Not much by way of update...

...just now, planning tomorrow... We survived... It was pretty cool... Went fast... Much fun... Think I did pretty good... 

This was my toy... 91... She go good for me... Well, faster than anyone else on the track anyway!! Full race spec, stripped, lightened, full cage, full internal extinguisher system, slicks, suspension, Brembo brakes, Tremec six speed, race computer and dash, nets... Sorry for bad photos, was very rushed on way out, hoped for time to take decent shots but didn't get to in the end. More later.

 

                                                         

 

                                                            

Salt Lake City - salty...

So today was business time (I wore business socks with my fireproof suit... it was interesting business)... But today was also the day Salt Lake and most of Utah got hammered by a huge low which came in bringing a significant temperature drop and 80mph winds... Hence the reason I found myself thrashing around one of North Americas top motor sports facilities behind the wheel of a track-prepped V8 Mustang while getting my eyeballs sandblasted by gritty Utah salt sand (What grade? I'm going to say... Coarse...) that was coming in horizontally through the open passenger side window. 

The day started well enough, our group of nine all arrived first thing and we got stuck into various classroom briefings and exercises with various professional instructors at the one and only (in the world) official Ford Racing School. Most of the guys taking the course are also pro racing drivers, our primary classroom instructor being a young guy called Michael Self (www.michaelselfracing.com) who seemed to know his stuff. From there we moved into the cars, my companion and most of the others in Boss 302 Mustangs and myself and one other as invited guests in the slightly less powerful Mustang GT cars the Ford Racing School runs normally, all the cars track prepped with roll cages, brake packages, sticky tyres, etc.

We started off going out in pairs doing the usual following the instructor around the track to observe technique etc and quickly moved into solo runs in the cars, doing about twenty minutes on track and then about the same in classroom to talk about the track, cars, skills etc. We also did a skid pad session in a skid car, a short track course practising heel-and-toe, and a bunch of laps with an instructor in the car looking at our driving.... Meanwhile the sky turned a dirty brown grey, the wind got worse and worse, and times you couldn't even see from one side of the track to the other... One of the pro drivers compared it to racing in Bahrain... Cones flew away, oil barrel rubbish bins bounced through the pits, and sitting still in the car before going out on track you could feel it rocking back and forth in the wind. But we soldiered on and had a great time. And I think I did ok... If I may quote some of the instructors... *ahem* - 

"That's textbook heel and toeing... You may as well just go play around the rest of this session huh?"

"Basically, you are a really good driver"

"Ok, you really dont want to be trying to brake any later than that at the end of the main straight... NOBODY wants to try braking any later than that at the end of the main straight..."

"You are the only person today to put a car that far in the gravel and keep your boot in it... That just shows you are using all of the track!"

"Sir, you are a driving god, can you teach us your ways?"

Ok I may have paraphrased a couple of those. Slightly. Basically I think I did ok because I was pulling 160kph on the home straight which was matching the more powerful cars... Plus in the last 20 minute free-for-all we got sent out one by one with plenty of space on the 2.2 mile track to do our own thing (the idea of the course being to hone driving skill not race each other) but we were allowed to pass if required... I got sent out behind an older guy who had been talking about his years of racing all kinds of cars and had complained earlier that everything was much too slow in the follow-the-leader and other exercises... So I saw him well up ahead and decided to try to gain some ground on him, and all the training and practise for the day seemed to come together and I started gaining, and after a few laps hunted him down and sat on his tail for a couple more before he had to let me through... And this despite me being in a lesser car with over 25% less power, smaller brakes etc... And then I left him behind and went out and hunted down the guy in front of him also.

 

We finished the day pretty happy, I would have preferred to spend the day in a Boss as my GT was a little down on grunt by comparison, but that's all good because tomorrow we move on to the actual full-spec Ford FR500 racecars, and stuff should get even more interesting. Meantime Salt Lake has continued to get savaged by winds (our hotel is a brand new five story building and you could feel it moving in the wind) and salt/sandstorms, to the point that when we drove further into the city to find BK for dinner tonight, we couldn't even see the city. Everything is just shrouded in what looks like a dirty brown haze... Trees are going down, trucks are getting blown off the interstates... I was going to take a cool photo of all the black cars in the parking lot literally coasted in this brown salt sludge, but before we got back it then dumped down with rain... And the forecast says possible snow... Should make the track fun tomorrow.... Wish me luck.

One final note which I know will excite some people no end... BK over here has these new Coke machines with a touch-screen front panel (calm down that's not the exciting bit) and they dispense about 20 different kinds of beverage (the entire Coke range including Powerade, root beer, Minute Maid juice, ginger beer, etc etc) BUT whenever you select a type of beverage it then comes up with about half a dozen options for what flavours to ADD... So to your normal Coke for instance you can then add raspberry, blueberry, cherry, etc etc... Apparently there are over 100 possible combinations the machine can do BEFORE you start self-mixing... I know right?? Almost as good as racecars. 

Climate change...

Is when you drive six hours from Vegas to Salt Lake... It was actually chilly out tonight, which was nice. The city is surrounded by mountains still capped in snow, although it's rapidly thinning I think. It's quite a pretty place...

First thing is first though... Last night, the Bellagio lobby.. Cool

                                              

 

We rose early, possibly as some kind of punishment for my lateish night last night... After checking out of the hotel we first set out to swap a bulk pack of singlets bought by my travel companion, having found they did not fit... And then discovered Sears doesn't open until 10am... What kind of store is that???

Giving that up we hit the freeway and pushed north on the I-15 which cuts a clear track all the way from Vegas to Salt Lake City (SLC)... It's a nice drive though more wilderness and desert and rock, then skipping across a corner of Arizona through an awesome canyon road, and then on into the wide plains and increasingly green expanses of Utah. 

        

The fun part was that much of the freeway up there has an 80mph speed limit, meaning a comfortable cruise at about 140kph.. We stopped for lunch and gas on the outskirts of Cedar City, where we tried Arby's for the first time, which was interesting... I had a Reuben which is a weird sandwich made with swirled brown and white bread and I think was beef with horseradish and cheese... Arby's point of difference is they do burgers and sandwiches with various sliced meats instead of burger paddies. We also learned some people up this way struggle with a NZ accent. Others on the other hand love it... The two girls at the gas station were immediately fascinated, to the point one was leaning right out across the counter so far she was actually lying on it, up on her elbows, staring at us intently while we talked, and they kept asking me questions to keep me speaking.

From there I took over the drive for the second half, we were both a little dozy which was not ideal... We got to Salt Lake and then I had another fundamental navigation failure which seems to be happening with uncharacteristic regularity in the last few days. We got to the hotel near the airport in the end, a nice new place, and then just as we started to relax for a minute we realised three Hardin fact crossed into a new time zone, and it was actually 1700 not 1600, so we got changed quick smart and headed the half hour out to the incredible Miller Motorsport Park. 

The Miller facility is the dream if the late Larry Miler, a self made millionaire entrepreneur and car no Motorsport lover who decided to build a US$140m world class Motorsport facility in a completely impractical place, because he could... He also, as we figured out, has quite some car collection... We 

Got there and went into the museum where the people for the track course had a welcome reception and dinner... I walked in not expecting. Great deal, then I saw a car.. Then I saw another car... Then I saw more.... Then I kind of no longer heard anything anyone else said after that... Then I decided this guy must just be a collecter of interesting replicas, so I started reading the descriptions of the cars... Replicas they were not... I am not really sure how to put it all into words, but the car people reading will understand when they see the photos below.... Let's just say it was one step short of a religious experience... allow me to show you why (some of you are going to cease being my friend in 5... 4... 3... 2... 

              

                                          

I could keep going... I kept the staff waiting round after dinner while I took photos... I had the entire place to myself in the end, just going round and round and round taking photo after photo... For the uninitiated, what you see above is a sample of an incredible collection of near-priceless Ford road and race cars... They are not painted in the livery of famous race cars you may have seen on TV and in photos, they ARE the actual race cars you saw... Including the actual Le Mans winning Cobra Daytona... The actual first production Cobra... One of two actual factory Cobra Dragon Snakes... Not to mention, the only complete set of GT40's in the world... All seven... Every model and type... Including prototypes and the actual racers... To put this further into perspective, one of the CHEAPER cars pictured above it worth around a million dollars... some of the dearer ones?? Ten million... Twenty million... I can't even begin to tell you how amazing it was. And then there we're shelves and shelves of genuine parts... Spare factory engines on stands... Stacks of wheels... Unbelievable. I am still spinning about it. And tomorrow we drive race cars!! So I better get going, although sleep seems unlikely. 

   

Kiwis trying to order food from Mexicans...

... Mutually hilarious... Ok perhaps not mutually... But I was confused as hell why my McDonalds bag was so full until I realised that during the last part of our mangled exchange, she didn't say "do you want to upsize for a dollar?"... She said "Do you want two apple pies for a dollar?"... So now I have two apple pies, and I hate McDonalds apple pies. Well good.... 

So if you had asked me to predict how today was going to go I would have most likely been significantly off in my guess... We got up with a few ideas about what to do... My companion granted me a blessed extra hour of sleep today as we had nowhere to be, which was nice as my body seems to be going through chronic air conditioning rejection currently and I am sleeping badly... Then we set out with plans to hit a department store of some sort as both of us are travelling light with plans to stock up on the essentials while they are cheap... Of course then we discovered Vegas actually DOES do Easter Sunday and nothing was open... Like NOTHING... Well, except all the casinos and bars, naturally...

With nothing to do til the afternoon when the Atomic Testing Museum opened, we branched out and went for a general drive around the other bits of Vegas... Some of them pretty seedy run down bits.. But I always think it's important to try and see as many bits of a town as you can find, not just the parts you are supposed to see... And then I semi-navigated our way to the northern outlet mall to look around for some stuff I might need. My companion not being a big shopper ( not that I am, clearly ) probably didn't enjoy this a great deal, which I was quite concious of, so I cut it quite short and just bought some new running shoes... After three weeks in the States I see some running in my future. I also should have bought a pair of Merrells from another shop as they were well cheap, but maybe next time. 

From there we decided to find some lunch and mosie (how do you spell mosie? Mosey? Mowsie? I think mosey) on over to the museum, but on the way through noticed one of the department stores had opened, and pulled in as my co-driver wanted to buy a pair of dress shorts. And then we found out there was an Easter sale on... And if you have never shopped in a US mall with a sale on... Well let's just say I bought two pairs of jeans, one pair of work pants, three t shirts, one polo shirt, six pairs of boxers, and thirteen pairs of socks for about what the two pairs of jeans would have cost me at home. Seriously, three dozen Asics running socks for $24. 

Wow, a normal person sized dwarf just walked past... I didn't know that happened... Like she was the same size as her friends, but clearly had the whole dwarfism thing happening... Fair enough. My ignorance is once again exhibited. 

So anyway before we knew it, it was nearly 1500 and my companion had a wedding to go to at 1600 (one of the Kiwi couples over for the Mustang show decided to wed, bless them) so we had to forgo the museum and get back. Bit gutted about missing the Atomic Testing Museum apparently it's cool, in a weird way.. Oh well, next time. 

With some time on my hands I decided to venture out and try to cover off a few spots we had not yet had time for, and probably only I was interested in... With a plan in mind I set off around 1600 and eventually found my way to the monorail (Monorail!!!) out the back of the MGM Grand (it took some finding, casinos are specifically designed to make it hard to find the exits... I kid you not... If you think I am joking, trust me... Every time you go into a casino, you will find it hard to get out)... I would thoroughly recommend monorail as a way to get around the Strip, a day pass is $12 and it gets you from spot to spot well... Except, I must say, at the end, because I caught it solely to get as far up the Strip as possible, and it doesn't actually stop on the Strip at the end... And so then the walk started. 

My goal was another pilgrimage of sorts, to get to Circus Circus, one of the oldest and most iconic of Vegas hotels and casinos, and a place I absolutely wanted to see on the way through, for all it's various pop culture references... Needless to say I was not disappointed... Or actually the opposite of that... Needful to say I was disappointed(??)... Yeah, it wasn't great. In fact it was pretty awful. Ok the whole circus theme was played up kind of well and the various mezzanine floors in the middle were full of carnival games and amusements, and a grandstand of morbidly obese people taking the opportunity to get an early seat for the circus show in the Midway area... Even though it didn't start for an hour... But overall it was just bad cheap and tacky... As opposed to the charming and weird cheap and tacky I hoped for. 

From there I set out to walk back down the Strip, which is not that short a distance, but walking is what seems to happen when I holiday. As someone wise once said, no matter how weary you are, if you just keep on lifting one foot and putting it just in front of the other, slowly the world will turn under you... So I did the strip, which takes a bit longer than you think with various forced diversions when the footpath disappears inside various hotels... I went back to Bellagio to photograph the beautiful glass flowered lobby ceiling, took in a few swank bars just to get a feel for the place, then ended up in the Planet Hollywood Miracle Mile mall, where there are heaps of shops and bars and food places in one indoor area. There I stumbled upon a little place called Lobster ME, where they do Maine lobster various interesting ways, like with mac and cheese, or on a stick deep fried. I had a lobster BLT and a giant Budweiser... The former way one of the tastiet things I have ever eaten in my life.... The later was... A large American beer. 

Wow, I just lost a huge amount of stuff not once but twice, awesome. That's what I get for switching between apps. Screw you Jobs. Awesome. Ok let's do this a third time but faster -

Blah blah walked around mall blah blah Sin City Beer, seen advertised, wanted to try local brew blah blah yes you can buy a beer in a mall like you could buy a juice at home blah blah got an amber red beer, chick serving said it was her favourite, blah blah it was terrible but got talking to her and she had grown up in Vegas so was very interesting to hear about what it was like for someone who has lived here as opposed to the millions who visit, apparently it's still pretty cool, but she has spend half her life snowboarding seven days a week after work and on weekends, blah blah, found Michael Godard gallery ('Oh My Godard'), while I like some of his work he just seems like way too much of a douche (could be wrong haven't met him personally) blah blah... BUT for my Waiheke friends and others who like vino, one of the artists also with stuff on display was a guy called Eric Chirstensen, check his stuff out!! A couple of others also there were Bone Daddy and Scotty who are also not bad, and some pretty cool painted bronzes and steampunk stuff by people I can't remember. Go to the Oh My Godard gallery page and follow the links to the group behind it. And.. Blah blah blah that's about it! McDonald's, unwanted apple pie, can't buy Coca Cola on the Strip, Pepsi stupid, etc, Lobby Bar, the end. Utah tomorrow. 

So then I was hanging out with Vaughn Gitten Jr...

...and that means nothing to most of you. But I did, a little, he came out of his trailer and talked to a few people walking past early Friday before the crowds arrived. He seemed cool, in that kind of wacked out extreme sports stoner kind of way.

So it's been a crazy couple of days of cars, the heat has been intense, with little shade, there has been all the usual car show stuff of walking around endlessly til legs and back ache and there is nowhere to sit and food and drink are overpriced and yadda yadda. But conversely it has also been pretty awesome. Two car shows which could not really be too much different, one we planned to see and one just kind of happened... 

So first off yesterday and today, one of the prime objectives of the trip was to see some of the Ford Mustang 50th Anniversary commemorations which are being held this weekend in Vegas and also at Charlotte across the country. The Vegas event was at the huge Speedway complex north east of town so we headed out and had a good old time looking at cars old and new, shopping for parts, watching Vaughn Gitten and co drift (with varying degrees of success) and generally absorbing ourselves in Mustangy goodness. 

Then on the way back we had time to call in to SoCal so I could stock up on tshirts and look at lots if other stuff I couldn't carry back with me, and while talking to the guy at the counter he asked if I was going to the hotrod show tomorrow... And I said well no, what show is this...??? And he said well, Viva Las Vegas, the huge rockabilly and hotrod and ratrod convention... And I said "reeeeeally???"

www.vivalasvegas.net

It always pays to talk to locals... I looked all over for stuff to do and to find out what was on in Vegas and I knew nothing of this awesomeness just down the street that I would have missed entirely... Always find likeminded locals and ask them what's going on...

So today (Saturday) we decided in the end to head out to the Mustang show again although we feared there was not much more to see, but we thought more cars might turn up today and also there was supposed to be drag racing on... Due to various dramas I won't go into the organisers ended up having a bit of a nightmare with the whole convention (which we weren't part of, we just turned up for a look) and various things just went wrong... Like planning a charity half marathon around the stadium this morning without realising the course blocked car entrances and therefore they couldn't get the Mustangs in to the show or park the public anywhere cause they had closed the surrounding streets... Yeah, stuff like that. So anyway the drags didn't happen either, so we browsed the cars again for anything new and then bailed.

By the time we left the show we were already feeling well cooked in the Nevada sun and could easily have gone to find a pool or some aircon to sleep in, but we soldiered on. After driving for some time to find a tree to picnic under we had lunch then went to Best Buy so I could look at toys but they had lousy stock. Then we cut across to the gaudy, nasty, but kind of cool off-Strip Orleans hotel, which I had noted for all it's weirdness in driving past previously. The roar of the band as we drove up literally guided us in to the side car park where we drove around endlessly trying to find a car park, as did several hundred other people... Finally we parked, wandered in and were greeted by the amazing sight of a massive queue of what can only be described as the most colourful and eclectic people you could possibly imagine... If you are not familiar with rockabilly music and fashion, pinups, retro lifestyles and period-correct vintage hotrods, ratrods and other such things, I suggest you look into some of that also! For those who don't know, that stuff has been a long term passion of mine for many years, and I have a lot of admiration for the dedication some people put into adopting this particular kind of lifestyle, many full time... (although I am not sure a lot of it was particularly appreciated by my companion, who really REALLY didn't know what he was walking himself into...)... Rather than try to explain at length, only images can really do it justice... And can I just point out this event was HUGE... Like crazy huge... Thousands upon thousands of people... So here we go... A small sample... 

     

                                 

         

                                         

                     

                             

Needless to say I went pretty camera crazy and could have literally stayed for days. I took some great car shots I think. Also met some cool people. Regardless of whether you appreciate the styles of vehicle or   in fact people, you have to admit the sheer art of what they do. I have to say I enjoyed every minute.