The LazyAssGeek’s

Yesterday evening Val & I went again to the Simeone Museum, this time as guests of PNC.  They hold quarterly wine & dine events for customers at various locations and when our dad passed along the invite for this one it was a no-brainer to attend. We had toured the museum in the spring with a group from the Corvette Forum but both had managed to forget to take a camera.  This time armed with my recently-acquired digital SLR and its make-me-a-hero-in-low-light image stabilization lens we were able to get some great shots. Click the 1909 American Underslung (referring to the suspension slung under the chassis) to take you to the gallery.

1909 American Underslung

After last year’s June Dover race Joe & I had decided we weren’t going to do THAT again.  Pretty boring race and god awful traffic were the main culprits, regardless of the fact that we were very well taken care of by the Haas folks in their suite.  Just after that it was announced that Tony Stewart was taking half ownership of the team and that he and Ryan Newman would be driving for the team. So when Ed from Lance Co (the mid Atlantic Haas dealer & service reps) proffered an invitation to this year’s race in September we had to do a 180 in our thinking and give it another shot. This time Val joined us, so in addition to enjoying the race with her we also had a designated driver!

We had another great pit tour, even with bouts of pouring rain. So thanks to Mariah from Haas Racing for showing us around and taking care of us in the suite, even though she wouldn’t rig the drawing to get us a damned hat. The race was a bit more interesting this year, though almost inevitably Jimmie Johnson finally got to the front and ran away with it. We decided we were just going to take our time before getting into the car, even went to the Applebee’s just in front of the track to grab a bite to eat.  Even two hours after the race ended the parking lot was still backed up getting out, but we managed to get home in about 2 hours from the time we got in the car. Not awful, but we are still less-than-impressed with the job the folks from the track do with the logistics.  Nothing like being charged $10 to park and then having almost nothing in the way of organization with the local infrastructure to move the traffic in & out.  I’ll step down off the box before I really get rolling…  Thanks to Ed and the folks at Lance as well as the Haas Racing folks for a great day.

Click the monster for the pics from the day…

Miles the Monster

This past weekend was Val’s first Pocono Race Weekend experience and as always, a good time had by all.  We headed up to my folks place late Saturday afternoon after making sure the kids were squared away.  Joe & Nat and the boys were up there as well as my parents and Doug, soon to be joined by our friends from Ohio, Ray & Shana. After a good dinner of dogs, burgers, roast pork, salad, fruit and pretty much anything else you can think of we settled into the basement to catch up and BS.  The Nationwide race had started so that served as early evening background noise.

Lou joined us not long after we’d settled in and added those evil Virginia peanuts to the mix, along with his sterling conversation of course.  He really let his hair down and had a personal best of FOUR beers! Kyle Busch won the Nationwide race but we missed his now-controversial guitar smashing celebration by turning over to the IRL Texas race. We had dragged along an Xbox and the Rock Band instruments, but nobody ever seemed to have motivation enough to move off the sofas so we never did play.

Sunday dawned an hour later than Val & I thought it did as the clock in the bedroom we were using was an hour behind. We headed over to the track around 11:30 with Ray& Shana, Joe & Lou were waiting on Billy & Bono to arrive in Billy’s truck, as well as for Mike Martin. Billy had a delivery to make Monday early AM at the NY state border so our dad did some calling around and was able to wrangle him a spot to park his rig behind the small shopping center just up the road from the house. We all wound up getting to the track at the same time as using the “back way” proved worthless this year.  We have always parked in the big grass lots just across the street from the track but they weren’t in use this year and so we had to slug our way sitting in traffic to get into one of the lots at the front of the track.  I called Joe and was able to spare him that.

Unfortunately the delay didn’t leave us any time to head over to pit road, but we did head into the fan zone area and Val got herself her first NASCAR swag, a #20 visor and a matchbox-size (1/64) #20 car.  She thinks Joey is so CUTE!

Val's First NASCAR Swag

(Click here to continue reading…)

aka the Corvette Forum “Ridley Park Crew” annual BBQ

Saturday 5/30/2009 we packed up the convertible and the Mazda and headed to Ridley Creek State Park with Melissa, Robert and Sport (Michael was on a school trip) for the annual BBQ organized by a couple of guys via the Corvette Forum.  There’s a regular group of Vette owners that meets nearly every Sunday for breakfast and hanging out at the park and often a cruise afterwards.  I’ve attended quite  a few times but hadn’t made it to one this year, though Val & I did cruise with some of the guys to the Simeone Museum a few weeks back.

There was a very nice group of folks and cars there on Saturday, with quite a few hot-rodded old Fords, a couple of Mustangs, a Viper GTS and a Ford Model A in addition to the usual collection of Vettes.  All but the first generation (C1) of Corvette was represented, though with only 1 each of the 2nd & 3rd generations (C2 & C3).  Melissa & Robert seemed to both enjoy checking out all the cars and Val & I spent some time pointing out the differences in the generations and they’re both fairly proficient in not only spotting Vettes now but in identifying the generation.

The Ford Model A is owned by a guy I know through LMC.  He is a technician for Lance Co, the Haas Machine Tool sales & service arm in this part of the country.  Kevin has been in our shop more than a few times over the years servicing the many Haas machine we have in service.  He has a C4 as well, an 86 or 87 I think, but this was the first time I’d had a chance to see his Model A.  Apparently it was his dad’s car and they did a lot of work on it together, very cool that he still has it and continues to keep it running.  Aside from 30 year old paint showing the inevitable signs of age it’s in great shape.  Melissa had to be coaxed a bit, but she finally got up into the rumble seat and Kevin snapped this picture.

Melissa's Ready to Rumble

Kevin had to snap that pic for us because we had of course managed to yet again forget the camera!  So thanks Kevin, for the pic and for showing us your very cool old car.

The BBQ was quite good too, with a whole pig having been cooked up as well as burgers & dogs. I won’t post a bunch of pictures from somebody else’s gallery, so if you want to check out some pics of the folks & cars, click here.

Added:  Pics from James of County Corvette (just page 1)

After slamming us with a snow day on Monday Mother Nature made up for it by giving us a warm, if overcast, weekend.  It was VERY nice yesterday with temps into the low 70′s so we decided that we would have a car washing party at my place today and remove the winter scum from our cars.  Many of you have been giving me a rash of shit for not posting an pics of the new Z06 but she’s been so filthy that it wasn’t fair to her to post pics looking like that. We’re going to pick up some of the new Zaino AIO and do another session to put a real shine on the cars, but for now here are some pics of my Z06 and Val’s new Zoom-Zoom.

Zoom Zoom!

3/4 Right Rear

Beauty, Eh?

Much WIDER 3/4 Right Rear

There’s 4 of the dozen pics. If you want to see the rest you can click here for the whole group.

I FINALLY got around to finishing up the install in my 2007 Avalanche over the weekend and I wanted to vent and share my experience to maybe help other unfortunate souls….

The equipment list:

Alpine IVA-W205 Head
Alpine PXA-H701 Processor
Alpine PDX-4.150 Amp
Alpine SIR-ALP1 Sirius Tuner
Focal KF165 Component Speakers
Elemental Designs 11K.v2 D4 Sub
Subthump under-seat box with amp rack

I had installed the head unit a long while back but most of my car stereo energies have been invested in the Vette so the rest has been waiting. The install itself was pretty easy. The Avy’s door panels are simple to take off, easy wire runs down the rockers and under the carpet to the back seat. I was able to fit the processor and a Stinger power & ground block (nice piece, very convenient for simple installs) on the bottom side of the Subthump box and the PDX amp and Focal crossovers in the “amp rack” area on the top side of the box.

Now the fun begins with Ai-NET. Somewhere along the way I read something that told me that the Processor must be the first thing plugged into the head unit. So with that in mind I had picked up an extra Ai-NET cable in order to run from the back seat area up to where I had my Sirius tuner installed behind the glove box(factory XM location). The idea was one cable from the head to the proc and then one from the proc to the Sirius. Seems straight forward, right? Yeah, well… I get everything hooked up and after playing a bit (and finally realizing the damn EQ/NORM switch on the head unit was on the bottom) I got the 7 gazillion crossover and speaker settings configured to where I was actually getting sound. YAY! OK, so when I switched to Sirius I wasn’t getting sound, but I was getting channel data and could control it. I figured that tucked up beside the garage the way I was I probably just wasn’t getting enough from the sat to get audio, so I buttoned everything up.

The Sirius wasn’t just a signal issue of course. Some Googling and searching of diymobileaudio.com later, turns out that I made a bad assumption regarding the Ai-NET chain. The H701 needs to be the first device yes, but that’s because it doesn’t have a loop connection so it’s only first when you think of the head unit as being the last in the chain. So off comes the trim and out comes the head again, I just love re-doing stuff! A short Ai-NET cable run from the Sirius to the head unit, and then the loop-out from the Sirius to the H701. Yes, the EQ/NORM on the head must still be set to EQ even though it’s actually plugged directly into the Sirius and not the H701.

So if you have any Ai-NET devices in your chain that rely on the analog audio of the Ai-NET connection and you’re using an H701 then make sure the connection STARTS at the head and ends at the H701.

/TheKomoman steps down off the soapbox.