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I appreciate much, but love little
2002-01-29-11:31 a.m.
The truth of the matter is, things HAVE been going on worth mentioning, but I've been busy and haven't felt like typing it all out. This past weekend was a blast, just car stuff car stuff car stuff. On Friday, Rodney, Sarah and I went to Cafe East with the guys in our car club. There were almost 50 people from the car club there, but this place was undoubtedly the biggest restaurant I've ever seen. It was an all you can eat chinese food place, but it was easily the size of an entire supermarket. The 50 of us didn't even make a dent. Anyway one of the guys in the club's parents own the place so we got a good deal. The freaking parking lot looked like an import car dealership with 20 vw's, a few audi's, and a few honda's all parked together. After that we all rolled to the Galleria, actually the parking lot across from it. People start parking at the Starbucks, and the cars line up through about 30 rows as the people show up. It was really cold and sorta dead though, so Sarah and I took off early. Saturday night though was a real blast. We stated outside of town, in the suburbs area, by 1960 and hwy 6, but after about 45 min. of shooting the bull, we went back to the Starbucks by the Galleria again. For those of you that don't know houston, the Galleria is the biggest mall in Texas, actually 3 malls connected together, the main part is 3 levels up, with a skylight that goes all the way through the floors onto an indoor ice rink. Anyway this is a really nice/affluent part of town. So while on friday night there were maybe 50 or 60 cars there, the count on saturday night was somewhere closer to 3 or 4 hundred. In addition to a great showing from us and the whole vw/bmw/audi/mercedes euro crew, there was the typical japanese cars, and tons of american cars. Street rods, trucks, mustangs and camaros, and about 30 C5 corvettes, most heavily modded. There were plenty of exotics too, 4 Dodge Vipers, one was a GTSR, and one was a Hennessy Motorsports Venom, which is a twin turbo Viper with a body kit and upgraded suspension/brakes. Also quite a few Porsches, and two Ferrari's. So we chilled out there for a few hours, everyone talking amongst themselves, taking video and checking out the cars. Around 1 a.m. the races for the night were setup, with Zerin in his twin turbo v6 all wheel drive 6-speed Audi, racing against some kid who had been hanging around in an AMG tuned, supercharged, rear wheel drive 6 speed Mercedes Benz. Also racing with them were two otehr regulars in the club, A gun named Wes in a supercharged Honda S2000 (6 speed, two seat Roadster, pushing 300hp) and Alec, in his 4 door VW golf with 5 speed, front wheel drive, and stock wheels. The trick is, last week, Alec drove to Alabama to have APR install it's new stage III kit, which is giving him 270hp to the front wheels on pump gas, and over 310hp on race gas, all out of a 1.8 liter engine, and all completely driveable on a daily basis.
He actually drove it back from Alabama to Texas right after they finished, and he is the first in the country with this setup. The cool thing it it's not all HP that requires revving like the honda motors, it's actually twice the torque of Wes's S2000. Actually it now more torque than the biggest gasoline V8 that Ford now puts in any of it's trucks. No one races around the meeting areas though, so as not to give the cops a reason to break it up. Instead its a 15 minuted drive to the north/west side of town, out on the beltway. Theres a particular stretch that hs no roads/driveways between exits, and with people at the gas station on the corner, there's really no way for the cops to suprise you. It's fast becoming popular though, so in the next week or two someplace new will have to be found. So the race went 1st place: $19,000 VW Golf. 2nd place. $35,000 Audi S4. 3rd place $40,000 Honda S2000, 4th place, $55,000 Mercedes Benz. Sorta a backwards order don't ya think? ;-) Sure, none of these are really drag race cars, but all but the Honda are very useful. The Golf will carry 5 passengers and groceries, the audi will do the same with more room and in the snow, and the mercedes falls somewhere in between, while looking, well, expensive. The highlight of the night for me was driving along at a steady 120mph, when all 4 of these cars floored it and walked away like I was parked. Weekends like this do not portend well for my pocketbook. No they do not. Also I ran almost 2 miles non stop yesterday, so I'm back in the swing, although not back to the 4 miles at a time I was running a few months ago.
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