FIRE!

Last spring, I attended Advanced SCCA Flagging School at Summit Point Racetrack. Flaggers/Corner Workers are the guys who make sure everyone behaves themselves on-track and the people who pull drivers out of cars when they flip/catch on fire/etc.

It helps then, to know how to work a fire extinguisher. Every year, to aid in this skill, they gather all the potential flaggers, light a car on fire, and give people a chance to try and put it out.

This past year, we turned a Ford station wagon into our pyre.

It was pretty cool to light a car on fire, although this was on the hill right next to turn 10 and Porsche Club was having an HPDE (High Performance Driver Event)that day. Smoke was ALL OVER the track, and anyone going around turn 10 was doing it blind. They were none too pleased, but we no care.

8900 Curve camera test

The wife and I went to The Willard Room last night for dinner. Awesome place, and I'm ashamed to say it was my first time even being in the building despite being a lifelong DC resident.



This is part of the lobby of the hotel, and it was were the term "Lobbyist" comes from. Politicians would frequent the bars, restaurants, and lobbies of The Willard hotel and special interests would come to chat them up. The little tiny flash on the 8900 lit this up pretty decently, IMO.



No, I didn't take any pictures of food at the table, not really the atmosphere for me to be whipping out the blackberry and taking pictures of seared scallops. Rest assured, it was fantastic. I will definitely be back.

After this, we went to the hella fun birthday party of a very good friend up in Cleveland Park. I tried to take some pics on the 8900 there too, but it was way too dark.

Palace5ive

This is one of my favorite stores in the DC area, and they were having a sale so I headed over on the Ruckus today to pick up some tees.

Visit them HERE

They carry The Hundreds, Stussy, In4mation, Diamond Supply Co, Rogue Status, HUF, Krew, Nike SB, Vans, and some others.

All pictures were taken with the new 8900 Curve. They were disappointingly out of focus, I think I need to hold my hand steadier.

No good can come of this

I have finally joined the ranks of the Blackberry-enslaved. This will bring only ruin. New 8900 Curve, got it yesterday. I've already got about a dozen apps on it and I'll be loading up the 4.6.1.152 beta OS build tomorrow. I will post a bunch of pics from the camera up in a day or two.

DC Street Food 1

DC has an admittedly lame street food scene. There were obnoxious regulations in place until very recently that pretty much limited us to the same group of hot dog vendors. This has recently changed, and now we have Korean, Salvadoran, and all kinds of other madness.

Homage must be paid to the hot dog vendor however, primarily due to the ever-ubiquitous DC street treat, the half smoke. Think of it as a tasty middle-ground between a true smoked sausage (i.e. kielbasa) and a hot dog.

These people probably wondered why I was taking pictures of their half-smoke/egg roll cart.



$2.50 for a half smoke is a pretty serious ripoff, but this was admittedly down by the museums, where everything is 200% more expensive for the tourists. Hot pepper sauce is a MUST. It tastes sort of like Siracha.

Under the knife

Not that I'm doing anything spectacular, but since I'm about to make some changes to the bike, I thought I'd take it out for a few last photos in it's current form. It was oddly nice weather here today for early February, about sixty degrees and sunny.



This was taken on the patio/balcony/whatever of an office building near my house. Apparently the rent-a-cop security guard took offense at my driving a Ruckus up his handicapped ramp and so he took a cell phone pic of me and yelled at me for trespassing. I LOL'd.



This was from the night before. I was losing the light and this is the only shot I liked out of about 40. I need a tripod like whoa, because handheld shots are not cutting it in low light.

Progress at last

I picked up this '96 NA8 Miata for next to nothing awhile back with the intentions of doing a shakotan/boro project. I'm just going to do all the wrongest things possible to it, everything I've ever learned not to do to a car. It should be fun.

The car was in pretty good shape, less the flat-white paint which I plan to leave alone. Both airbags were blown though, so I replaced the drivers' side and still have to do the other side. I already bought another wheel for it, but I want it to be stock for inspection.



I need to get my suspension in order. I have most of the stuff, I just need to do some installation. I need to score a set of NB tophats to improve the travel though.