Yay Me

I found a factory 5spd MX73 Cressida. I've been looking for one for years to no avail, as I wasn't about to monkey with swapping transmissions when I'd have no intention of swapping out the 5MGE.

I might not even keep it, but for the time being, I'm happy to have bought it. It's in killer shape and it's a very uncommon car.

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.

Forbidden goodies

I collect a lot of things, videogames not the least among them. I have a specific interest in non-retail items, or things that generally cannot or should not be bought. This includes unreleased games or code, development hardware, store demo items, "reviewer" or press items, et cetera. I think I like them because they're so hard to get, you can't just walk into Gamestop with a wad of money and buy a PS2 Debug station or something similar.

The two DS carts shown below are "Download Station" carts. When you go to a videogame store and download demos onto your DS, it's because they have a DS in the back with one of these carts in it, "serving" the demos wirelessly. Nintendo makes the stores return these when they're done and they aren't supposed to fall into public hands, but like anything else, a few slip through the cracks.

I'll feature some other dev/proto/demo stuff as time goes on. I've got loads of it.

Anyone potentially interested in this stuff should read THIS.

Fun with Ovens

I headed up to a friend's place in PA this past weekend to get some powdercoating done for the Ruckus. Just a bar and stem, as I was too lazy to pull the wheels off. I'll do them the next time when I also do the wheels on the Roadster.

Here's Pete sandblasting:




Here are the parts, freshly powdercoated, curing in his new oven. We both think I can probably stack 2 15x8 wheels in here at a time.




Here is Pete's awesome and very VW-centric garage. These are two of his SIX cars. The MkII Jetta on the left is obnoxiously clean.

ObamaDrama 2009

In 7 days, Barack Obama will appear in this grandstand shortly after having been sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. I really, sincerely wish I could moon Dick Cheney on his last drive out of the Naval Observatory residence. EPIC TUESDAY.
























In preparation for this incredible event, the DC Mall has been littered with what seems like fifty million Porta-Poopers. They just go as far as the eye can see, and this is literally only about five percent of what is down there. It's absurd.

More bikes, more problems

How do these things keep finding their way into my garage? I picked up this 2008 Ninja 250R awhile back and finally taught myself to ride (sort of) on it last weekend. Fun like whoa.

I got an offer I can't refuse on it, so it'll be gone soon, but I have another 2003 Ninja 250EX I may turn into a streetfighter project. I'll throw up pics of that eventually, but it's an ugly bitch right now.

I'll never sell the Ruckus though. I can't slalom hot dog carts in DC on the sidewalk on a sportbike. It'll be getting a serious makeover in the next couple months.