The LazyAssGeek’s

After a drive across the desert on Highway 160 (last gas for 40 miles!) that had gorgeous scenery we arrived at Spring Mountain Motorsports Ranch.  Wouldn’t it have been cool if that picture had been taken just as we arrived? Well since I forgot my camera back at the time share that wasn’t possible (ok, you done now? Good, let’s move on).  You cross the front straight as you pull into the facility, which is kinda strange the first time when you haven’t seen how they work their gate system.  We parked out front and headed inside to sign our lives away, pretty much literally, and acknowledge the $8000 damage deductible on the insurance included with the school package. You can pony up another $200 to take care of most of that, but we were feeling confident so opted against that.  The course we were taking is the Level 1 3-Day Corvette Program.

After meeting the group, 7 of us on the first day, our instructor Jordan gave us an overview of what we’d be doing over the 3 days.  2 of the folks in the group were there for only the 1 day “Corvette Performance Highlights” class.  One guy (Sal) had been riding a motorcyle at a track day there over the weekend and since he was thinking about buying a Vette decided to hang around and take the 1 day.  The other 1 day guy (Danny) was in Vegas with his wife and while she was at a conference he decided to head on down to Pahrump. An employee of the facility, Mitch, was also taking the 1 day because he had some projects coming up for the company and needed some first hand experience.

After that introduction it was right to the cars! My first ride was a silver Z06, though for the upcoming exercise I really didn’t get to take advantage of the differences between it and a standard C6, that would come on Wednesday(cue the dramatic music) and frankly at that moment I wouldn’t have been able to appreciate the differences anyway. If I remember correctly Joe got a yellow C6. They took us over to the skid pad where they had a braking exercise setup. They start you off with the ABS fuse pulled, which disables ALL of the computer assists so we had raw, 430-505hp rides under us. The first exercise was to get the car to 35mph and when you got to a pair of cones hit the brakes and bring the car to a stop.  Here’s where it gets interesting though – the skid pad has a special, very slippery sealer on it, and they were standing there with a fire hose and had wet down the braking zone. The idea was to “threshold” brake, get the wheels up to lock and then release, modulating them to keep them as close to lock as you could but not keep them locked and bring the car to a halt. OK, so we did that a couple of times, and then they wanted us to come down at 35 again and this time just pound on the brakes and lock ‘em up, trying to get a 4-wheel lock immediately.  Joe got it first time, took me a second try as instinct kept me from really hammering on them the first time.  Even on a wet, slippery surface with the wheels locked down the Vettes come to a stop very quickly. I took this lousy cell phone camera pic while waiting my turn, since I neglected to bring along the real thing(would you PLEASE let it go).

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Ah Gregbo, it’s good to know some things never change!

This past weekend Rick, Chris, Steve, Greg, Jim and I, collectively known as “Old Guys” or perhaps more appropriately “Creepy Old Guys”, revisited our youth.  We met in Dayton at the Marriott (we can afford to stay there these days) on Saturday afternoon, had a few beers at the hotel bar and then headed out to hit the old haunts.

The first stop was Brown St. What was a street of old, run-down buildings with bars & shops is now a newly renovated, fancy brick-facade row of shops and bars.  One of the shops is Flyer Spirit, essentially a swag annex to the bookstore. We dropped in there so Steve could continue the brainwashing of his poor, impressionable children. Within about 2 minutes the rest of us were predictably bored, so we, also predictably, left Steve to his t-shirt shopping and headed to one of the few shops that was there when we went to school – Second Time Around. When we last did this reunion thing in 2002 we had stopped in and it had undergone a major renovation vs “the old days” so it was nothing to new to most of us, except Chris.  Chris was busy being a good Dad and husband since his daughter was about 2 weeks old when we were there last so his were the only eyes doing the whole “wow” thing at that place.  Rick of course bought a couple of CD’s – an “old” Nickelback disc and something else I don’t recall. From there we walked across the street to the Bar Formerly Known As The Shed and had a beer.  It too had undergone a remodeling that we had experienced in ’02, if one less impressive than Second Time Around’s. The “Miller Lite” they served either wasn’t, or they hadn’t cleaned the lines in months, so we moved on after 1.

We walked up Woodland to see a house that Chris had spent a semester in with a couple of friends and then headed onto campus, walking by the Garden Apartments where we lived at the end of our UD Experience, remembering our youthful housemate Raoul “Ed” Inesta. A big “hey dude” to Ed, wherever you be. We headed to the Kennedy Union in search of our next beer, but even though the bowling alley & pools tables were open, the bar was closed.  Wrong, so very, very wrong. Of course there wasn’t a bar in the place when we were there, so we were used to that and moved on.  The next stop was the new rec center… oh my what a place.  What was “The PAC” in our day is now that incredible, modern facility, complete with a smoothies bar of course.  Just.. wow.
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Does it get any better than that?  Well ok, one must be careful when combining them, which I promise you I was(the House Alt at Porter’s Pub did sorely tempt me to act otherwise). I’d go on at length about the fun road trip Jack & I took on Saturday 7/26/2008, but he already did a better job than I would have, so here’s a cross post!

http://www.voiceofjack.com/2008/07/27/my-saturday-part-1-the-road-to-beerville/

And if you know Jack, be sure to follow up with his birthday party post!

http://www.voiceofjack.com/2008/07/27/my-saturday-part-2-surprise-youre-old/

Just writing this so that as the weeks, months & years go by my old-man memory can use it as a refresher as to what the hell we did! I’m leaving out pics in this because the highlights have already been posted and all of the pics can be viewed by clicking here.

Saturday

Shockingly the flight to Vegas went as smoothly as you could want, especially considering it was US Airways! No wait to check the bags at the curb, no wait in the security line, flight left on time… it was spooky. The German contingent really enjoyed flying over the grand canyon on the way in and getting their first glimpse of the Strip. Everything smooth getting the ill-fated minivan as well.

Tahiti turned out to be great – easy to find, good location (ok, traffic on Tropicana can be a bear at certain times of the day) and the room was excellent. They have a cool setup where they have a 1 bedroom suite and then a studio style room that are adjoining with locking doors like a hotel. That lets them rent/sell as 2 singles or as a 2 bedroom room unit.

We were all really hungry by the time we got checked in, unpacked and organized so we headed just down the street to Orleans and grabbed a meal at the Chinese restaurant there. I really like the casinos owned by the Gaughns. They are nice places but not overdone like the big places on Las Vegas Blvd. We didn’t make it to any of the others, but I really liked Sun Coast the last time I was there and South Point sure liked like a nice place as we passed it going South on I-15 later in the week.

We grabbed the shuttle downtown to Treasure Island where Alan & Heidrun were staying and met up with them. We headed over to Venetian to give them their first “wow” casino experience. That was my 2nd time in Venetian and it was just as impressive the 2nd time as it was the 1st. The lane they have setup for shopping is really cool. The lighting is especially impressive as they have managed to give the lane a very natural daylight look. That is very hard to do but they’ve done it so well with the lighting and the ceiling painting that your eyes actually get fooled into thinking the clouds are moving sometimes. We wandered around, did some window shopping and grabbed a couple of drinks at one of the bars. Joerg had a pink one, and I of course will never let him forget it! We were all pretty worn out by then so it was time to grab the shuttle back to Tahiti and get some sleep.

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The idea for a trip to Las Vegas started with Biggi’s desire to drive a road “in the middle of nowhere.” Being Biggi it had to be just the perfect road, of course.   After a great deal of searching we finally found it – the Mojave Nature Preserve.  But of course it couldn’t be absolutely perfect – it was raining!  I told her that made it extra special cause you can drive in the desert in baking sun ANY day, but raining.. well that’s something else.  She didn’t go for it either.. but she did get to drive.

The pictures of that drive and the rest of that day can be found here.

Andy gets too close to the edge at the Grand Canyon…

OK, that’s not as funny now as it seemed to us at the time.

All of the Grand Canyon pics can be found here.