Leaderboard

Debbie's take on chicken piccata, with white wine, quartered artichoke hearts and capers. The green beans were less than flavorful however. Not her fault, it was crappy supermarket stuff. We'll get local soon. But hey, they look good. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Claire's first concert -- her dad took her and it was his idea -- was Iggy Pop with David Bowie on keyboards and Blondie as the opener. She was 14.

Oh yeah! New straps!

Neil Young pulls his music from streaming services. Says quality is worse than 8-tracks, AM radio, wax cylinders, etc.

So the performance driving program was an absolute blast! It is amazing how much you learn when you can really drive your car HARD. So now for the recap: We had 10 or 11 participants and 4 instructors. The day started promptly at Sonoma Raceway at 10AM. Having never driven on a track before, I was easily the least experienced member of the class. It turned out that I had the second shittiest car of the group (at least to start). People brought some seriously impressive toys. We had: A Ferrari (don't know which one but it was one of the GT ones because it threw its weight around a ton in the corners. That being said it was fast as shit). An R8 v8 (the silent assassin, seriously this thing is quiet. It was perhaps the most impressive car in the group with how flat it stayed in the corners. A true supercar). A couple of Carreras (one S, one not). A Shelby GT500 (the bruiser of the group and perhaps the least elegant). the Jag F-Type (my god what a beautiful exhaust note! must be loud in the cabin tough. also it looked very tail-happy but the guy who was driving it kept it under control). A TT RS (solid all around). An Evo (my Japanese brethren and the closest car to mine performance-wise). A beater E36 BMW (someone's dedicated track car). My WRX. (Naturally, the beater BMW crapped out before the end of the day making my WRX the slowest/crappiest car of the group. I can't say I expected that to happen!) The Mustang GT and Camaro in the pictures were the instructors'/tracks' cars. After a bit of classroom instruction, we started the day using a big parking lot and some cones to do two sets of drills. Half the group started on a slalom course while my half of the group started on a hairpin turn. The goal for the hairpin drill was to approach at maximum acceleration, hit the brakes Hard, turn in at a cone they had set up, make a proper line to the apex (also marked by a cone) then slam full throttle as soon as you hit the apex. It sounds easy, but I sucked at this drill to start. Prior to yesterday I had always thought that the apex was simply the halfway point on the turn. Yeah... that is defiantly wrong. The actual apex of a turn is past the halfway point, sometimes well past it. It took a while to break my bad habit of trying to hit the half way point. I kept turning in too hard right at the start which caused me to be 4-5 feet wide of the apex and come out of the turn at way to wide of an angle. When I'd go to power out I'd have to hit the brakes as my exit angle was taking me right in to the cone "wall." The cool thing about racing is that when you get something right you feel it. I knew right away on subsequent runs when I nailed the turn and hit the apex as I was able to have perfect run-outs at full throttle. We had about 10-12 runs each at the hairpin before we moved on to the slalom course. The slalom course had 5 S-turns in succession. The key to this one was taking it easy though turns 1 and 2 so that you had the grip you needed at turns 4 and 5 to put the power down on the exit. It was hard not to overcook turns 1 and 2. You would know right away if you screwed up as you'd start losing traction and start slipping and have to slow down to regain it. The few times I nailed the slalom felt great. When I get a good line down it minimized the amount of load transfer going through the S's. I was able to exit with much higher speed and felt more in control the entire way. I guess the point of the slalom course is to teach you that you always need to be setting up your next turn as soon as you exit. Lesson learned! We then broke for lunch and I had fun chatting up the other group members. Naturally, it was all guys. At 30 I was the youngest guy in the group, but there were a few other guys who must have been in their mid to late 30s. A guy who worked at facebook was driving my dream car, this blue Carrera S. Very nice whip, sir! I also went and sat in one of the Audi R8s. Go get one of these right now, VPI! The Audi school had basically all the R and S models sitting around. After lunch they had rearranged the cones in the parking lot to set up a little auto-cross course for us to practice cornering and transitions from corner to corner. Being a beginner, it was a bit overwhelming stringing it all together. I found it hard not to let botching one corner effect your performance in subsequent corners. Still, this drill was a ton of fun. We each had 4 runs of about 4 laps each. Like I said before, you new instantly when you had nailed a turn. The feeling of doing something right is pretty damn exhilarating. Stringing turn after turn together to put together a good lap is very challenging. For as much fun as I had already had, the main event was still to come. We were finally ready for the big-boy Sonoma Raceway track. Holy fuck, driving it was amazing! We split in to trains of 3 cars, each with an instructor and two students, and set out for two 25-minute lead-follow sessions. In lead-follow, the instructor car goes in front and the two cars in the train follow and try to maintain a distance of two or three car lengths. For going out on the big track we all had to have helmets and head-socks on, giving the entire thing an awesome feel. My train was me, an instructor in a mustang and the Evo. We started out going reasonably quick and picked up speed on each lap. I have no clue how fast we were going as I never really had time to focus on anything other than driving, but it was pretty goddamn fast. It is amazing how much you feel everything when you are going at speed. The load transfers, the tire slip, the velocity of it all. You have to feel it all too, as any mistake at speed on the big course can easily end up very badly. Sonoma Raceway is a crazy track. There are elevation changes and blind corners EVERYWHERE! Turns 1 and 2 are on an uphill and we would hit them so damn fast I was worried the WRX wouldn't be able to handle it. The tires howled, but she made it time after time. Exiting turn 4 was also insanely fast, as 5 is very gentle and you can take it at speed. The instructor flew out of 4 every time and it was definitely challenging (in a good way) for me and the Evo to keep up. Turn 6 is blind and on a downhill and I could never quite figure that damn thing out. The apex is way at the end, almost completely out of the turn. I could hit it, but it always felt like I was coming out of 6 slower than the Evo and the instructor and they would have to slow a bit going in to 7 to let me catch back up. The slalom turns at 8 and 8a were also easy to mess up, but very rewarding when you hit them right. When you didn't get the right line you could feel the weight of your car causing it to slide. When you did get one though, smooth like butter. We finally finished up at 5:30p.m. and I drove the WRX home pretty gently as she (and I) had had a demanding day. -- Suffice it to say it was a fucking amazing day! I haven't had a spike of adrenaline like that in a long time. I've never driven faster and harder than I did on the big track. I was glad the instructors were leading us, they pushed me to keep up and do things I didn't know my car was capable of. It felt like I definitely had the WRX at 90/95% of its capability and that I learned a lot in just a single day. TLDR version? If you get a chance to do something like this, DO IT!

Summer... Summer something... /martyfeldman

I'm probably being old fashioned, but those look like speakers from a really bad acid trip.

I don't think he thinks he is -- he's just very particular. Previously, he didn't like eMpTyV using "This Note's for You" anti-commericalism video ironically, then he didn't like his antiestablishmentarianism anthems used as political propaganda. Now this. So he's always kind of been like this.

Brent is right on. DS2500 and Super Blue. The DS2500 are quite dusty but work extremely well, especially on lapping days. My favorite street pad so far is the EBC Redstuff. Low dust and are very responsive and progressive. Not for tracking though.

If you are ever out in the Bay Area and want to the the Audi R8 experience day I'd be down!

Peter ... that is effing amazing from a 1" sensor! Gives me something to aspire to with my RX. Nice you connected with the penguin. Like old times.

Very nice picture Peter!

Nate, new blank rotors + nice aggressive street pads (Ferodo DS2500?) and some ATE Super Blue (oh, Mr Slacker can hook you up with fluids,) and you should be fine. **BRENT**

Nice!

But doesn't it already state that in the manual for the probe's?

Been off on the John Muir Trail for a week with Thrice, here's the first photo from the trip I posted to my site, taken handheld with an RX100mkI at that!