Success?

I'm referring to the campaign by the post office to get people to use the flat rate boxes for all their shipping needs. Well after this week I'd say it's been a success for Christmas 2009. The last two days there has been so many parcels coming into Colorado and going out that we just haven't been able to keep up very well. This is not due to lack of planning or personal just over whelmed by the amount of mail coming into the building, most of these parcels are in the flat rate boxes too. So in my opinion the flat rate boxes have been a pretty good success and a bargain really, if it fits and weighs less than 70 pounds it ships.

Christmas poem

I found this on a car forum I visit and changed a few things around to reference a Mustang where the original was a Corvette. Some of it also didn't make sense so I changed some phrases to make more sense.

Twas the night before Christmas, and in the garage
There wasn't a trace of Chevy or Dodge
The presents were wrapped, the lights were lit
So I figured I'd play with the Stang for a bit

I popped the release and lifted the hood
When a deep voice behind me said "looks pretty good"
As you could imagine I turned mighty quick
It wasn't a Glidden, it was jolly St. Nick

We stood there a bit, not sure what to say
When suddenly he said, "would you trade for a sleigh?"
I looked in his eyes and said with grin
"No way Santa, but we could go for a spin"

His round little mouth, eyes all a glow
Turned with a smile and said "Great, let's go!"
So not to disturb the neighbors all a sleep
We pushed the Stang out into the street

Then taking our places to drift down the hill
I turned on the key and let the gas spill
The sound from the mufflers took him by surprise
But he liked it a lot by the look in his eyes

The big tires screeching, the headers aglow
We burned rubber out to where hot rodders go
Santa's grin widened, approaching his ears
The tach went up while I rowed through the gears

Then he looked at me yelling "I feel so alive"
So I backed off the gas, "Hey Santa, wanna drive?"
Santa was stunned as I gave him the keys
As he was strapping in was shaking at the knees

The big block exploded, with no exhaust sound
The ground was trembling for miles around
As Santa sat jolly, holly complete
Those big giant slicks ripped up the street

He wound up the mill, high and tight
I stood there watching, what a beautiful sight
I heard him exclaim as he started to fade
"Merry Christmas to all, I made a hell of a trade!"

Very cold and I have one too

It's been very cold for about the past week, it's supposed to get down to -8 tonight and as a result I've been fighting a sinus infection since Saturday. I haven't had one in a few years because the winters haven't been this cold in a while. We're already having January cold in the second week of December, what's in store for the really cold month of January then? I had forgotten what these sinus infections were like since I hadn't had one in so long, they still suck, but I had the Dr check it out any ways and he says I should start improving now.

The rush has started in the area I work at now which is outgoing Priority mail, but since I've been sick all week I've missed out on a bunch of OT. I hope to go back to work tomorrow but with this cold sleeping is the hard part. I haven't had a decent nights sleep all week, which is strange because you'd figure being sick I'd be tired which I am but just can't sleep.

I hope your a lot warmer than we are here, it does look like we might hit the 40's by the weekend. I hope so cause I'm already sick of all this below zero cold, I wonder if we can move?

A blast

So I went to the Bronco/Giants game at the new Mile-Hi Stadium and had a very good time and the Broncos won. The new stadium is very nice but lacks the feel and atmosphere of the old stadium. I don't know if the fans are like this for every game but they were pretty worked up for this one. They constantly stomping their feet and screaming pretty loud, it was rather fun. We had very good seats but the person in front of me had to stand up each time there was a play so I couldn't see anything half the time without standing up myself. It became so tedious that I wanted to grab the guy by the back of the coat and pull him back down into his seat, but I refrained.

Thanksgiving football

Tomorrow's Thanksgiving and for the first time I get to go to a Bronco game on turkey day. It would be way more exciting if the Broncos were playing better, but I was given the tickets so free is good and I've not been to a game at the new stadium. The weather is forecast to be a high of 60 so hopefully it's not going to be too cold when the game starts at 6:20. We are going to Aunt Vada's house for dinner again and it looks like a smaller group this year, Carrie's dad has come down with the flu and might not be able to attend, Karen and Jessica are going to her dads, Carries brother Curt is going to be busy and won't make it either so it might just be the four of us.

Good luck to the Broncos they're going to need it, I don't see them winning however, just too many problems on both sides of the ball. Perhaps this is how they were meant to play this any ways.

Have a great Turkey Day!!

Long time no blog

My mom pointed out I need to update my blog, I didn't realize my last entry was in August so it really has been a while so there's some catching up to do.

My last post I said there's some changes coming and I changed my job duties and hours. I'm no at South Denver Annex station, I'm now at the MPA, Mail Processing Annex. I work Sunday - Thursday with Friday/Saturday days off. At the MPA we process all the out going Priority/First Class parcels and incoming Colorado/Wyoming parcels. Monday - Thursday I work the out going mail which are separated into numerical legs, 000-099, 100-199, and so on and some of these legs get a lot of mail. the 000-099 leg gets all the APO - FPO zip codes and with the war there's a ton of parcels going out with Tuesday being the heaviest day for some reason. The 500 leg also has the Foreign out going and it gets slammed with mail every night. Another pretty heavy leg is the Low 900 leg that takes care of California and they get lots of mail daily. I start at 1800 hours, 6:00 pm for the non military, and I'm supposed to get off at 0230 or 2:3o am but that usually doesn't happen, there's OT just about every night. The USPS can say the numbers are down, but I had no idea we processed this many parcels daily, so on the up side I make more money now than I did at the station and that's not such a bad thing.

Now how about an update on the race car. I took the car to Minnesota with a friend of mine to visit our friend Mark, we call him CornDog. Well he races at a small track in Wisconsin called Rock Falls Raceway so we went there to visit and race with him there. The altitude is considerably lower than here, around 720 feet above sea level and the car ran very good. It's best run was 11.03 @ 119.96 mph which I must say was fun to go that fast, but then broke on the next run when it blew a head gasket. The engine is now in pieces waiting for my friend Big Kevin to take a look at and put back together for me and make sure there's no hidden damage (I didn't see any when I took it apart). Racing is done for the season so there's no big rush to get it done, we have until March to get it done.

The only other news around here is we will be celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary on Tuesday November 17th by going on vacation to Las Vegas. We're splurging and staying at the Mirage Hotel Casino, we'll be leaving Monday and coming back Friday evening. Carrie's really looking forward to this since she didn't get to go to Minnesota with me (our puppy sitter backed out at the last moment on that one).
On the 22nd Carrie's mom and dad are having a party for us at the local Moose lodge so that should be fun too.

Right now I want to thank my mom and step-dad Chuck for getting us married in the first place, they paid for us to get married in Vegas in the first place. They paid for the Silver Bells wedding chapel, our hotel, they really went all out for us and we've never forgot that.

Well that should bring us up to date now, blog at ya later.

Changes are coming

Lately I've been pretty fed up with the letter carriers and other clerks at the station so this last go around I put in 3 bids for a different job. I ended up getting one so starting Sunday my new days off are now Friday/Saturday (they were Friday/Sunday) but I go into work now at 6pm and I'll get off at 2:30am. I really hated to do it but I was getting pretty ticked off on a daily basis at how lazy and bitchy those carriers are there. At least now I won't have to worry about getting time off to race on Saturdays and because I start late I should be able to do most stuff on Sundays.

So your not going to Tweet?

I've been waiting to see you on Twitter and your not there yet, how come? It's easy to do and you can follow me more often than reading the blog.

So go to www.twitter.com and register and follow klondike93 daily.

Frustrating thy name is drag racing

It's been a frustrating last couple of races while the car's performance has been great the track's hasn't. The first time run will be great, lifting the front tires and running a pretty good time but every run after that it spins the tires. At the last race I even lowered the tire pressure 1/2 pound and yet it still spun in the first round and I lost.

Here's how it breaks down and you can tell it cost me the race. My car will normally cover 60 feet in 1.59 - 1.60 seconds but on the two first round losses they were 1.68 and 1.69 so you can see that I left .008 or .009 on the starting line and the car ran slower than my dial in as a result too.

Well I'll be back out there again this Saturday trying to put some wins together and get out of this first round losing slump. I just hope the track co-operates with me this time.

Do you Tweet?

I do, shouldn't you? I'm talking about Twitter (www.twitter.com) where you have 140 characters to say what your doing at that moment called a Tweet. Lately I've been tweeting more than blogging cause it's shorter, I even tweeted while I was racing last weekend. No not while I was driving but after the run I was tweeting what happened.

So go to www.twitter.com, register then look for klondike93 and follow me and you'll be kept up to date too.

Happy tweeting!!

That's racing

Well went racing this past weekend and for the first time since I've owned this car I had traction problems. You wouldn't know it looking at this photo, yup both wheels are off the ground this time. Still not real high but on this run the car hooked up to the track pretty good. But, each run after this it spun the tires pretty bad and I lost in the first round. Ordinarily when I have a traction issue I'll lower the air pressure in the rear tires about a half a pound and see if it fixes it. This time I didn't because I was told I lined up in a bald spot which I remembered there being one on the starting line so I didn't touch them.

Now it's on to first round and we decided to move closer to the 'tree' and out of the bald spot but that didn't work and it spun and I lost as a result. I think in hindsight it would have been wiser to move away from the tree and in between the two bald spots. Now we're off this weekend then we have two weekends in a row of racing and I'll be back there trying again.

Neighbors

Did I mention that we now have new neighbors? We do and while this might sound a tad racist they're white and I'm glad they are. The reason is we had some illegals living there for a while and we had to listen to their mexican music as loud as they could get it every day. They also enjoyed parking their vehicles in the yard, throwing their beer cans in the yard, never mowing the yard, in short acting like pigs.

Now here's the interesting part, the new neighbors have a dog! Mystique has never had a dog in the yard next door and acts a bit nuts when you let her out now. She's worn a path around the lawn swing running up and down the fence and has pushed out a few boards with her nose from hitting the fence with it. Now when you let her out she has to run over to the fence and bark at the neighbors dog, rather funny really.

Sunday was a good day

Sunday was Ford Fest at Bandimere Speedway where I raced the Coupe in the Pro Ford category and managed to make it all the way to the semi-finals. There is where my bubble burst as I went too quick and broke out going to quick. What that means is I said I'd run a 11.95 and I actually went 11.930 which is .020 too quick, and then the guy I lost to red lit in the finals, why couldn't he have done that against me? I really needed to go some rounds like that, I was getting pretty bummed losing first round all the time. The secret was letting my friend Mike use the car on Saturday and he was cutting some really good lights so I asked him where how he was doing it and used that info Sunday and it worked. So, now I have a pretty good idea how to really drive my car, wish me luck.

RMMR

That stands for the Rocky Mountain Mustang Roundup and it was held last weekend, June 18-21 and was fun as usual. I worked like crazy for 2 weeks prior to get Carrie's '68 ready to go and it made it just fine, mechanically that is. Cosmetically it didn't, one of the new emblems I put on the side blew off just east of Idaho Springs and is lost, then some of the chrome on the rear of the car was snagged and looks like junk now. It did have a slight problem when lining up for the show on Saturday, the car wouldn't shut off which turned out to be a bad starter solenoid, replaced it and all was good.

It didn't win an award, but Carrie didn't really care about that she had a ball just driving it and having it there.

My car did win an award, second straight year too and I was rather surprised too because I didn't put as much effort into this year like last year. Still, I thought it looked pretty good and was excited to win again.

I did the autocross again this year, it's run on Friday and you get 4 timed laps around a course of cones laid out by the Pikes Peak Autocross club and it was a long hard course this year.

Carrie rode with me on all 4 runs, started off screaming then went right into laughing and said she had a blast. The autocross is fun because you get to test the limits of your cars handling legally.

It really is a lot of fun and packs quite an adrenalin rush, these are photos of my first lap and I was shaking when I finished. My times went down with each run, 1st run - 55.256, 2nd run - 52.432, 3rd run - 52.270, and my last run was a 51.633. I improved with each run and ended up 8th out of 16 cars in my class.

There's one event I don't have any photos of and that's the Senic Cruise they hold on Thursday where you drive your Stang around the Steamboat area. It's done like a poker run where you get a cards at each stop and put together a winning hand. They also give out 'door' prizes at each stop and we were lucky and won a nice hat at the second stop. We used Carrie's '68 for the cruise and it went great, but I had forgotten I had entered the Mach 1 in the cruise too or we would have had two cars cruising around.

All in all it was fun and Carrie said she can't wait for next year, she's now hooked on it just like I knew she would be.

One of those weeks

Have you ever had one of those weeks where nothing really goes right? That's me this week so far and I still have to get through Friday. Started off decent enough and then came Tuesday when I discovered the blower motor in the furnace wasn't working. I was trying to get the AC on since it was in the 90's and getting rather warm in the house and no AC. So Carrie called a number we had from a previous visit and the guy came out Wednesday and fixed it, $400 later that is. He replaced the the blower motor and what he called a ECU and now we're cooking with Crisco (maybe even a bit too cold now). Then I happen to notice one of the trees we planted last year in the backyard has blown over to one side from some very serious wind we had the last two days. So I go to look at it and I notice that I have 'ringed' the tree, not good for a tree. When you 'ring' a tree it pretty much kills it because you've cut a ring around the trunk of the tree. When I staked the tree after putting it in the ground I forgot to put some tubing around the trunk so the string wouldn't cut a ring into the tree. We tried to stand it back up and it ended up snapping off right at the 'ring', killing the tree. DOH!!!, my bad.

Now we're up to today, uneventful until my friend Mike calls me to see if I can help him get one of his cars home from his uncles house. His car is a 2003 Cobra Mustang that is just a ton of fun to drive and it was all good until we get it to his house. I knew I shouldn't have tried to pull it in the garage for him but I did anyways and ended up scratching the passenger mirror on the garage door. Boy do I feel like a dumb ass now and he try's his best to make me not feel so stupid about but I do anyways. So yeah, this week pretty much sucked and I'm glad it's about over.

Crazy weather

The last few days there's been some crazy weather around here. Sunday we rain, hail and high winds and some parts of town had tornadoes. Carrie's brother had to head to the basement when one hit the area he lives in, it tore up a strip mall pretty good but didn't get to close to his house. It turns out one of the mail carriers I work with lives in the same area and his house was torn up pretty good by the hail. He showed some pictures of the hail and it was almost baseball size, luckily his Explorer was parked in the garage or it would have been totaled.

Tuesday we had some bumpy weather around here, wind and some rain and a few funnel clouds in the area. There weren't any around us but I did see some rotation in the clouds but it didn't last very long. All this rain is great, I haven't had to turn the sprinklers on in a couple of weeks, saving some money on the water bill.

Before and after

These are the before, taken almost a year ago

These were taken today, 175 pounds









What do ya think?

Violated!

It's finally happened, first time since we moved into this house 22 years ago, I had something stolen. It's really nothing, just three 5 gallon gas cans I used to put oil in, were stolen from in front of my garage. What bothers me is the vandalism that could occur when the young punks that took them could do when they find out they're not gas. Also makes me wonder what else they could try and take from the house. We have a table and chairs that were my brothers on the front porch that I might have to move now for fear of it being stolen. There's also a bunch of yard ornaments in the backyard they could take and if they got bold enough they could start to vandalize the house. I have a couple of suspects I'm going to keep an eye on. Last summer they vandalized the street lights in the neighborhood and one of my neighbors even tried to chase them down when he caught them in the act but was unable to. We have one of Thornton's finest living right across the street but that doesn't seem to be much of a deterrent to these dummy's.

Tomorrows race day, last weekend wasn't a good day for Phast Phat #3 (me), the car was running very well the driver wasn't. The car ran consistent, time trial 1 11.92, time trial 2 11.92 so for first round I put 11.91 on thinking I can just run it all out and still run the number. Then it rained and the conditions went into the trash, it ran 11.99 with me having a bad reaction time and slow to boot. Needless to say I lost pretty easily, to the eventual winner no less but I was still bummed.

Carrie's '68

It's been a long time coming but the car finally made it's car show debut. All through the summer there are car shows all over Denver that some friends and I show up at. Last night was the first one called Gunther Tooties Cruise In, and I heard this is the 32 year of this show. This was my second time there, the last time I had the Mach 1, this time Carrie's '68. I spent the afternoon washing and waxing the car, cleaning the glass and chrome so it would look pretty good. I followed my friend Mike in his '68 to the show and we took the highway where I opened it up and let it run which hasn't been done since the motor was built (3 years ago). The car ran great, no over heating issues, misses, didn't wander all over the road I was very pleased the way it ran. There is only one piece left to put on the body but I don't have the nuts that attach it to the body and I can't find them for sale any where.

Rant alert..........

I bought some fender emblems for the car from what's supposed to be the best remanufacturer there is and they wouldn't fit on the car. The emblem is a running horse, it has 4 prongs on that insert into the fender and they put the prong that's on the tail too far out, it won't go in the hole. All of the other prongs match, just that one is too far out to go in the hole. So I had a Ford made emblem and compaired them and sure enough it's wrong. The Ford piece has the prong in the bend of the tail, the aftermarket one is out in the flat part, about and inch too far away to fit. So the only way to fix it is to clip that prong and attach it with the other three and hope it stays.

'68 Update

The only part left to be put on the car is the trim that goes on the quarter panel and the only reason it's not on now is I don't know it gets bolted to the panel. The carpet has been ordered and is on the way and should get installed next week. I'll take some photos of it when we do the paint detailing here real soon.

My friend Mike went racing yesterday, my car was legal for any of the classes so it stayed home, and he had a bad day. It started with the electric fan not working that turned out to be a bad ground and had it working again but in the process we found a chocolate milk shake. Your wondering what that is, cause it's not the kind you can drink. Well, when you find oil in your radiator the oil floats to the top so when your looking in the filler hole you see what looks like a chocolate shake. This is bad really because it usually means you have a blown head gasket or a cracked block, but it can also mean loose head bolts but not likely. So with all this the car ran SLOW!! The week before it was running 11.91 @115 mph, yesterday it was 12.09 @ 113 mph and for the second run even slower, 12.30 @112 mph, did I say SLOW. Sadly this means the car is going to the shop for some tests to determine what the problem is, should be there tomorrow morning.

I'll be at the track this coming weekend, plan on going up Friday and Saturday at this point, but if Mike's car is broken it'll probably just be Saturday.

It's been a while

I haven't felt like blogging much lately so it's been a while since I last wrote anything. Let's see what's new around here? Well, I sold my '97 F250 so I could buy a '99 F350 Dually Powerstroke diesel to pull my trailer with. I really like this truck, it's big and has no problem pulling my trailer. My goal is to get a car hauler that can hold 2-3 cars and work part time with my friend Mike hauling repo's and dealer cars to the car auction.

The race car saw some action for the first time in a month last Friday, it was disappointingly slow though. I did a test and tune session in March and it was running 11.80's @ 113 mph, but Friday it ran a 12.0 @ 110, 11.91 @ 112 and a 11.94 @111 (in a first round loss no less). The weather was pretty bad, damp cold conditions which really took hold on Saturday and washed out that day's racing. Our next race will be May 8 & 9 and I hope the car's running better by then.

Since my racing was washed out on Saturday, I took the time to work on Carrie's '68 Mustang, the problem has been a noise coming from a weight on the flywheel (flexplate actually), hitting the starter. I had a shim on the starter to space it out but it still hit and made that stupid noise (a lot like a rod knock). So I got to thinking that since this is a late model engine maybe it needed a late model starter. So I borrowed one from my friend Steve, put it in (with the shim too) and yes, no noise now!! It appears the late model starter has a little shorter snout on it to keep the weight from hitting it. So that's done, let's keep going and see what else we can fix. The shifter has needed a new set of bushings to tighten it up so I took that apart and fixed that and also fixed the gear indicator light so now that works too. Call me butter cause I'm on a roll now.

Up next for the '68 is to buy new carpet and get that installed, finish putting the remaining body chrome on it and then it's ready for the Rocky Mountain Mustang Roundup.

My weight loss as continued very well so far, I'm down from 218 in January to 182 this week. I'm going to keep it up and see what weight I end up at.

That's all from around here, sorry for not blogging in a long time.

Time to rant a little

Here's the story: Over the winter a friend of mine sold me his wheels off his race car so I had Discount Tires mount my slicks on them with steel valve stems. Steel valve stems are needed in drag racing, the rules require it. Well, after getting them mounted one of the wheels wouldn't hold air very long and the other would eventually leak out too. So I thought the wheels just couldn't seal well enough and bought some very expensive drag racing inner tubes for them. Now Tuesday comes along and I decide to finally get them put in so I head over there and they tell it's going to be $100 to put two inner tubes in my slicks!! Yes I was shocked, I just looked at the guy and no thanks I'll do it myself and walked out. As I leave I'm telling myself I'll never go to that store again, little did I know I'd have an even better reason after what I learned today.

I called my friend who I buy all my tires from and he tells me he's not surprised and to just bring them to him and he'll take care of me. I went by his store, a Discount Tires store, and he takes the wheels to unmount the slicks and he tells me the valve stems aren't in correctly. One of the pieces was upside down and wouldn't allow the valve stem to fully seal against the rim. So he suggests we try it and see if it leaks, so we do and hooray it doesn't leak, but the sidewall does. This means the tires are bad and I have to buy new slicks now, which I was planning on for later in the year, but still a shocker.

So the Discount Tires that's less than a quarter mile away has lost my business due to their incompetence. I was fully expecting to pay to have the job done, but $100 is flat ridiculous especially when I buy all my tires from them. Forty dollars wouldn't have been a bad price and then they can't even put a valve stem together correctly, sheesh.

I wonder if I should take my Explorer to my friend, I had to have a tire replaced and now wonder if it's done right.

Take care of your customers and they'll stick with you for life, or reject you for life your choice.

Opening day

Today is opening day in baseball, and being a big fan of baseball I'm loving it. I have a subscription to MLB.com so I can watch all the out of market games I can, mainly the Padres games. At one point today I had three computers running each with a different game and the TV on tuned to the Rockies game (currently in the bottom of the 7th tied at 8-8). If you like baseball at all I recommend getting the package, and with a laptop and wireless you can take it outside with you.

More snow & truck tips

How about that, we had to wait until spring to get any snow around here. Now I'm not complaining, well maybe a little, because the grass really needed it. Of course race season is coming up so naturally it has to start snowing all the time, but what can you do.

I was asked about F-150 trucks and here's my opinion: If you can get a repossessed '09 model for $15k, take it because that's cheap. I'll tell ya, the new '09 model is a good looking truck too. I think this would also be the case for a '08 model, but the '07 model might be easier to find for around $10k. Obvious things to look for on any truck are, leaks onto the pavement, leaks around the top of the motor, does it rattle while driving, tires still good, and does it smoke at all. You'd want to know about maintenance too, how often was the oil changed, transmission fluid and so forth. Colors, white is so-so, blue is better, black is nice but gray or silver is best!
Oh yeah, is leather really needed, I actually prefer the cloth it's cooler in the summer but leather would probably have heated seats. Have fun looking!!

Snow

They have been forecasting snow all week long and finally on Thursday we had some. It started lite then turned into a blizzard then stopped, started again and snowed moderately all night. It's funny how the weather forecasters around here can never get it right though. First it was supposed to start Wednesday night and snow lightly into Thursday, yet when I got up at 2am it was only partly cloudy, no snow had fallen. Then about 5am it started snowing and that lasted about an hour and finally around 9am it started falling pretty good.

These same weather people also said that the farther north of Longmont you went the less likely of snow accumulation would occur. What happened was it started snowing pretty hard with blizzard conditions way up in Greeley and slowly worked it's way south. So by our house around 11:30am we had a pretty good blizzard going on and it was pointless to try and shovel the driveway. About 3pm it had stopped snowing so I ventured out to shovel the driveway off and the weather service called off the blizzard warning and then said the snow would stop by midnight. Well it didn't, it snowed all night and was lightly snowing until around 7:30am.

I'm glad it finally snowed, the grass around here was getting pretty dry and luckly we had the yard arreated last weekend. I can't remember when the last snow fell around here so it's been a pretty long time since we've had any mosture. The good thing about spring snow is it's usually very wet and that should help the lawn out a ton.

Stupid headers

I'm referring to the exhaust headers on my race car. I bought a set from my racing buddy last year to put on but was hesitant because they're bigger. Well I decided to swap them out last weekend and failed. I started with the passenger side, unbolted them from the cylinder head and then found it impossible to get them out of the engine compartment. I tried sliding them out the bottom and the flange would hang up on the transmission. Then I tried sliding them out the top and they would hang up on the motor mount, failed again. Next was unbolt the motor mount from the car, jack the motor up and then see if there's enough room to slide it out, failed again! So after 4 frustrating hours of this madness I'd had enough and bolted the header back to the head and called it a day.

You read right too, 4 hours of struggling with this I had accomplished nothing and that is very frustrating.

Race car testing

This past Friday I was able to get the race car out and get some testing done with it and was pleased that the car ran better than it did in the fall. I made 6 runs mainly testing out what rpm to launch the car and what rpm to shift at, I'd like to one more test & tune with it to test some timing changes out.

These are the numbers the car ran:

(in order)

E.T. MPH

1. 11.837 @ 113.32
2. 11.845 @ 113.45
3. 11.873 @ 113.17
4. 11.824 @ 113.47
5. 11.911 @ 112.86 --------- Had bad tire spin at the start
6. 11.817 @ 113.60

So I know your looking at those numbers and saying, "ok what does this mean?". The answer is for the most the car was consistent and if it can do this when I race I should have a better year than last year. Consistency is the key in bracket racing to winning and that's one thing I didn't have last year.

Interesting discovery

I was out in the garage working on the race car when I noticed a large bump on the side wall of a tire on the Explorer. Upon further investigation I discovered the tire would blow out the side wall very soon. So off to Discount Tires I go in search of new tire, thank Santa I purchased the road hazard warranty and the tire was free (more or less). It also happens I need to get the slicks for the race car mounted on the new wheels I purchased from a friend of mine so I brought them along too. I paid to have them mounted and balanced but they only did one of those, mounted, and had to order a new tire for the Explorer. Now I'm back home with the slicks and I find out they didn't balance them, so I have to take them back the next day with the Explorer, to get the new tire remember, and have it done.

It's the next day now and I was told the tire should be there by 10AM, I get off work at 11:30am home by noon and back at the tire store by 12:30. I get there and no tire, should be there on the 1pm truck and will be mounted after that. So I leave the Explorer there to get finished, walk home and wait for them to call me and tell me it's done. Now I'm waiting, and waiting, and still more waiting then I decide I'm going to call them. You guessed it, it's done and been done for a while now, why no call I ask, not written on the invoice I'm told. Wow, left me speechless, I guess I'm supposed to be psychic now and know when they're done with it.

So to finish my rant, the Explorer was done 3 hours later, they finally balanced the slicks for me and all is well with the world.

Ford F-150's

That link (click the Ford F-150 title) is to a web site called Craigslist, think of it as the want ads online. That search is for F-150 that you would have to search for the particular year and mileage your looking for.

Let me know if this helps.

Stupid glasses

This will be a rant about my glasses, they broke this morning while I was cleaning the lenses. These are the flexible frame type which I bought because I thought they'd more durable, I seem to be a little hard on glasses. Well about a month after I bought them the covering on the left arm could just slide right off and the right arm had become very loose. So I took them over to my eye clinic to see what could be done and they're going to order me a new pair. They didn't say if they would be free but they should be I haven't even had them a year yet but I've also never been very happy them. I hope this frame will be a little better made.

Mach 1

Uncovered the Mach 1 today, first time it's been touched since October and found the battery totally dead. So I put the battery charger on it for a while and then took it out and drove it around to charge the battery more. When I don't drive it for a long time like that I forget how much fun that car is. I'm a bit surprised I didn't get pulled over because it's very easy to get going too fast, and it's a tad hard on the gas gauge.

Do you like Science Fiction shows?

What's your all time favorite Sci-Fi show if you do, mine is a show from the 90's called Babylon 5.

The show was 5 years long, and the all 5 years had been totally written before any episodes had even been filmed. It was owned by WB and year 5 was the weakest because they didn't know if the show would be picked up for year 5 so some of the actors quit after year 4. It's set in space and it's about the daily events that happen on a space station called Babylon 5. It's B5 because the previous 4 all were destroyed before they could even come on line and you find out why in one very good episode. I bought all of the seasons when they came out on DVD and like to watch them every now and then. 

My other favorite is the Smallville series that's on the CW network now in it's 8th season. I like because I've always been a Superman fan and the way the writers have done things has been very interesting. For instance, Clark is afraid of heights so he's afraid to fly and he also hates tights so he usually wears a blue or red coat all the time. Most of the episodes have been good and there's been a few stinkers but overall entertaining. My only gripe has been the over playing of the Lana/Clark stuff, and then this they kind of went over the top and gave her super powers. However, the last episode was her last and won't be on anymore so they can get on with the Lois/Clark stuff (Lois is way better looking too). 

So what's your favorites? 

Race Car

It's time to get the race car and get some work done on it. I have a new set of wheels to put on it, what's called a line-lock and a new harmonic balancer.

The wheels I bought from my friend Kev-Dog, he's the brother of my racing buddy Mike. A line lock is a device that when activated it locks the front wheels to prevent you from moving forward. You use this when you do a burn out to put heat in the drag slicks and the line lock prevents you from rolling forward out of the water. The harmonic balancer goes on the front of the engine a dampens vibrations from the crankshaft. I got a new one because I was using a stock balancer, the new one is SFI certified for racing.

Looks like I might to go to a test & tune session towards the end of March so I don't have much time to get the car ready.

Sweet, racing season is coming up fast!!!

Forgot to post this last Saturday

Arroyo Seco Raceway

From Deming: Take HWY 549 West approximately 17
miles.

I think it would fun to have you two watch me race my car, so I'm thinking serious of trying to get there for a race.

Wind sucks

It seems the wind has followed us back to Denver, it's been blowing pretty hard around here today, no snow however.

First day back at work today, work really sucks.

So for grins I was searching the internet for race tracks in New Mexico, thinking I would maybe try and attend a race there. I found one that has a drag strip not too far from Deming too! So I might try and race there some time, should be fun.

Update

Carrie had her stitches taken out today, the doctor said every thing looks good. She'll be out a couple of more weeks then back to work but doing more sitting than standing for a while.

Sup?

Just curious.

Proof it snowed in Deming

I had posted earlier that it snowed in Deming New Mexico where my mom lives. This surprised me because Deming is located just north of the Mexico border, or just over a hundred miles west of El Paso Tx. It wasn't very much but when your this far south you don't expect it to snow. The next day it was in the mid 60's with no clouds at all. 

In Deming new Mexico

Had to go all the way to Deming New Mexico to get some snow!!!  Will post photos soon!

So what's new?

Not much really, it has been pretty warm here the last few days and even set a record high on Wednesday. Today though it's back to normal cause it's a bit chilly around here today.

Carrie is having another foot operation on Feb. 3rd, she's up beat but disappointed too cause she was hoping she wouldn't need any more of these. My foot is doing alright but it's still gets very sore if I'm on it for a long time. I've begun trying to lose some weight I put on because of lack of exercise to see if that helps out (it should).

Mystique is doing just fine and being spoiled rotten every day, she's a great dog!

Happy New Year

Still trying to OD on the bowl games which so far have been pretty good. I'm not liking that the Florida/Oklahoma game isn't until next Thursday that's a long time to wait for such a big game.

GO GATORS!!!