audi to be the ONLY rally car to complete all three events in full! And that’s with three teams sharing it. It did 33% more stage than any other car! Its extremely rewarding to have the car perform and drive onto the trailer at the end of the day. With all its teething pains and hassles over the previous rallycross season it has really come into its element and is doing what it was built to do. The down side is, of course, that we’re getting our rears handed to us stage-time wise by the lighter, more powerful (And yes, more capably driven) Subarus. Oh well, stage rally is still the most fun I’ve ever had in a car. If I won the lottery tomorrow, I know where a good portion of the winnings would go!
Here’s an in-car video of myself and my navigator, Tim Dine at the 3rd RallySprint of the season. Can’t wait to get back to it again!
The in-car video is my new helmet/motorsport camera, a Drift Innovation HD170. It does a very decent job, except, as you notice, in the audio department. They’ve since released an external microphone which sounds a lot better and will be releasing an audio input, which means in future videos you’ll be able to hear our rally intercom. That likely just means I’m going to have to put a warning on my videos since they’ll probably make George Carlin blush in the afterlife!
So, In October I sold my WRX and bought a new daily driver. I found a very well maintained 2005 Subaru Forester XT for a price that was pretty attractive. The ‘XT’ model is essentially a slightly taller WRX wagon, with a 2.5L Turbo motor made of mostly STI guts, with a couple of relatively inexpensive modifications (Which, I’m sad to admit I’ve already started acquiring), some seriously prodigious power can be had, all well maintaining a Toyota Camry-equivalent insurance rating, works for me!
Of course what good is a new Subaru if you don’t find out how it handles rallycross? The answer is, disturbingly well. The high ground clearance and softer suspension made a snowy/muddy event awesome. Other cars would get hung up on berms and snow banks while the Forester would just power through/over. The only downside is that the power and fast spool of the small turbo meant there was a lot of wheel spin on the slippery parts. I think I brought a good portion of the AMP Back 40 home with me, though!
I also picked up a set of Swift Sport Forester-Specific Springs and KYB GR2 struts. The one shortcoming of the Forester XT is that they didn’t beef up the suspension to go with the added power. It still runs on the same springs and shocks as the base model, in other words it drives like an SUV. No es bueno. The Swift Sport springs provide a reasonable lowering (-1.5″F/-1.2″R) and near-STI level spring rates. Combined with the 10% stiffer GR2s and the Cusco Rear Sway bar, handling should be vastly improved without losing too much back-road eating ride height.
We’ve had a couple of good snows in the last month and the Forester has easily reminded me why I love owning a Subaru in the winter so much. Nothing like taking the long way home during a snow storm just so you can keep driving!
So… mostly a car update this time, I’ll try to cover some other topics from the last 8 months soon, but I’m not making any more empty promises!
I always said I’d try to keep at least semi regular posting going, I wasn’t going to have one of THOSE blogs. Well, I have one of THOSE blogs now. Lets see if I can’t kick start things again.
Updates and stuff… in no particular order.
I am in no way an Apple fanboy. I’ve made my Apple/Mac slurs along with the best of them in the PC world, but slowly and surely more and more Apple products are creeping into my life. How exactly does that happen? I’ve had an iPod for a while, but who doesn’t. That hardly counts, even. Last year I bought an AppleTV, which makes for a pretty decent and compact video streamer when hacked for XBMC. (Though it may soon get replaced with a small Atom HTPC with even more flexibility). In September it was time for a new MP3 player and I bought a 32GB iPod Touch. My reasons for going this (expensive) route were the Nike+ integration (which I fully associate with keeping me running over the last 9 months). It turns out I use the Touch a whole lot more than I expected. Its a great little couch browser, theres some legitimately good games and apps available for it. Its got a good screen for doing video and media on planes and traveling and, in a pinch, it makes a decent ebook, though I still prefer my full sized ebook readers.
Fast forward to April and Apple finally updates the MacBook Pro line of laptops. I’ve been feeling the restrictions of my Asus 1000HE netbook for a while. Its was a good couch machine but the tiny screen and weak processor made it pretty much useless for doing any sort of photo work. I didn’t want a ginormous 15.4″+ lap-breaker system either. I missed the days of my 14.1″ ThinkPads. Anything larger than that is just too big for my purposes. I had my eye set on a 13″ MacBook Pro, fully expecting them to get the new Core i5, or at least i3 treatment with the new refresh. Unfortunately Apple didn’t see fit to go that route and continued using the Intel Core2Duo processors. After some serious thought and consideration I ordered a 13″ anyway. I don’t really need the horsepower of the i5, as nice as it would be, and the nearly $650 price difference between a 13″ and 15″ MacBook in decent spec just couldn’t be rationalized.
So far I really like the 13″. Its just the right size for a portable laptop. The screen is beautiful, even if its glossy, which wouldn’t be my first preference. The MBP trackpad can’t be beaten for control and I love the keyboard. The solid Aluminum block design is pure sexy too. I would like a bit higher res screen and an eSATA port, but at the 13″ level the only laptop that comes close is the HP Envy 13, and it costs MORE than the 15″ MacBook!
OSX had a bit of a learning curve but I’m pretty comfortable with it now. Having a Unix back end makes it feel like a Linux flavor to me. I’m not a convert, by any stretch. Its still clunky in a lot of ways and, despite what they say, I’ve had my fair number of crashes and even a lockup or two. Pretty much on par with Windows 7. I can’t say its better, I won’t say its worse. Its come a long way since the old PowerPC’s I last used from Apple.
Final verdict, pretty happy. We’ll see how it lasts longer term.
Next up on the techno-updates, shortly after my last blog post I got my Canon 7D and sold my 40D. Man, how I wish the 7D had come out sooner and I’d had it for Targa. If you had sat me down and told me to write out all the features I wanted in a Canon body for my shooting purposes I would have made the 7D. From the incredible focus modes, the speed, the feel, all the bells and whistles, there’s literally almost nothing else I’d want in a camera! I’ve only had the chance to use it at a couple of events so far, but I can tell I’m going to love this camera. Bring on the cars!
In late April, Daphne finally had her long-coming jaw surgery to fix her TMJ problems. It was a long time coming and we’re both glad to have it out of the way. Everything went very well and she’s doing great now. The surgery and recovery were pretty rough, but I think everything went as expected. There’s still some braces and recovery to go but things appear to be on the proper mend.
We head off for our summer vacation in a couple of weeks, off to Savannah, Georgia via Charlotte, North Carolina where we’re going to visit some friends. We’re going to be in Savannah for our 10th wedding anniversary. A whole decade. How in the heck did that happen?? Wouldn’t trade it for anything though. I can’t wait to get away…
More stuff to write, but I should save it for other posts so I actually keep updating.
Interesting month, October, but hard to summarize.
Late last month I took a western-jaunt to Toronto for a few days to visit a friend. It doesn’t seem like that long since I’d been there but we did the math and I think its actually been 6 or 7 years. I’m getting to that point in life where I’m acutely aware at how quickly time goes by. I can see why people start to have breakdowns.
Visiting my friend was the primary goal of the trip but we had a bit of an agenda planned… the first night we threw on our darkest metal-blacks and headed to The Sound Academy to see my current band of the moment, DethKlok! Dethklok is an odd deathmetal band spawned from the Adult Swim show ‘Metalocalypse’. Its a violent, offensive, over the top and entertaining show about the most brutally popular band on earth. The music turns out to be excellent melodic metal and the show was great. Its been a long time since I’ve been to a metal show and, this being my year of concerts, I really enjoyed myself. I even sort of missed my long hair for a minute.
The next day was the launch event of Forza Motorsport 3 at the Canadian National Exhibition grounds. A simple 30 (down to <20!) second slalom course was setup and folks brought out their cars to do ride-alongs and even some public drives. I had the chance to drive my friend’s Honda Fit but I’m very rusty when it comes to Slalom and decided I’d rather shoot the event instead. It was fun but a long day overall.
The following Tuesday night it was time for the ears to bleed again, this time to see Metallica at the Air Canada Centre. Another great show but for different reasons. It was really interesting to compare and contrast the smaller club metal show with the giant arena one back to back. Metallica are essentially the ‘U2 of Metal’ at this point. Their music is very polished and they have the spectacle down to a science. The old guys can still rock a show though, even if they’ve reached the point where they drop beach balls on the audience for the finale. Seriously… Metallica is dropping BEACH BALLS on their audience!
While I was away the BAC RallyCross season got started, judging from the brown AMP-clay coloured car-blob in the driveway it looks like it was a fun and muddy day. Daphne did very well coming in with a 4th overall time for the day. Next event is November 22nd and I look forward to shaking the cobwebs off. There just hasn’t been a lot of driving in anger for me this year.
You may have guessed from my last post that I started running (hopefully) regularly a couple of months ago. Its something I’ve been putting off for ages but it was time to start. Prior to September I can pretty much count on one hand the number of times I’ve ever run when it didn’t involve getting to something or away from something. So far it’s been an interesting experience. I haven’t quite reached that plateau where I truly enjoy it but I haven’t minded it nearly as much as I expected. I’ve at least gotten to the point where I crave doing it and miss when I don’t. Having the Nike+ pedometer for my iPod gives me the geeky feedback I need to keep myself motivated too. Of course now that I’ve finally build up momentum the weather turned and the time shifted so its more and more inconvenient to go running, but I’m trying my best to lot lose momentum! You can see the Nike+ widget at the bottom right of this page, if it looks like I’m slacking please send me snarky comments!
Have I mentioned I hate winter? (Possibly with the exception of RallyCross, but I prefer doing that in the dry and warm too!)
