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Archive for November, 2004
November 29, 2004
November 19, 2004
can someone please explain to me why, if it is the end of november alrady and 75* and sunny every day there are commercials on tv advertising sweaters and winter hats and stuff? thanks.
November 16, 2004
well, since i never have time to update this damn thing from home, i figure i can write it while i’m at work 🙂
this weekend was a lot of fun, got to explore southern cali a little more…
friday night i went out in search of a DIY-car wash place since my car was so dirty she was brown instead of gray. i wound up finding one in long beach, and started washing her as if my life depended on it. after the first wash, claybar, and second wash i was waxing her when out of nowhere a police helicopter starts circling over the house across the street from the place with it’s spotlight on as if it was trying desperately to find someone. a few minutes later, police cars started swarming the area. i stood there watching for a little while and eventually they all left after like 20 minutes, so i just continued on washing my car. she is so shiny!
saturday morning i woke up painfully early for a saturday, got in my lovely glistening car, drove out of my apartment complex, and of course, it starts to rain.
wonderfuullllll
but thanks to the claybar and wax, she stayed relativ
ely clean.
got down to oceanside for the mossy performance car show/meet around 845, and parked with a bunch of sentras since i didn’t know anyone there and it was mostly G35s and 350Zs… i wound up meeting this guy adam with a red b13, really nice guy. we hung out since i didn’t really know anyone else… haha.
the show was great, i saw a bunch of nice cars and met a lot of great people. the weather started clearing up too, and it wound up being hot as hell the rest of the day (read: middle of november, i was wearing a tanktop and i was hot! how great is that??) two guys from g20.net showed up, 2000g and freaktroll, both had turbo p11’s. so there were only three of us reppin, and all boosting. that was fun.
i had to do some ‘undercover detective work’ for garrett which meant i had to go and harass the turbonetics guys with tons of questions trying to get the dirt on them and see how they shittalk us. i got a LOT of great info. but it scared the crap outta me cause the guy i was talking to recognized me, but wasn’t exactly sure where he knew me from (from the garrett booth obviously) so i just played it off since i go to englishtown all the time and blah blah blah and when he asked what i was doing out here i just said school and changed the subject. eep.
pictures from the show will be up on www.g20nyc.com tomorrow night.
afterwards, the guy adam that i had been kickin it with asked if i wanted to hang out so i was like sure i’ve got nothing better to do haha. we drove to this lovely beach in the OC cause i ❤ cali beaches and of course my car ‘broke’ along the way…
i was doin 60 and all of a sudden the car just dies, i lost power steering and brakes, and had to pull over real quick. so i do, and i tried to start the car again, it starts after a few clicks and goes brapbrapbrap brapbrapbrap and dies… sounded like it was running on three cylinders. wtf?
so i start it again, rev rev reved it, let off, and it dies.
by this point i’m thinking ‘great, maybe my motor is finally calling it quits…’
so i pop the hood to go take a look, and of course, my blow off valve literally blew off the intercooler piping. stupid bosch plastic piece of crap, it’s connected to the intercooler pipe by a piece of hose and some hoseclamps. so i put it back on but i didn’t have a screwdriver to tighten it so i had to use a quarter. but it worked, and she started right up and ran like a champ 🙂
i love my girl cause she likes to mess with my head. silly car.
the beach was great. i saw my first real-life pelican!
so we hung out at the beach for like an hour, then adam mentions how his dad is the caretaker of this awesome old 1800’s mexican ranch in the area, a state p
ark/preserve type thing, so i was like oooo i wanna see!
so we drove over there and it was dusk by the time we got there but we walked around and he gave me the tour and it was just sooo amazingly beautiful and peaceful and serene. we were walking towards one of the old houses and all of a sudden i hear this loud bark come from a tree and i screamed cause it scared me and i said what the hell was that and adam is like oh it’s just a peacock.
a fucking peacock!
in a fucking tree!
apparently they sleep there so the coyotes can’t get them.
coyotes! what the hell??
so then we were chillin outside the house watching the sun go down and we lit the chiminea and roasted marshmallows and it actually was a lot of fun because i am outdoors-challenged and mine kept catching on fire. haha.
but so then we’re sitting there just hanging out and i hear a howl in the distance… it was the coyotes. it was amazing. i’ve never heard anything like that before, it was so cool. a little unnerving, but still, quite an experience!
sunday morning i again woke up painfully early, and brit came and picked me up for the se-r cup which was about three hours north at buttonwillow. i slept most of the ride up, yaay.
the track was cool, i’d only been to drag tracks prior to this so seeing an actual course was pretty neat. the races were cool, i had a good time. one of the guys
flipped his car a few times and it was totaled but he was okay thank god for roll cages and harnesses…
pictures from that will also be posted on g20nyc.com as of tomorrow night
yesterday my car decided to mess with me again…
i was driving back to the office after lunch and as i stepped on the clutch to shift i felt a little “pop” and i thought, great last time this happened it was the clutch cable snapping halfway through… so i get back to the office and i called the infiniti dealer up the block to see if they had the part in stock and also to see how much they would charge to change it for me since i have absolutely no tools here… they had it in stock, $35 for the cable + $360 for labor. they said it was a four hour job (yeah, maybe if you smoke crack while you change it…) so i said fuckkkk that i will figure out a way to do it myself.
then this guy that i work with says to me ‘why don’t you just change it yourself?’ and i replied because i have zero tools here and he says ‘well hey, just go downstairs (to the garrett garage) and borrow some stuff’ and i was like holy crap that is a brilliant idea!
so i went downstairs and grabbed some tools and yes i love my job so much more now because if my car breaks i will be able to fix it thanks to work 🙂
anyway, after work i drove to the
dealer to pick up the part, they were very nice, pretty knowledgeable too…
made it home safely, and started to get to work.
it only took me 40 minutes, not bad for a “four hour job” haha
but oh man what a pain in the ass to get the friggen thing unhooked from the clutch pedal and to get the grommet in/out of the firewall. i sliced my hand open pretty bad on the battery terminal while i was pulling it out 😦 ouch.
so after i finish it up i figure i’ll take it out for a testdrive to make sure she’s roadworthy, i start it up, pull out of the driveway, give it a little boost, and bam, car dies again. guess i didn’t tighten the silicon coupling on the throttle body enough and i blew another intercooler pipe. oops.
took me 20 minutes to get that damn thing back on because i was too lazy to remove the maf and loosen the other end of the pipe so i could get it on easier… haha. anyway, started it up again, took it for a spin, beat the crap out of it, and she’s perfect!! 😀
here’s the funny part:
my clutch, for the past year, has always been really heavy.
i loved it.
but i always knew something wasn’t right because i know it wasn’t supposed to be that heavy, but i could never figure out what exactly was wrong… i just didn’t care.
well, now my pedal is soft as hell, only sliiiightly heavier than stock, which i am not too happy about, but it still *feels* gr
eat and i feel the engagement point and everything so i guess i can deal with it 😉
but it’s good because it’s smooooooth as butter now, it used to bind up a little whenever i’d depress the clutch, and now, well, it’s like silk. it’s also nice peace of mind knowing that it’s exactly how it should be.
clutch cable #3, hopefully this will be the last.
here is a picture of the damage:
click here for car-nage
oddly enough, it wasn’t actually the cable that went… it was the metal collar around it.
see the exposed section of cable?
well, that shouldn’t be visible, the metal around it should completely surround it.
but somehow that broke (the pop that i felt) and caused the cable to kink and rub slightly, so it would have broken eventually anyway… good thing i changed it when i did.
so now, i’m at work, only an hour left… kinda bored but it’s not too bad. i’m looking forward to next week, i get thursday/friday off for thanksgiving and i haven’t slept past 7am in months, i’m really looking forward to having at least one day where i don’t have to get out of bed before noon 🙂
November 11, 2004
me mentioning to maddy that i don’t want to fuck up at work and lose the best job ever:
LacKiNgHiGht: whoa whoa whoa… ainsley “ny bitch” hyman is afraid of an authority figure!?
LacKiNgHiGht: what planet did I wake up on?
i love you girl!
November 4, 2004
we make a cute couple don’t we? 😉 haha i am pathetic
and yes i am aware i look like a total idiot, i was just all happy cause he’s so damn cute
November 3, 2004
i am getting worse and worse at updating in a timely fashion… fuck it
okay so a LOT has happened since october 13th, my last entry… well, more than a lot. a fuck lot? nah that doesn’t describe it. i don’t know, i can’t verbalize it right now, so i’ll just continue writing since i’ve actually stopped procrastinating for a few minutes…
i don’t remember too much about the 14th or 15th, but i know on saturday the 16th angelo and i went to santa anita racetrack so we could see the distaff. i hadn’t been to the track (horse racing that is) in a very long time, and santa anita was just absolutely gorgeous. it’s right by the mountains, so while you watch the horses race through a palm tree covered track, there are beautiful snow covered moutains in the background. it was just lovely. it smelled great too, i really miss being around horses… i miss motown so much. i’d give anything to be able to ride again… to be able to ride like i used to… i’d kill to get on a horse’s back again…
somewhere in there i managed to get to SuperA
utoBacs with bennett. it was cool cause they sell tein and nismo and jic and all that stuff just like peplosers sells apc… definitly a cool store.
but i must move on. after the track, we were going to go to cruise the mountain roads, but found a carnival along the way, and i got a little goldfish who is really cute, but it makes me miss nismo even more. the new fish (touge, named so because he survived a mountain run) is anorexic, he never eats! yet somehow he’s still alive… but he’s fun, it’s nice having company that won’t keep me up all night with drunken rampages. haha.
went back to angelo’s for dinner, and i wound up falling asleep on his couch. i slept sooo good since i had been sleeping on the floor up until then. haha. but it was cool, he’s a great guy i really enjoy his company.
drove back home sunday morning and went to japanese church with the guys i had met the week before. non, deisuke and kaz, they’re really such genuinely sweet people. i also got to meet the guy mickey who owns the gold hachiroku that parks on the street by my house. it was siiick under the hood 😀 but yeah, i’m not religious at all, but it was cool to listen to a sermon entirely in japanese. i couldn’t really understand what they were talking about, but i was catching things here and there and i could kinda follow along. regardless, it was a really cool experience. afterwards, i went with them to this
japanese market in my area, which i didn’t know about, but was cool as hell. a huge grocery store where i can get food/drink if i want, a bookstore that sells every single car magazine known to man, option magazine $6, soo rad! and i found a little model primera that i get to build (yay!) but i don’t have glue so i can’t. haha.
so hrmm then what… i met this guy at my job, rob cadle, he’s one fo the head engineers, and apparently he is one of the people responsible for the godlike Disco Potato. it was cool talking with him, he said he had seen my car in the parking lot at work recently and had wondered whose it was. haha.
jay came in on the 20th. i drove down to long beach to pick him up and my car broke. it was a few weeks over due so i kinda expected it. but it wasn’t anything serious. when i first started her up to go pick him up, i noticed that my clock said it was like 1:30 when it was really 6:45 so i was like uhh whatever and just reset it. then when i was driving, my stereo completely shut off for like two seconds then just came back on. i thought it was strange but oh well and kept driving. when i got to the airport, jay’s flight was late, so i pulled into a parking lot to wait and shut off the car. except i didn’t shut it off. it died. and it wouldn’t start back up. eep. but i popped the hood and thankfully it was just a loose battery terminal. wrenched it back up and she was g
ood to go. what a trooper 🙂
the next day, thursday the 21st (i am only using dates as a personal reference so i know where the hell i am on my timeline haha) we went to check out non (the guy from japanchurch) ‘s shop enonvativ force, and it was amaaazing. he has, hands down, THE nicest 240 i have *ever* seen in my entire life. not to mention the two other beautiful 240s next to it, one with a full tomei motor and another full built os giken motor. it was just phoenominal. jay had a great time, which i’m glad of. it was cool we hung out for a few hours. non’s got these awesome chairs in the shop made out of car parts. one is a pressure plate as a base with a shock/spring setup as the stand and a flywheel as the stool, while another stool uses a set of brake rotors welded together to form a seat on top of the suspension/pressureplate setup. very cool stuff. so then me and jay and deisuke went to the bookstore we had gone to earlier and i got this rad book about the SR20DE & DET but since it’s in all japanese i can’t understand much of it. after that, back to the shop. we were all standing outside talking and somehow we got on the topic of the fact that i don’t own any wrench-appropriate clothes except jeans and tshirts, so non goes inside and comes out with this amazing japanese nissan chief mechanic jumpsuit and said ‘here, now you don’t have to ruin your clothes when you work on your car’ a
nd i was just floored it was such a kind gesture. it fit perfect too since he is tiny like me 🙂
thennnn on friday, we cruised to motorex since i had only been there once before and at 2am. it was extremely impressive to say the least. bajillions of skylines and skylines and an occasional 350z or FD3S… wow. i managed to fanagle (i love that word but i can’t spell it to save my life) us a ride in a R33. yaaay. it was fun. so then jay and i were outside looking at cars and just making conversation with the guys, and this one guy i was talking to saw my car, walked over, looked at the bride seats and asked me if the seatrails were custom made. i said no they weren’t, i ordered them a long time ago but it took forever for them to arrive. he then informed me that he works for bride (tee’s usa) and that in the entire history of the company they had only gotten one request for P10 seatrails. i said well, i ordered mine back in may from this shop fizz in new york. he (allen) replied, oh yea, i know robert, he’s a good guy. and i remember that order for the rails, so that was you that bought them huh? you’re the only person to ever buy them! that’s what took so long, hahahah they had to make/get them from japan. what a crazy coincidence that i met him… small world.
after motorex, we went over to signal so jay could check out their place.
thennn saturday, nhra finals at pomona!!!
we woke up early and met up with this guy that i work with, remi, at work so we could all cruise up to pomona raceway together. got there early, i was sleepy as usual, setup the garrett booth and got to work. i worked my hours, then got to watch the races with jay. since it was saturday it was only qualifying, and of course, we finished in the #1spot. ron’s such a talented driver, and our gt car is just unstoppable. it runs consistent 7s in the hot rod class while everyone else is in the 8s 😉
came back and sleeppppttt.
sunday was the finals! since i didn’t have to work, me and jay drove up a few hours later than the day before and just chilled the whole day. it was a good turnout, some nice show cars, the jgtc s15 and r34 were there, along with some other niceities.
the races went well.
stephan papadakis redlighted during the final run of eliminations and consequently cost himself the championship, it was sooo heartbreaking.
but the good news is,
we won our class! 😀
there was a huge celebration at our hauler, everyone was so elated, and it felt really cool to be a part of it. i’m so proud of the bothwell guys, they’re really down to earth people and they deserve this so much.
so after things calmed down, i wanted to go congratulate stephan on a wonderful year (he set record after record and just had an amazing season). i wasn’t expecting him to remember
me after our conversation at englishtown about a month ago, but he did!
me: hey steph, i just wanted to say congratulations on a great season
him: where have you been all weekend?
me: uhh?
him: i was looking for you yesterday and today!
me: i was working all day yesterday and today i’ve just been hanging out and spectating
him: well you should have come by earlier to say hello
me: 😀
then he gave me the biggest hug ever and oh my GOD what a body on that guy 😉 so we talked for a little more then i saw jay making a face at me in the background (thanks jerky! haha) so i said i had to go and he gave me another wonderul dreameriffic hug and we parted ways. hindsight however is 20/20, and i now realize i should have asked if he wanted to maybe get some coffee sometime since he lives in the friggen town over from me. damnit. i totally blew my chance. damnit. i ❤ him.
monday jay and i drove down to la so i could show him around a bit but it was kinda slow that night. we came back to torrance and he suggested we grab dinner at olive garden (my fav!)
so the dinner itself was good but there were two parts that were just sooo worth writing about
1. they play that cheesy italian music in the background, and this some comes on that i recognize but i couldn’t figure out where i knew it from. so jay says that it’s the ‘when the moon hits your e
ye like a big pizza pie that’s amore’ song and i’m like no no i know it from somewhere else… and after a few minutes i realized. it’s the thaaaaat’s on ebaaayyyy! song. oh man. i am a consumer whore. and how! at least i finally got to use that sentence and have it fit the situation *perfectly* haha
2. after dinner, the waiter brought over the chocolate mints as usual but i don’t like mint so jay took both, then threw one at me. i threw it back, and he threw it again. then i picked up my butter knife and was like hrmm which should i throw… so i stuck the candy on the end of the knife and flicked it at jay. but i have the worst aim ever and missed and the damn thing went flying past his head and smacked the guy sitting behind him RIGHT IN THE FACE!!! i was horrified because i thought the guy was going to be pissed, but he was laughing and thought it was great and i was laughing so hard that i was literally crying but i kept trying to apologize to the guy but he wouldn’t accept it and just kept laughing and ate the candy then asked for more so jay threw the other piece over his shoulder and it almost landed in the poor guy’s food but he thought it was hysterical and played along and omg i was so embarassed but at the same time i have never laughed so hard in my entire life. eep. it was more of a you-had-to-be-there situation though… thankfully, i was! 😀
jay left thursday. it’s
quiet here now, but i’m glad he finally got to see what life is like outside of the buffalo-box 😉
the rest of the week i spent catching up on sleep and doing errands.
my awesome landlord hooked me up with a black leather comforrrrrtable recliner and a BED!!! well, a mattress, but i put a mattress pad and egg crate on it and it’s now ultra-comfortable and holy shit being able to sleep through the night without waking up five times because my hip bones are jutting into my kidneys is such a fucking luxury!
saturday the 30th was my first SoCalGs g20 meet. it was funnnn i’m really glad i finally got to meet the guys out here. i love my eastcoast g20guys so much i had always thought it would be cool to take my car out here and meet these guys, but i never thought it would actually happen. they’re a completely different group, but all so wonderful. we went out to dinner in the OC and overall i had a great time. the meet was at bolsa chica state park/beach and wow is all i can say. a beautiful warm palm-tree’d california beach, with mountains and catalina island off the shore, yet if you look inland, there are snow covered mountains on the horizon. how strange is that??
driving home from the meet actually something pretty cool happened. i was at a light and this guy was on a harley next to me and the thing was cammed so sickly it was barley running. so i roll down my window
and ask what spec cams they were and he looks at me like ‘wtf? little white girl how did she know that?’ and i complemented him on his bike and he was cool then the light turned green, i didn’t get on it too hard, but i was in a good mood so i was having fun. a few blocks later he finally caught up to me and said ‘damn what the hell do you have under the hood of that thing?!’ and i smiled and said it’s only a four cylinder…. then i added …. turbo 😉 and he goes ‘girl that car is a beast! that’s fucking awesome!’ and it made me smile cause well, how often do harley riding bikers compliment little 4banger imports? *giggle*
thennn sunday, i packed, did laundry, and went to sleep.
monday morning i was up at 5:30am. yuck. my cab came at 6am and i went to lax to catch my flight to vegas. it was a nice smooth flight, coming in to vegas was cool since i had flown over it before but always at night and the one time i had driven through well, that’s completely different than flying in. went to check in at my hotel, the Hilton Grand Vacations, and honestly, my fuckin ‘suite’ was bigger than my entire apartment!!! it had a full living room, kitchen, washer/dryer, bathroom, king size bed in the bedroom, and a SPA in it’s OWN ROOM! wow. my job fucking ROCKS.
then i went to the convention center to help setup the booth. it was tiring but fun, and we got everyt
hing setup and straightened out. i wound up meeting this guy who works for cusco’s north american distributor. their booth was right next to ours so we got to talk a lot, he was really sweet, gave me a free shirt, so that’s one less day i have to do laundry 😉 haha jk i’m not that lazy. but yeah so getting the booth up was exhausting. afterwards, our president of turbo technology guy took the whole independent aftermarket team out for dinner at this ultra-expensive steakhouse and it was the best food i’d had in ages. it’s also fun watching your coworkers get smashed while you get served glass upon glass of expensive wine without being carded 😉
viva las vegas!
monday was spent working the booth, talking to customers and vendors, etc etc. sema was so huge it was unreal. i had a great time. our distributors were there, and i feel so bad cause harry from precision kept trying to call my cell so we could get lunch but he had written down the wrong number and we didn’t find eachother until about an hour before i had to leave to catch my flight… he’s a nice guy, everyone buy their products! shameless plug, www.precisionturbo.net Precision Turbo & Engine i also met the president of TiAL, the nicest guy in the world! i had no idea he was mr. pres until he gave me his card after we had been speaking for like a goo
d 40 minutes. so, another shameless plug www.tialsport.com TiAL Sport
after i did my hours at the booth i got to walk around for a while, but since sema is so huge, i only got to see the racing & performance section, and most likely i didn’t even see all of that. i ran into a bunch of people i knew, got a bunch of free stuff (yay), met some wonderful people and made some wonderful connections (co-op opportunities next year maybe?) and overall had a really fucking fantastic time. i hope i’m lucky enough to go again next year.
so, after a long hard two days of worrrrk and stress to the max, i caught my 6:30 flight back to lovely la. i wish i could have stayed at sema longer, but everyone only got one or two days with the exception of management, so i’m grateful that i got to go at all. i’m very thankful for the opportunity and the experience and i am just happier and happier every day that i decided to take this chance and move here… i never could have dreamt how great this co-op would turn out to be…
i’m sure i’m leaving out/forgetting a lot of stuff but right now i have been writing for almost two hours and well, who really cares at this point. if i remember, maybe i’ll update if i get a chance…
but now, i sleep 🙂
ps i also got props on my car from a guy in a porsche today.
that was random and kinda neat.
SR20DETg20girl's Blog 