The Farstrider Scout

I finally managed to find my EOS utility CD, as well as a flash card reader, and was able to get the pictures off my camera.

I’m not going to post them here due to file space (I only have 100mb TOTAL available for this site), but I did upload them to Picasa, so you can view them here.

Also, the track photographer took a LOT of photos, which can be seen here.  Big kudos to him!  Unfortunately, he left after the first changeover, so there aren’t any photos of the stock classes, or anything from the second run when most of the cone destroying seemed to occur.

The results for the June 15th Autocross event finally got posted.

The two marked as DNF (did not finish) is where I missed a gate, and the number in the PEN block is the number of cones I plowed over.  If I hadn’t taken out those 5 cones on my last run, that would have been my fastest time.  Even still, with the PAX index, I came in at around 50 seconds, which I don’t think was too bad for my first time.

The next event isn’t until the 27th of July, and while I’m definitely looking forward to it, I really can’t find much to do to prepare for it.

I haven’t posted in a while, mostly because between work and getting the car ready, plus my normal play time, I just haven’t found the time.  I did make it to the Steeda event on Sunday though, despite the alignment on the car not getting done (which is getting taken care of tomorrow morning, I might add).  It was cloudy, muggy, and a bit on the warm side, but there was a breeze that helped out somewhat.  When I was racing, I didn’t even notice it.

The people there were, thankfully, very friendly and helpful, and I think I learned a lot.  I was doing much better by the end of the day, despite the amount of cones that I ploughed over on my last run.  The heavy ass end of the Saturn seems very conducive to drifting around tight hairpin turns, which helped set me up for the next gate on the course…  But it was also a downfall on the slalom until I learned to maintain a constant speed, instead of slowing down or trying to pick up speed (which was right before the hairpin turn as well, I might add – not exactly a good thing).

Sadly, I didn’t get to take very many photos, because when I wasn’t racing, I was working the track, and they didn’t want anything distracting us from our jobs.  Work wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be though, mostly just chasing after cones that drivers knocked down/off their marker box, and calling them in.  There were quite a few spectacular cone explosions – one from one of the Steeda Mustangs, and another from one of the local racers who ended up taking out 7 cones – most of a “wall” in one go.  Someone also managed to score a hit on the timing gate lights with a cone that got thrown from their tire at high speeds.

All in all, I had a blast, and I think I’m definitely going to keep going.

Good lord, how am I going to afford this?

Only a few days left until the autocross/Solo II event this weekend, and part of me is having second thoughts.  Talking to…  “naysayers”, for lack of a better word, at work, hasn’t helped, and neither has the fact that my “crew” has been slated to leave for a TDY, so he won’t be able to help me at all…  And I still need to do a couple of other things before the car is really ready.

At the very least I need someone with another car so that I can put anything extra I have (food, water, spare tire) in it while I run with the Saturn…  And I haven’t asked my wife since I doubt she really wants to watch me, being paranoid about my driving and all.  I’m kind of running out of options though.

I also need to dig out my camera, and possibly my video camera, so I can at least get some pictures up here.  Aaaagh!