Jumping through hoops

It's what I had to do to plate the new (to me) trailer, jump through some hoops. This trailer was originally first titled here in Colorado then the person I bought it from took it to Minnesota when they moved there back in 2005. I was thinking that perhaps DMV could just use all the previous information from then but I was told they "purged" that when it was titled in Minnesota.

So now I have to get the trailer, have it weighed empty and then get the vin # verified so it could be registered here. I don't know if you've heard this or not but there's this book of yellow pages that is supposed to list businesses so you can find one an visit it. So I'm looking for a certified scale in Denver and what do I find, yup, nothing. Then I heard about this thing called the internet and decided to give it a try. I used this search tool called google and typed in certified scales in Colorado and what happened, yup nothing. The results come up with anything certified, anything scales and lots of Colorado but no places to get a certified weight. With each attempt I tried all kinds of phrases, public scales (you get reptile results), public scales in Colorado (you get CDOT scales), and so on until I sent up the white flag and stopped. My last attempt was to search for truck stops with no luck, I even called the state troopers office where they directed me to another web site that actually has a list of certified public scales for me to call. So I called one and sure enough they do certified weights, it's $8 and come on down we can get it done for you. So now I'm off with the trailer, still with inadequate mirrors to get the thing weighed but it's not too far of a drive, sweet. As I'm driving down to the truck stop I drive by a certified scale on the other side of the road, note it and continue on to the truck stop.

Now I'm at the intersection where the truck stop is and there are 7 semi's waiting to get into the truck stop for what ever reason with a line of traffic behind them waiting to get in as well. Remember that certified scale I told you about, now I'm thinking I should just go there, only one vehicle there to get weighed. But I'm thinking, can I do a U-turn with this truck and trailer? I look and think, and look again at traffic, none coming so I give it a shot. Wow!! I can do a U-turn in this thing and I'm off to the other scale.

I get there and only one vehicle being weighed, a camper trailer, and it took the guy about 30 minutes to do this (I'm thinking newbie here). I pulled in behind him and waited, then a semi pulled up, then another and yet another. I let one of the trucks go on next then the weigher waved me on. I had to drop the trailer, pull the truck off the scale wait for the signal then hook back up to the trailer and I have my weight, 4240# (heavier than I thought).

Now with weight ticket in hand I head off to DMV to get the vin verified and get my plates which actually went pretty quickly and cheaply all things considered. There was an interesting moment while the clerk was inputting the data where she had a puzzled look. She then confirmed that the trailer was coming from Minnesota, yes it was, then asked "was it originally from Colorado?". You'll remember that it was, so that information now shows up on the computer (purged remember). Well all this made a difference in the cost because when that information showed up it was now cheaper for the plates.

Like I said, jumping through hoops, call me the circus pony.

New trailer

Carrie and I went on a road trip last weekend to Lincoln Nebraska to trade trailer with my friend Mark. He had told me he was thinking of getting rid of his enclosed trailer for an open one so I suggested why don't we trade. He thought it was a good idea but he lives in Minnesota so we met half way, Lincoln Neb.

So off we went right in the middle of a serious down pour that started Friday and didn't end until Saturday some time. Once we got out past Fort Morgan the rain had stopped and didn't run into any at all in Nebraska. So Sunday morning over cereal at the hotel we signed over the titles, swapped trailers and headed back home.

Now I have never towed an enclosed trailer so it was an eye opening experience for me, to say the least. For one I didn't have the proper length receiver so the ball hung down to far and that let the trailer sway pretty bad. The best speed I could do was about 64 mph, over that and the trailer would sway to bad and I'd have to slow down.

Then an interesting thing happened, a semi truck passed me, and I thought I was about crash for sure! I wasn't warned that when they pass you the air pressure tends to push away from them and then tries to suck you back into them.
Scared the crap out of me!!

So having to slow down like that it seemed to take forever to get home but in reality it only added about an hour and a half. I've since installed the correct receiver and I think the trailer will tow just fine. I'll get to find out over labor day weekend that's when the next race is scheduled, The High Altitude Bracket Nationals. I'll have to post some photos when I take some.

Pinks air date

I've seen it twice now as going to be on October 9th, not sure of what time though. It will be on Speed channel which on Dish is channel 150 probably at 7pm. I hope I'm not left on the cutting room floor, I'd like to see how close it really was.

...and Pinks is now over, the result?

It was a pretty big success for the track, they had a huge turn out of racers (over 450) and fans as the stands were packed full.

It was very interesting to be in a race where they start it by a guy dropping his arms, a first for me that's for sure.

So we were all sitting around speculating what cars they would be picking for the 16 cars that would get to race for the $10,000 and the NAPA tools. All of us thought they would pick cars in the 11.0-11.3 second range, and we were wrong!

They decided to throw every one a curve ball and they chose a 32 car field!!! The way it worked was they had 16 cars that were all around 12.0 and then they had 16 more that were between 12.1 and 12.2. So they had the 16 slower cars race the 16 faster cars for a spot in the final 16 car field to race for the money.

I was one of the 16 slower cars!!!!!! That's right I made it on to Pinks!!! It was so awesome to pull out there with that huge crowd, all the TV cameras on you and all your friends right there pulling like crazy for you to win. So with the cameras on me I decided I'd do a longer, smokier burnout for them which went perfect. So now we stage and the starter gives us the arm drop and they say I left too soon and was out of Pinks after the first round. Bummer, let down, sadness my 15 seconds of fame was over before it began. I had a blast though, should have my mug on TV once or twice and I'd do it again if they ever come back.

On a side note we were all wearing T-shirts that said 'sea level is for sissies' and they were a big hit. If we had made up 200 of them we could have made a small fortune on them, a lot of people wanted one.

Here is a photo of me jumping the start:

Pinks update

Well I got the car up to the track last night so it would be in line to get into Pinks later today, I was told we were about 150th in line!

Maybe I'm whinnying a little bit here but you tell me.

We had been told that if you were in line for Pinks and wanted to go into the track for the Wednesday test & tune you would lose your place in line. There would be no saving your spot in line!! So what happens, a whole bunch of trailers put out a ton of cones to save their spot and went inside to test & tune. So I go over and ask one of the security personal about and what did they say? "If you want to go in and test go ahead, we won't say anything just mark your spot in line" So it makes me wonder what other 'rules' are going to be broken tonight as they park the vehicles in line.

I also heard a rumor about another group of racers that have intentionally slowed their cars down so they could all get in the field of 16 (they normally run mid to high 9 second times but have slowed them down to low 10 second times). They call this Pinks All-Out for a reason, they want you to go All-Out not sand bag it so you can get in the race and we are thinking of mentioning it to the producers and get them thrown out. The producers have done this in the past at other Pinks All-Out shows so they're not afraid to take action. We'll see.

Pinks!!

This weekend the TV show Pinks comes to Bandimere Speedway offering $10,000 and over $8,000 worth of tools from NAPA. There will be over 400 cars that they'll trim down to the 16 closest in time to race for the tools and money. I doubt they'll pick a slow car like mine but I'm going to give a shot anyways, besides I want my 15 seconds of TV time!!

New trailer (to me anyways)

So it looks like I'm finally going to get an enclosed trailer to haul my car around in. My friend Mark, who I bought the Mach 1 from, is looking to get rid of the one he has and e-mailed me to see if I was interested. He had mentioned while he was out here for the Mustang roundup that he was thinking of getting rid of his enclosed trailer and getting an open trailer to haul his car to the track. Well he sent me an e-mail saying he was seriously thinking of getting rid of it so I suggested trading my open for his enclosed. After getting him all the information on mine I could find it turns out mine is a heavy duty trailer, capable of hauling much more than I thought. It looked like the deal breaker was going to be whether it had 2 wheel brakes of 4 and after contacting the manufacturer it happens to be 4 and we have a deal. Now comes the fun part of figuring out how to make the swap, he lives in Minnesota just about 13 hrs from here. It looks like Lincoln Nebraska is a half way point between the two of us and hopefully we can meet there and make the swap.

The reason I wanted is it gives me an extra garage space where I can keep the race car and not have it sitting outside. This is even more important during the winter, I don't want it in the driveway with snow and cold, it'll kill the race tires on the car. I can also keep all the race stuff in the trailer and not in my garage freeing up a little more space.

On another car note, I have painted the engine compartment in Carrie's 68 and can now install the engine and transmission so she can finally drive it around. Needless to say she's pretty excited about that.