Day 28: charging into battle

Well I hope everyone had a great holiday.  So much for promises.  Once again I found myself busy with other things and without enough time to make another entry to this blog until now.  In the days leading up to Christmas I was busy getting my car ready for the racetrack, and then I went to visit my dad up near Roseville, followed by a track day at the Thunderhill Raceway way up north near Chico.  

The track day was super wet and cold, and it rained most of the morning.  The early sessions on the track weren't very fun.  Lots of people driving beyond their limits and going off track and one Porsche 911 crashed/spun into a barrier, losing a front bumper and deploying airbags as a result.  I was definitely taking it easy since my car is so new (and new to me) until the weather improved and it started to dry off on track in the afternoon.  There were so many cautions and off-course tows that we got what I felt was fairly minimal time on track.  I think next time I will go with a more organized and safety-oriented club for a track day.  

Here are a few recorded track laps I made using my iPhone and an app called Harry's Lap Timer Pro ($20).  The most expensive app I have ever bought but it's actually worth it in my mind because it does things you would normally have to pay hundreds of dollars to do in dedicated equipment.  It logs your GPS position and speed, measures lateral G forces, and records video.  I used the Kensington mount I've mentioned before and it worked well with the phone mounted to the windshield.

here's one of the last laps of the day, showing more of the passing and being passed that goes on in most sessions where you have a mix of different cars and drivers with differing abilities.

It's been an expensive month for me... between some planned automotive purchases, the track day, and Christmas presents, and some unplanned automotive expenses (cracked one of the rims on my Lexus IS350) I have been charging up a storm on the credit card.  More on the expenses to come.

Day 17: loss of traction

I have to admit I haven't been very diligent about keeping this blog updated for the last week. Perhaps that's a good thing because that means I've been keeping busy. But I'm going to try and keep things updated regularly because otherwise too much may have happened and I may have forgotten some of it.

So let's see what I've been up to? Well I went for a few drives and brought my Subaru into the dealership to have the GPS repaired so I was without my BRZ for a few days. I took advantage of some of that downtime to visit the Blackhawk Auto Museum. I hadn't been there in many years and it was nice to come back and see some great classic cars that they have in their collection. I didn't bring my Nikon DSLR with me but I did take quite a few pictures with my iPhone and I have to say it did a pretty good job especially with the HDR function. Link to my auto museum photos here.

One of the many gorgeous cars at the Blackhawk Auto Museum

This thing is massive.  And made of wood!

Sunset at the Blackhawk Museum

I've been going out and having lunch with coworkers or with V for a few days so I haven't had much opportunity to cook anything fantastic. Just a few pasta dishes and grilled sandwiches that Sort of thing.

I got the chance to watch The Hobbit in an advance screening sponsored by my firm. I have to admit I'm not much of a Lord of the Rings fan so The Hobbit was a bit of a strange movie for me. I had a hard time distinguishing the trolls from the goblins and so on.  It definitely felt like the movie was too long and the entire story could have been told in far less time. I got the sense that they were stretching it out just to make it another three-movie box office cashcow.  Oh well, the nice thing was the firm covered all concessions for us, so we went to town on the popcorn, candy, snacks and drinks!

Last weekend V and I attended my firm's holiday party. It was at the Stonybrook mansion in Los Altos Hills which is a very nice place for a party or gathering. I wish I could say I have some nice pictures from the event but unfortunately my stay there was cut a little short. I was chatting with some coworkers when I suddenly felt faint and actually passed out in the middle of the reception area. They called an ambulance and ended up taking me to the emergency room at the nearby hospital where I received a bunch of tests and x-rays. The results were fairly inconclusive as everything looked normal but it appears the most likely cause was dehydration. I'm doing much better now but I have to say it was a very interesting experience riding in an ambulance for the first time to be taken to the hospital. And surely I made a grand exit from the party on a stretcher.  One thing's for sure, I'm going to be drinking plenty of water from now on.

So I've been taking it easy last few days but today I'm back on the elliptical. In fact I'm on the elliptical now as I speak and my iPhone is taking down my words so that I can update this blog using the blogger app. The accuracy is pretty good and I've only had to make a few changes here and there to fix some weird word recognition issues. Ain't technology grand?

That's it for this update. Stay tuned for more stories later this week.

Day 10: driven to distractions

Would be feeling patriotic but for the fact these were all made in Japan...

Yesterday I went out and met up with a few other BRZ/FRS owners and went for a brief drive on some back roads... it was a lot of fun but we kept it a short run.  It left me wanting more so today I set out on my own and drove one of my favorite roads.  I set up both my iPhone 5 and old Sony digital camera to record the drive, but the Sony's video was basically unwatchable - too much shaking and rattling going on.  The iPhone which was mounted on the front windshield seemed to get much better results.  Here is video of just the first 8 minutes or so of the drive, the actual road is much longer, closer to about 30 miles long.

Day 1: the journey begins

Farewell, Sweet Movember.

I started the day off right by getting on the elliptical and putting in 30 min of workout.  One of my goals during my vacation will be to continue working out, getting exercise from various activities and trying to lose some more weight.  It's going to be tough as there is lots of good food (and bad food) calling my name.  Prime directive #1, satisfied.

The month of November has now passed, and it was time to shave the moustache I had growing for Movember.  Can't say I did a whole lot to actually promote the awareness of men's health issues and testicular cancer, but I did what I could.  Which is to say I grew a moustache, and now it's time to shave it off.  V was certainly happy about that, she doesn't like me growing a moustache.

Then it was off to the Great Mall in Milpitas to meet a few other car club members, fellow owners of BRZs and FR-Ses.  We met in the covered parking garage area so we didn't have to stand out in the rain, so we were able to hang out for a while and talk about cars, racing, and other guy stuff.  The weather was a little too wet and the roads too slippery for anyone to want to go for a mountain drive, so we decided to stop by a Toy Drive charity event and car meet at a local high school.  I popped into the mall before we headed over, to pick up a toy to donate to the cause.

I don't shop for kids very much, and I don't have any myself, so I'm never sure what to get.  In the end I generally get something that I would myself like and hope that works out for the intended recipient. I left the store with a box set of 2 helicopters, a firetruck and a police car.  I also got some Hot Wheels looping track for myself.  Awesome.

We got to the meet a little late and the weather was generally dismal, but it was quite heartening to see this massively long row of tables nearly all covered by toys that people had donated.  That made my day.  And so, prime directive #2 has been met.

It was funny, that at the car meet, one of the other owners asked me if I got a lot of reactions or compliments on my car, and I said, honestly, I had not seen a whole lot of reactions like that since getting the car (aside from other owners of the car, at these car meets).  People seem to ignore me or maybe I just don't pay enough attention while driving to see what other people in cars are doing, maybe they are freaking out and going gaga and I didn't see it.  I thought it was just that in the Bay Area, we have plenty of nice cars around and people just take it for granted - I certainly will gaze admiringly at a Ferrari or Aston Martin when it rolls by but a lot of people just seem to not notice.  And my car is certainly not that nice or expensive.  Generally I just drive it to and from work so there's not much time for human interaction.  But then it was lunchtime and while I was standing around near my car I got like 2 compliments within 5 minutes.  Interesting.

I took these two panoramic shots using my iPhone 5, it really is quite useful for these kinds of pictures.  If I had tried to take them with my SLR I would have been cutting something off in the process, or wishing I had a wide-angle lens.  It's not perfect but here it seems to get the job done.  OK these aren't shots worthy of the Ansel Adams gallery or anything, but I do believe I've managed to hit directive #3 too.

Bonus discovery of the day!  Perhaps not huge news to the most tech-savvy geeks out there, but I realized that you can use the iPhone 5 as a wireless access point to tether things like iPads and laptops to the 4G data service on Verizon.  That basically means I can now use my iPad or Nook tablet anywhere I go, without need for an independent wifi source as long as I've got my phone and I'm in a 4G service area.  So in theory I could type out lengthy emails and blog updates on the road, wherever I go.  Geek-o-rama!