COTA Blitz: The Road Home

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Sunday, June 11

In general, I don’t like going the same way, to and from. I prefer a loop. A loop for this trip would be impractical. What I ended up with, though, was nearly as good: a dumbbell. Different routes for about two hundred miles on the Austin end and between home and Amarillo on the Denver end.

It was sunset when I approached the wind farm near Sweetwater. The windmills were in silhouette in darkening amber. There’s a red light on top of each turbine. The light flashes on and off; a few seconds on, a few seconds off. That rhythm gets interrupted depending on which way the wind blows. If the blades are facing you, they pass in front of the light.

These things are laid out in rows. Generally, due to the route the road takes, it just looks like a random assortment of the things. But every now and then you get to look down a row of five or six of them. Groups of thirty or forty had their lights synchronized such that they’d all go off and on at the same time.

Arrived at the motel and went to check in. No reservation. Hmmm. They asked if I had the right motel. I have gone to the wrong place before but pretty sure I got the right place this time. I checked my phone. Here’s the record of my phone call: I called this number last night. “Yes, that’s us.” How is it I can make reservations two different ways and still not have a reservation? I’m glad they weren’t booked up.

Monday, June 12

Just out of Snyder they’re erecting a windmill just a couple hundred yards off the highway. Shortly after I passed the site, I passed two blades on transporters. Probably not for the same site, as they only had a short section of the pylon completed. Near Lubbock I saw another piece of pylon heading the same way. Makes me wonder how many they’re still building. I also can’t help but wonder why they’re all white. I’m guessing they’re not painted, as that would seem to be a big maintenance nightmare. Is it a law that they’re white, or a result of an engineering issue?

North of Lubbock on I-27 I think a train honked at me. It was going the other way on a line with no grade crossings for miles. One quick blast of the horn and done.

I stopped at Boise City for lunch. When I got back on the highway, a sign indicated it was 287 miles to Denver. That was the only sign with mileage to Denver the entire trip until I got on I-70 at Limon.

I didn’t like the road in Oklahoma. The expansion strips were wide and drummed the car with a staccato beat.

I think this is the first time I’ve ever changed time zones by traveling north.

On the map, the road is arrow straight though there are some small variations. But it does rise and fall, and the horizon is no longer razor sharp. We’re crossing grassland, prairie. Not farmland, and doesn’t appear to be ranching, either.

I’ve lived in Colorado for about forty years. I’ve never been to about a quarter of the state – everything east of I-25 and south of I-70. Kit Carson, Eads, and Lamar were just names in weather reports. They’re still pretty much just names in weather reports to me, but I’ve driven through them!

There was a lot of truck traffic. It looked like most of it was going the other way, as I caught and passed only a few tractor trailer rigs. But southbound it was not uncommon to see trains of five, six, seven rigs.

I didn’t get rush hour traffic until Northfield, which was better than I expected. Only six or seven miles of it; much less unpleasant than ninety miles of I-25.

I’m happy to be home. Now it’s time to get the bugs off the car.

COTA Blitz: The Big Event

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Sunday, June 11

I woke up a few minutes before 2am to a bit of a racket coming from upstairs. Was somebody doing jumping jacks in the room above me? Running in place? Definitely calisthenics. A few minutes later it was quiet. By now it had become obvious to me the true reason I woke up. Let’s just say I was having some gastric distress, perhaps a side effect of the tasty tacos.

I woke up for real at a quarter to 6. Got showered and checked out of the hotel. In the days leading up to my trip I kept an eye on the Austin weather forecast. A few days earlier the forecast for Sunday in Austin was 93 degrees. That didn’t sound bad to me, but I wasn’t taking the humidity into account. I had to wipe the windshield down with paper towels, there was so much dew.

On the way to the track, the sun was a red ball sitting on the horizon and a thin layer of ground fog filled the low spots in the land. There was no traffic. I didn’t see three cars together the whole way until I pulled into the gate at the track behind a silver Elise and a Porsche.

The track’s waiver wristband is pretty cool, as these things go. It’s a tubular fabric secured with a one-way sliding bead. Takes a pretty sharp blade to remove, I found out later. “Have you ever been here before? Know where you’re going?” Not me. “Through the tunnel, past the gas pumps, down a ramp on the right.”

This is a giant facility. It’s not as big a piece of land as Road America, but measured by the infrastructure it dwarfs everything else. Big grandstands, big parking lots, big video monitors, expansive garages. It has an amphitheater. For all that it is, I really didn’t see that much of it. The interesting bits, for sure, but I never left the garage area and the track surface. I’d like to attend the F1 race and see the place in the usual way.

At the bottom of the ramp the first car I see is a yellow Elise. It had the full aero package – big wing, splitter, big diffuser, half a set of side skirts. “Is this the Lotus parking?”

“Yep, pull right up.” Thus I met Eric and his wife. They are clear evidence I’m not the only one who makes trips like this. They lived here in Austin for a while, not long ago. They live in Detroit now, after a stint in the UK. On their way here they did a track day at Autobahn near Chicago. He’s run lots of European tracks and spent a lot of time at the Nürburgring. When he lived here in Austin he was a member at nearby Harris Hill Raceway. He reckons he’s done on the order of two hundred track days. He bought the Elise new back in 2004 and has made a number of upgrades. In addition to the aero, it’s supercharged and has all the requisite suspension bits. He’s run many laps here at COTA.

We walked over to the registration desk together. We got a schedule, an aerial picture of the track – not a map, and the turns were not numbered. My pack included two wristbands, the yellow one to indicate my group and the “tie-died” one to signify I’m a solo driver. After my experience with Hooked-On-Driving, and given the cost of the event, I expected them to have numbers available to us. At HOD they were five bucks for the set. Surely they’d have them here. Alas, that was not the case and many of us used painters tape.

We began festivities with the drivers meeting. For me it was actually two consecutive drivers meetings as we had our yellow group meeting immediately after. In both meetings we discussed the usual topics – signalling, passing rules, and flags. When they got to the debris flag, it went like this: “We’ll show it for one lap. After that, be aware that the debris may still be on the track. The flagger needs to be ready to show other flags so the debris flag won’t be shown continuously. The debris could be a part from a car, or it could be a critter like a turtle or rabbit.” I’ve seen birds and squirrels and ground dogs and, yes, rabbits. But never a turtle.

After the drivers meeting I had just a few minutes before my group was out. I got both cameras mounted and running. When I’m in a hurry is when I make mistakes, like not being sure the camera is running. Today is my first time running two cameras. Level up! On the drive yesterday my suction cup mount for the phone came unstuck. The heat killed it and I was unsuccessful getting it to work. So the phone spent the day in my pocket. It works, but I don’t like it. Since I can’t see it until after the session is over I have no idea how I’m doing on the track. The feedback is valuable.

Now I’m feeling the anticipation of that first lap, that first time on an F1 track. I’m pretty much only minimally prepared. Chad kept offering to bring his sim rig over so I could practice, but I declined. I watched several you tube videos. I searched for cars similar to mine to get an idea of the speed. Any videos I found with data were Exiges or supercharged Elises. The NA ones I found didn’t even have lap times. But I thought I at least knew which way the track went.

The first session I was at sea. I really had no idea where to put the car. The track is wider than others I’ve been on (though not as wide as I was expecting). There appear to be a number of different lines of rubber down. Whenever I was following two cars, they both ran different lines and neither looked particularly great to me. I struggled particularly with the esses.

My very first lap, the out lap on my first session, I saw a turtle on the rumble strip in the esses. It didn’t register with me. What did I see? A piece of bodywork? The next lap was carnage. The scene changed every time I drove through it. It wasn’t until our after session meeting that I learned what it was. One of the guys said he thought the shell was part of a brake disk.

After my first session, I took the SLR and went in search of my Lotus people. Including me, there were eight Lotus: five Elises (mine, two yellow, one silver, one red), two Evoras (silver and blue), and a black Exige.

The silver Evora belonged to Richard. He’s English. The Evora is not his first Lotus. He has a Rover Elise at his dad’s house in the old country. He still goes back and drives it.

The second yellow Elise was driven by an instructor here. He told me he had a busy day yesterday. He ran in all the groups except blue and logged 159 track miles.

The silver Elise was another Eric. I see very few Elige drivers wearing kneepads. Eric was. This naturally led me to relate the ordeal of the camshafts, with the result that my kneepads are missing, along with the rest of the contents in the box. He kindly donated his other kneepad to me. “I have a bunch of them, use them for go-karting. You can keep that one.”

I never did track down the owner of the red Elise. The black Exige was Rich, and his wife drove the blue Evora. I only talked to Rich briefly and never did make the acquaintance of his wife.

I didn’t think to ask the organizers about the car count. There were a lot of cars there. There were probably a hundred cars in the garages and more, like me, spread across the paddock. I’d guess at least twenty five cars were in the yellow group. At one time I found myself tenth in a string of fifteen cars. The corner workers just displayed the blue flag to everybody.

Before the second session I was talking to a guy who was driving a BMW. I told him how I was struggling to find my way. He offered to ride with me and give me pointers. Only instructors can be passengers, and he had the proper wristband. I didn’t realize he as an instructor, as he wasn’t adhering to the published dress code. But, sure, hop in. I told him I wouldn’t be able to hear him. He didn’t say or do anything the first lap, watching where I was going wrong. The second lap he started with some hand signals. He corrected my line in a couple of places and suggested an early fourth gear in the carousel.

With my passenger’s tips I was able to improve my time by about a second. I always wonder how big a penalty in lap times a passenger is worth. Even without his instruction, I’d have been faster in the second session than the first. It’s just a matter of how much. The only number I could hang my hat on was top speed. I managed 118 in the first session but only 114 with the instructor. I picked up three seconds in the third session and another in the fourth.

There were quite a few interesting cars – lots of Ferraris, a few Audi A8’s (all together in the same garage), a couple McLarens, and the usual large numbers of Corvettes, Porsches, BMW’s, and Mustangs. Also a few Dodges, including a Hellcat. In an afternoon session I pointed the Hellcat by me then managed to keep up with him until the end of the checker. He pulled far ahead of me on the straights, but I always closed up on him quickly under braking. That car weighs 4200 pounds and he struggled in the twisty bits. I talked to him after the session. The car is only a few weeks old, and it was his first track day.

My goals for the day were to turn a 2:50 lap and hit a top speed of 120mph. I never did accomplish the lap target, doing a best of 2:51.3, and on that lap did manage 120.5mph on the back straight. I’m confident that I could do the 2:50 if I had another day. By late afternoon I think the temperature was not in my favor on my street tires. In the final session I was getting sideways a lot. It was great fun, but doesn’t make for quick laps.

After lunch we were offered a tour of race control. I was expecting big things, this being an F1 track. It was somewhat better appointed than race control at HPR. Instead of two or three monitors showing all the camera views, there was a wall of screens showing dozens of cameras. One screen was devoted to a list of all black flag incidents. For today’s event, only a couple of people were working. For Formula One the place would be packed.

Our meetings were held in one of the rooms above the garages. You enter from the back. There are several rows of seats directly above the pits and across from the main grandstand. I stood out here for a few minutes. When the high horsepower cars blasted up the main straight the building shook. I can only imagine what it’s like when a field of F1 cars go by.

The event organizers also do F1 viewing parties here at the track. If I wanted to watch the Canadian Grand Prix, all I had to do was sit there above the garages. I didn’t want to know the results, though, so I minimized my time there.

I wandered through the paddock and garages several times. There was a wide variety of interesting cars. I spotted a yellow Ferrari with Montana license plates, but didn’t find the owner.

I didn’t have a full tank of gas at the start of the day, so after three sessions I went to the gas pumps on site. They had regular unleaded for about thirty cents a gallon more than typical retail in the area and 93 octane for five bucks a gallon. They also had high octane race fuel at eight bucks. I pumped three gallons of 93 hoping that would get me through the day. In the end, I cut the last session short by a lap or two because my low fuel light came on.

My last session was due to start at 4:00 and end at 4:20, but things got delayed a bit. There was a charity event of some kind. A bunch of Ferraris lined up at the back of the garage. They did some parade laps. I was standing next to one of the event organizers and heard a message on her radio: “No more than fifty miles an hour!” I told her I thought that hardly seemed fair. She said they were giving rides to blind kids. I bet they got a kick out of the sound and motion, even at slow speeds.

With the small delay, I didn’t get out of there until about five o’clock. After nearly not getting a room the previous night in Clayton I made reservations in Snyder. That meant I didn’t really have the option of finding a room any earlier. And with an ETA in Snyder of nearly 10pm it meant some more night driving.

It felt good to get out of the driving suit. It was pretty toasty and with the humidity the heat index was probably about a hundred. For the last session I briefly considered ditching the suit. If they let instructors out in shorts and short sleeved shirts, why not me. But I was a good boy and kept the suit on. Even with the heat, I felt pretty good at the end of the day. I’d been diligent about drinking a lot of water. Although I wasn’t exactly looking forward to five more hours behind the wheel, I wasn’t fatigued at all.

Note

I’m waiting on an email from the official photographer and expect to have those photos by the middle of next week. I’m also working on putting together a video or two. I’ll post an addendum when I have the images.

COTA Blitz: The Road to Austin

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What the heck am I doing?

I got it in my head some time ago that I should run laps at Circuit of the Americas. I think It’s pretty cool to drive my car on just about any race track, but to drive on a current Formula 1 track cranks the coolness factor up a notch or three.

I started planning this trip late last year. For a while it looked like David might make the trip too. He’d trailer his car, which meant he’d be able to take my track wheels. The scheduling just didn’t work out, though. So I’d do it solo, marathon style, shortest elapsed time, minimum vacation days used.

It’s a thousand miles each way, thirty hours driving time. To spend a day driving. A week after collecting the car from the shop, where it spent one hundred days. No shakedown cruise, just straight into battle, so to speak.

The days leading up to my Portland and Laguna Seca trips were filled with pleasant anticipation, a buzz of excitement. This time it’s a bit different. Those trips were scenic drives with many good Lotus roads. They were vacations. This will be more akin to spending a long weekend crossing the Russian Steppes.

COTA Blitz!

Friday, June 9

I left the house promptly at 3pm, hoping to arrive in Clayton, NM around 8pm. This was optimistic. I didn’t have a motel reservation in Clayton. The thinking was that if I was making good time I could make it to Dalhart, TX. If not, there are half a dozen motels in Clayton availability shouldn’t be a problem.

The two obvious routes out of town are I-25 through central Denver or C-470 to US 85 and catch I-25 at Castle Rock. I chose the latter. Things weren’t starting well. I should have taken Sheridan but took Wadsworth instead. It was backed up. I-70 to C-470 is the next leg, and I-70 was a parking lot for a few miles. C-470 wasn’t any better until nearly Chatfield.

Going down US 85 I briefly considered taking the back road, CO 105, to Monument. But I figured I was in a hurry and didn’t have time for the scenic route. In retrospect, the back road probably would almost certainly have been faster. I-25 was stop and go until the Larkspur exit, never getting over about 20mph. Then, there was an accident on the north side of Colorado Springs that had traffic snarled.

It took me over three hours to get to Pueblo. South of Pueblo the traffic thinned out to more what I expected. Now I could follow Ryan’s advice to modulate my engine RPM’s. The speed limit is 75, which I obeyed until somebody faster passed. Then, once I left a reasonable gap, I matched speeds with them. After a few miles I’d slow back to the limit. Lather, rinse, repeat. This got me all over the map between 4,000 and 5,000 RPM. The earlier stop-and-go covered the lower ranges.

I quit violating Rule #1 when I got gas at the junction with US 87 in Raton. Fueling up, I was approached by a gentleman who was gassing up his rig. “I had a 2002 Esprit, sold it a while back to Dez Bryant of the Cowboys.” He pulled out his phone and showed me Dez Bryant sitting in a yellow 25th anniversary Esprit. “That’s one car I’m not wanting to see again. I’m afraid it’ll have 25” wheels.” He bought it new, said it was number 25.

“I went to that ell-oh-gee a few years back.” “The one in Aspen?”, I ask. “Yup, the one in Snowmass.” He’s a Corvette guy. I asked him what he had, he listed off five or six. I lost count. “The Esprit was just sitting. So I sold it.” I told him I was heading to Circuit of the Americas. “Oh, you’ll enjoy see-oh-tea-ay!”

While this conversation was going on, a woman with a little kid, perhaps 4 years old, approached. “He wants to look at your car.” I asked him if he wanted to sit in it. Mom had to go back to the minivan for her cell phone so she could get a picture.

No longer violating Rule #1, I would soon be breaking Rule #2. The sun was setting behind me, and entering Des Moines the road bends slightly south. This put the rising full moon directly in front of me, sitting large on the horizon. The last 40 miles or so were in the dark. Parts of the road had recently been repaired but not yet painted, adding to the degree of difficulty. I keep a keen watch for the flash of eyes in the darkness. I passed the carcass of a deer or antelope on the shoulder, I couldn’t tell which.

When you enter Clayton from the west the road goes over a railroad overpass. On the far side of the overpass the police had a car pulled over in the right lane. Not on the right shoulder, but still on the road. The speed limit is 30 through here. A couple blocks later, a police cruiser coming the other way turned his lights on and flipped a U-turn right in front of me. I was going 28. There were two or three cars ahead of me in that block; I don’t think anybody was going 35 but one got pulled over. Looks like Clayton is working on generating some revenue!

I headed to the Super 8 at the opposite end of town, passing plans B and C on the way. It didn’t look like there were a lot of cars in the lot, which I took as a good sign. There was nobody at the front desk, though. I pushed the bell a couple of times, trying to be patient. Then I tried the bell on the outside of the building. Just then another gentleman came in and asked if I’d pushed the button. A few moments later, a clerk finally materialized. “I don’t know how many rooms I have, if I even have any rooms. Are you two together? I might have a queen smoking room.” We are definitely not together. She called her manager and finally was able to give a report: they had one queen non-smoking, one queen smoking. Having arrived first, I claimed the non-smoking room. The other guy left.

This week on “What Did I Forget?”: pajamas.

Saturday, June 10

I wanted to get an early start, as I’d lose an hour about ten miles down the road when I entered Texas and the Central time zone.

I loaded up the car, strapped myself in, turned the key and pushed the button. A quick “tik tik tik tik.” I wondered if I’d accidentally left an interior light on or something. It started up just fine at the gas station in Raton, but not here. Accessories worked okay, just no crank. There were some folks in the parking lot so I asked if I could get a jump. Friendly people; one provided the cables, the other the jump. So I was on the road pretty much on time. Hopefully, running the car a hundred miles would charge the battery and all would be well.

I won’t bother with turn by turn navigation. I ended up on a lot of different roads, and many of them had multiple route designations. I didn’t have an atlas, I put my faith in Google. I simply entered my hotel address as the destination and said “no tolls” and let it guide me.

But after my luck with this strategy on the Laguna Seca trip, why would I do it again? Crossing Texas is nothing like crossing Nevada. I was happy with the route. It skirted Amarillo and Lubbock, the biggest cities on the way. It was a mix of US highways, Texas highways, and Interstates, but probably as little of the latter as was possible without adding a lot of time to the drive.

Much of the morning was spent crossing the Caprock Escarpment. This is a geological formation that is notable for its flatness. There’s not a tree or river to be seen; the terrain is as flat as a table, no sign that water has ever flowed here. The extreme western end is in New Mexico. It stretches from the Oklahoma panhandle on the north to a point roughly east of El Paso on the south, and its eastern edge is east of Lubbock. It’s a big place. Featureless, dull, with roads that are the antithesis of Lotus roads: flat and straight. This is crop circle land, literally: farms featuring center-pivot irrigation, mile after mile.

The only relief from this monotony is a stretch between Channing and Bushland, on Texas routes, where you descend through a valley that has somehow managed to be eroded from its surroundings.

I stopped for fuel in Amarillo, at the extreme southwest corner of the loop highway, Texas 335. Unfortunately, the car again failed to start. We live in a time of technological marvels. I was able to consult my phone to get a list of auto shops, with hours of operation and phone numbers. As this was Saturday, though, quite a few were closed. And the first two I tried that were supposedly open failed to answer. My third try was a Firestone shop.

After some bad experiences decades ago with Firestone I was reluctant to try them, but they were now my best shot. I called them, told them I needed to get to Austin before dark and asked if they could help. They said yes, so I had a destination. It took me all of about 90 seconds to get a volunteer to give me a jump start. This friendly gentleman also gave me directions to the very Firestone shop I had just talked to.

Within ten minutes I was at the shop. They quickly diagnosed the problem – it was indeed the battery – and were able to provide a replacement of the same brand and model. I was in and out in a bit less than an hour, and everyone there was friendly and helpful. I was back on the road a bit after 11am.

With the phone doing the navigating, I typically don’t even hear it chime when I get text messages. Even when I do hear them, I certainly don’t bother with them until I get to my next stop. At one point Ryan texted, wondering how the car was running. I let him know of my difficulties, and he was quite supportive. It really means a lot that he took a few minutes out of his busy day. He’s working to support a car in the Ferrari Challenge, one of the several events in Montreal this Grand Prix weekend.

The next stretch of road was I-27 southbound toward Lubbock. We’re back atop the Caprock Escarpment, straight, flat, and boring. Just before arriving on the north end of Lubbock I started seeing the icons of Texas: longhorn cattle and oil pumps. I felt like I finally entered Texas.

I much prefer US highways to Interstates. But in Texas there is often little difference between the two. Many of the miles I’ve traversed on US 87, US 84, and US 183 may as well be Interstates. They’re four (or more) lanes, divided highways, often with limited access. Exactly the kind of roads I try to avoid. Luckily, they don’t have nearly the truck traffic we see on the Interstates.

Google skirted me around Lubbock on the loop highway and sent me southeast on US 84. This is very much oil patch territory. Each farm and ranch had a number of oil pumps. It looked to me like only about a quarter or a third of them were in operation, bouncing slowly up and down. The scent of Texas Tea was in the air. As the road descends from the Caprock, not only the terrain is transformed. The flora changes dramatically from ranchland to what we’re more used to seeing in stereotypical television and movie versions of Texas. But the bigger transformation, to my surprise, was from oil wells to windmills.

My first thought was, “Wow, there are hundreds of windmills!” This is wrong. There are not hundreds of windmills. There are thousands. While only a fraction of the oil wells are actively pumping, well over ninety percent of the windmills were spinning. There are more than ten thousand windmills generating power in Texas and my route takes me through the largest concentration of them.

I remained on US 84 until the junction with I-20, which I took for only a short distance. When you get to Sweetwater on I-20, there’s a windmill blade, maybe sixty feet long, by the side of the road with “Life is Sweet in Sweetwater” written on it. By now, we’ve been passing windmills for nearly a hundred miles. And still they line the horizon. Somewhere around Brownwood I find myself back on US 84 and finally we leave the windmills in the rearview mirror.

The remainder of the route follows US 183 south. I’m somewhat amused by the directions Google provides. We follow 183 for twenty or thirty or more miles and are directed to make a right turn to remain on 183. This happens five or six times before we finally get to Austin where 183 becomes an urban Interstate: four, five, or six lanes wide, elevated, with much traffic.

I was not so good today modulating my engine speed. There’s some degree of that that occurs naturally, being that the roads I traveled pass through many small towns. The speed limits drop from 75 to 70 to 55 and on down to 45, 35, and 30. Then back up through the progression on the other side of town. But on the open road I pretty much stuck to the speed limit, which is a nearly universal 75.

I checked in to the motel at a quarter to eight. I hadn’t eaten dinner but didn’t want to get back in the car, so I wandered down the road a couple of blocks and found a dive Mexican restaurant. I was one of only a few customers. Had two beers and two tacos. Tasty tacos and refreshing beer, sure hit the spot.

Got online to make reservations in Snyder for the way back. I didn’t want to risk not having a room, after the near miss in Clayton. I used Expedia; selected a motel, entered my credit card info, and pressed submit. No reservation showed up in my account. So I called the motel. They had no record either of my reservation, so I asked for one. No problem, she says, and reserves me a room.

It has been a long day, leavened with a little stress from the problem battery. And I have a big day tomorrow. Drivers meeting is at 7:15, so I need to be checked out of the hotel not much after 6:30. Time to hit the hay.

The Ordeal of the Camshafts

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Last summer, you may recall, my check engine light came on when I was in Monterey. I spent a sleepless night in advance of my track day at Laguna Seca after reading horror stories about terminal misfire codes. When I got to the track I had a short discussion with Rob Dietsch, an expert on the Elise. I was able to run that day, with only minor difficulties presented by an open thermostat.

These cars have been known to have issues with the camshafts. The hardening sometimes fails, causing abnormal wear on the cams and resulting in serious problems. Rob said, “You should have your cams inspected every 30,000 miles. When’s the last time you did it?” Let’s just say I was overdue.

Months later, I finally got around to scheduling an appointment to have somebody do the cam inspection. I dropped the car off at High Mountain Classics on February 25. I won’t go into all the factors that led me to going there. I’ve toured the shop a few times over the years and seen a variety of interesting vehicles there, including eight figure Bugattis, a ’50’s era Formula 1 Ferrari, and other assorted museum pieces. The owner, Victor, is a Lotus aficionado and fellow Lotus Colorado member. Although the modern Elise isn’t exactly in their wheelhouse, I had no doubt they’d take good car of me.

In addition to the cam inspection, I’d have them replace the thermostat (which had given me no problems since that day at Laguna Seca), see if they could do anything with my failed left rear turn signal, and a couple of other minor, things.

They were quite busy with projects and it took a week or so before they got to my car. So it was approaching mid-March when Victor called. “You brought it in just in time. The hardening is beginning to fail.”

Notice the discoloration

We talked about whether I should consider upgrading the camshafts to performance parts. It didn’t take much research before I decided to stick to the stock Toyota camshafts. I briefly considered the Stage 2 camshafts from Monkeywrench Racing. Installing those would require replacing the valve springs and they recommend also upgrading to titanium retainers and replacing the valves as well. That’s quite a bit of extra expense, and the result would be a car that’s more fun on the track but less drivable on the street. I enjoy my track time but have no interest in making it harder to drive on the streets. It was an easy decision to stick with the stock parts.

So they picked up a camshaft from the local Toyota dealer and installed it. When they put it all back together, they idled the engine for about forty minutes then took it out for a test drive. Where it promptly died. We were on the phone for a while making sure it wasn’t something silly, like the alarm or the inertia switch. They got it back to the shop, took it apart, and went about diagnosing the problem.

… down the rabbit hole …

It quickly became obvious that something had gone seriously wrong. There were gouges in the cam journals. The head would have to be replaced. When the cams were machined, they left burrs inside. Some of these dislodged and tore through the motor. Victor took the part to the Toyota dealer. They inspected the brand new cams in dealer stock and they had the same issue. It looked like Toyota had a bad batch of cams and poor quality control.

Clam off, factory service manual open

Victor had no doubt that Toyota would reimburse him for the cost of rebuilding the top of my motor. They had him provide estimates from two other shops for the repair. Toyota sent a couple of engineers to Victor’s shop and inspected my car. They agreed that the damage was done by their bad cams. At one point it looked like the only obstruction in making us whole was that we couldn’t enter my Lotus VIN into their warranty software because it wasn’t a Toyota VIN.

Week after week went by with no progress. Finally they agreed to replace their bad parts with good ones but under no circumstances would they cover the cost of repairing the damage their bad part caused. In the end, the camshafts that were finally installed had same defect. Rather than wait for another (potentially bad) cam from Toyota, Victor’s machine shop cleaned them up.

Now things were a bit uncomfortable for Victor. His shop concentrates on old cars; they don’t do much with modern engines. Having his guys work on my car meant they couldn’t work on their bread and butter. And he had to carry the cost pending a trip to small claims court. He felt the best route was to subcontract the complicated repairs out to an expert. So he got a hold of Ryan Chapman, factory certified Lotus mechanic.

This turned into a potential scheduling problem for me as Ryan would do the work on the side. He did the work in Victor’s shop, lacking some of his specialized tools, working on weekends. I was getting pretty nervous about the calendar. See, I had already paid for a track day in Austin at Circuit of the Americas on June 11. It’s the most I’ve ever paid for a track day and it’s non-refundable.

Ryan came through like a champ and got it done on Saturday, June 3. I was ecstatic when Victor confirmed it would be ready for me to pick up at the end of the LoCo drive. Then I was crestfallen when he told me it couldn’t be ready before Tuesday. A sensor had failed and the fan wouldn’t turn on. He couldn’t get a replacement until Monday. But in the end, he got it working by disconnecting and cleaning it.

To recap, I took it in to have the thermostat replaced and the cams inspected. In the end, the final tally was a new thermostat, new cams, a brake flush, and new rear brake pads. The new cams came the hard way, with a complete rebuild, utilizing a new head and new cam caps, with the old valves, springs, retainers, and lifters. Everything cleaned up and flushed out. New fluids all around: oil (with upgraded filter), coolant, brake and clutch.

Victor will have his day in small claims court sometime in July. He showed me all the evidence he’s put together: the defective cam, with burrs, photos of the other defective cams, metal chips, and so on. I asked if I could have the cams as a souvenir after the case is over.

I had a nice chat with Ryan on Monday. He talked a bit about the data dump from my engine. I didn’t make notes, so I may have the numbers wrong. But he said my engine has been between 7,000 and 8,000 RPM for more than three hours. This is about three times longer than any other Elise he’s worked on. I’ve had a massive amount of wide open throttle as well. I’ve done somewhat less than double the typical miles he’s seen, so that’s a factor. But a bigger part is the thirty track days.

So now I’m trying to get everything ready for my trip to COTA with a pretty short lead time. My passenger headlight is out. My left rear turn signal has been out for years now. Ryan says he has a ballast I can put in that will likely fix the problem. And I haven’t been on the second cam yet. Victor recommended not wringing its neck in the first hundred miles. Ryan says I can, but that I shouldn’t run a steady RPM level on my way to Austin – modulate between fifth and sixth to vary my engine speed.

Oh, and the brakes squeal like mad. They’re fine except when braking at under 5 MPH. So it sounds like hell every time I come to a complete stop. I’m hoping this goes away soon. My previous set of pads only made that noise occasionally, and not nearly as loud.

Finally, it just so happened that Victor moved his shop from Greeley to Ft. Collins while my car was under his care. I had a box in the boot with some things I’d like to have with me on my trip, like a can of fix-a-flat, my front license plate, a tire gauge and some tools. And my volleyball knee pads. I wear them on track days so my left knee doesn’t get all bruised up. We went through his shop but didn’t see the box. I’m sure he’ll track it down, but I don’t expect I’ll have it before I leave.

Later…

Chad kindly picked up the ballast from Ryan and agreed to supervise my light bulb replacement. It took me an hour to do the job, because I’m software, not hardware. It’s the third time I’ve performed the operation and I’m still totally inept. But I needed to get it done because I’ll be violating Rule #2 by doing some night driving this weekend.

Unfortunately, the ballast was a no-go. It was as easy as Ryan said, took about two minutes but still no workie.

The car was in the shop for 100 days. Feels like forever.

The noise the brakes make is embarrassing.

LoCo Spring Drive – Day 3

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June 4

For a three day vacation, there wasn’t much sleeping in. We breakfasted and checked out of the hotel and were on the road by 8am. We started off eastbound on I-80 for about twenty miles until we reached WY 130. Going south on WY 130 you cross the top of the T in a T-intersection. To continue on 130 we needed to make a left turn. Continuing straight puts you on WY 230.

We missed the turn. We were in the middle of the pack and assumed nobody else saw it as nobody slowed down or put on a turn signal. I didn’t see it until we were right on top of it, but Genae had no doubt we missed the turn for Snowy Pass. We discussed options, really wanting to turn around. I dithered, wanting to stay with the group. Before long, though, Mike found a spot where we could turn our string of cars around and after a short detour we were back on our proper way. I probably jinxed us yesterday by joking that we hadn’t made any wrong turns.

Medicine Bow Peak and the Snowy Range

The Snowy Range was the highlight of today’s drive. Mike led us to a scenic overlook that was empty, and we lined up the cars in front of the gorgeous backdrop of the Snowy Range. We lined up with the Hyundai and Subaru at the end, and very quickly a Honda Fit pulled into formation with us; an automotive photobomb. They made good by taking our group picture with Peter’s camera; he didn’t have a tripod, so with their help he got to be in the picture.

Photo courtesy Peter Monson

At the eastern foot of the pass we exited pine forest onto the high plains and through the town of Centennial. From there the road goes to Laramie, where we had a pit stop and a picnic in the park. At the gas station, one of the gals working there came out and ogled the cars. “I like that one best”, she said, pointing to the Elan +2, the oldest car in the group. “I like the old ones. I used to have Jaguar E-Type.” She was quite the enthusiast. She told us all sorts of clubs stop here; even the monster trucks came through.

From Laramie we headed south on WY 230. If you’ve been paying attention you may be wondering how we find ourselves on the road that we made a wrong turn on to on the other side of the Snowy Range. This is a fair question. You’ll have to ask somebody at the Wyoming transportation department. It appears that one can enter Colorado in two different places by driving south on WY 230.

In any event, we climb back above the grassy plains and into pine forest, and into Colorado where the route changes designation to CO 127. After a few short miles we exit the forest again and emerge in North Park where we junction with CO 125. (If you stay on CO 127 rather than making a left onto 127 you’ll cross into Wyoming and find yourself heading north on WY 230.)

I’ve lived in Colorado forty years and I’ve never been to North Park before. It was obvious to me where we were; it’s quite similar to South Park but on a smaller scale. A flat, wide, treeless, high altitude valley ringed by snow-capped mountains. We turned east on CO 14 and ascended Cameron pass. I made a point to try to identify what side roads I could, as I plan on coming here for a hike in a few weeks. But without knowing what I was looking for, a road name or route number, I could do little other than to get a sense of the terrain.

We didn’t have to go far down the Poudre canyon to start hitting traffic. We were trying to go only a few mph over the limit. The first couple of cars we caught up to kindly pulled over for us. Then we came upon a truck towing a 30’ trailer. He was oblivious; had a string of cars behind him about a mile long, was going between 10 and 20 mph under the limit, and passed at least three dozen signs advising slow traffic to use the pullouts. He led us all the way to US 287.

When we got out of the canyon, my phone chimed with a text. It was Victor, saying my car was ready. I had Genae reply, telling him I’d call him in a few minutes.

Our next (and last) rally point was the Conoco station at the corner of Wilcox and College. I immediately got on the phone with Victor. He really wanted to get the car to me so he had played around with it some more. He disconnected, cleaned, and reconnected the suspected bad sensor and it worked. I told him I’d stop by his shop after we had dinner with my brother.

I drove the rest of the way home in the Elise, but that’s the end of the next blog entry. I’m finally ready to tell the ordeal of the cam.

LoCo Spring Drive – Day 2

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June 3

We wanted to get an early start today. Our first stop is the Dinosaur Quarry Visitor Center. It’s a short drive from there to the Quarry Exhibit Hall, and by 9:00 we’d have to take the shuttle bus. So we had breakfast and checked out of the hotel by 7:30.

Fossils in the quarry wall

They built a building over a “wall” of fossils; hundreds in a very small place. There are the bones of Allosaurus, Diplodocus, Stegosaurus, and several other behemoths plainly visible, free to be touched (as long as you don’t climb on the wall). The exhibit hall also includes murals and castings and signs detailing the fossils and the history of the quarry.

Quarry Exhibit Hall

The layers of the Earth are nearly vertical here. One of the layers had a faintly blue tint, which reminded me of the John Day fossil bed that I visited on my Oregon trip a few years ago. I asked about the similarity back at the visitors center but the ranger I talked to had only recently started work there and didn’t have an answer.

Swelter Shelter

We took a quick side trip about a half mile up the road to Swelter Shelter. This is a small site with enough parking for maybe half a dozen cars. Just a couple hundred feet from the road you get to see both petroglyphs and pictographs. A petroglyph is an image chipped or carved into the rock while a pictograph is something that is painted on the rock. The pictographs are somewhat more rare, as they’re more easily weathered. Unfortunately, many modern visitors have left their own marks here as well.

 

Extinct and large

After Dinosaur, back to Vernal then north on US 191. After a few miles the road rises steeply, navigating ten switchbacks taking us from high desert to more mountainous terrain – aspen and pine. The Simplot phosphate mine is visible in places on both sides of the highway. There are a couple of scenic overlooks but we dallied longer than expected at Dinosaur and didn’t stop to take in the views.

 

 

Extant and small

For several miles along this route we pass through a number of geological layers; we’re traveling through time. I didn’t have any idea which way we were going, from older to younger or vice-versa. For each layer we traversed there was an accompanying sign by the side of the road: “Morrison formation – where Stegosaurus roamed”. Some referenced “bizarre sharks” or fossilized sand dunes.

Passing through geologic history, we climbed and the terrain changed from high desert to mountain forests of pine and aspen. Flaming Gorge dam was next on our itinerary. US 191 makes a right turn at the junction with UT 44. We continued on 191 to the dam. Here we made notes of what we might see when we come back with the luxury of more time. They give a walking tour of the dam, where you can go deep inside and see the inner workings.

Flaming Gorge dam

On the east side of the dam there’s a road down to a boat ramp on the river. Near the top of this road is a small pullout with a nice view of the face of the dam. We asked some other members of our group if they wanted to go with us but had no takers. By the time we returned to the parking lot half a dozen others changed their minds. That’s okay, though, as there was very little parking.

We headed back down US 191 toward UT 44. Genae was keeping an eye out for a place to pull over so we could get a picture of an interesting bridge we crossed to get to the dam. It’s very much like the bridge at Roosevelt dam near Phoenix. Mike was way ahead of us, though, and had already picked out a spot for a group photo.

Which of these is not like the others?

Next we made another side trip, to Red Canyon overlook this time. There were a number of warning signs: “Steep cliffs. Guard your children!” The view was spectacular. Although we couldn’t hear the boats below us, we could see them clearly. We watched a water skier wipe out. By now it was noon and lunch wasn’t scheduled until we got to Green River. So it was decided we’d change plans and have lunch here. But no food was available; we had ours with us in a cooler (advantage of having cargo space) and a few others had stopped at a Subway in Vernal, but some didn’t have food. So a few cars went ahead of us.

After lunch we took a side trip down the Sheep Rock Geologic Loop for another group photo. We understood the loop was closed and turned around but found out later that some who didn’t have lunch went this way and the loop was open and “spectacular”. While we were stopped for this photo, I saw Ken messing around at the front of our car. He had a magnetic roundel, and temporarily made our car an honorary Lotus.

The terrain changes dramatically as we cross from Utah to Wyoming, from pine and aspen forest to high desert. Along the way we encountered some of the same signs as we saw in the morning, describing each of the geologic layers we traversed.

We stopped for fuel in Green River, WY. This was our originally scheduled lunch stop. It’s a good thing we adjusted our plan, as it was late afternoon by now.

About this time, I exchanged text messages with Victor. He confirmed that the car was ready. But shortly thereafter he called. He was sorry, but the car wouldn’t be ready until Monday at the earliest. He test drove it, but the fan never came on. Evidently the engine head coolant temperature sensor was bad and the fan wasn’t coming on. They can’t get a replacement part until Monday. I was disappointed, to say the least.

The final leg of the day was a blast eastbound on I-80 to Rawlins. We were gassed up and ready to go, so we hit the road first. It didn’t take long for the modern cars to pass us by, but we had a big enough head start that the older cars were still behind us.

After getting checked in at the hotel we had time for a brief rest before heading to dinner at Aspen House. We can be a bit picky when it comes to dining out. We wanted to go over the menu first, thinking we may head off on our own. They don’t have a menu on their website but the Yelp reviews were pretty good so we said “what the heck” and went anyway. This was a good decision. The restaurant operates in an interesting old Victorian house and the food and service were both good.

LoCo Spring Drive – Day 1

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It’s time for another edition of Lotus Colorado’s “Colorado Good.” This time we’re making a loop that covers three states, with stays in Vernal, UT and Rawlings, WY and visits to Dinosaur National Monument and Flaming Gorge Reservoir.

This year the entry list included thirty people in fifteen cars, including nine Lotus. Ours, unfortunately, was not one of them as the Elise is still in the shop. We always have a variety of cars; it’s not really about the cars. But I have to admit that it felt a little off driving the Hyundai. In some subtle ways we were outsiders. Not among the group, of course. But when we drove through towns we were invisible in the Hyundai.

Friday, June 2

Mike’s directions had us rendezvousing at the rest stop in Edwards. The Denver contingent made plans to meet just outside Morrison but we headed off on our own. We’d be in a group for the better part of three days so we took advantage of having a little time on our own.

We left the house at 8:30. We weren’t rushed getting out of the house and it was plenty early. I figured we might have the better part of a half hour to loiter at the rest stop. The weather was quite pleasant – sunny and mostly clear, and calm. Another beautiful day in Colorado.

When I travel I always ask myself, “What did I forget?” I’ve been pretty good lately. I managed to not forget anything on my last several business trips. We were nearly to the assembly point when I realized I’d forgotten the SLR. So it would be cell phone pictures instead. Luckily, cell phones these days do a decent enough job to tell the story. (True, I didn’t take any pictures today, so you’ll have to judge that tomorrow and Sunday.)

As I expected, we were the first to arrive. It’s a nice little rest stop, services both eastbound and westbound traffic and sits a bit off the highway, so it’s fairly quiet. I couldn’t help but notice a “No Loitering” sign on the building. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a rest stop where loitering was specifically prohibited.

By the appointed time we had assembled most of the gang. From here until a few miles outside of Vernal it would be new roads for us. Although we were headed north, we started to the south. We skipped a few miles of interstate this way on our trip to Wolcott where we picked up CO 131 and the drive started in earnest.

I won’t bother with a navigational blow-by-blow. I will say that the highlight of the day was the twenty or so miles we spent on County Road 27 from Oak Creek to the junction with US 40. It’s quite a nice Lotus road, with a smooth surface featuring lots of twists and elevation changes. I’ll admit that it’s not as much fun in the Hyundai; low power and high center of gravity is not as good as high power and a low center of gravity. I look forward to making another pass on it someday in the fun car.

Somewhere around here Victor phoned to tell me my car would be ready tomorrow. I normally don’t care much if we have cell coverage, but I was happy we did at that moment. I’ve been a bit stressed out that I might not get the car back in time for my Austin trip next weekend. So this was a phone call I was happy to get. I reminded Victor that we were on the LoCo drive and we’d be in Ft. Collins on Sunday afternoon. We agreed I’d pick it up then. Excellent news!

We stopped for fuel in Craig, followed by a picnic in the local park. Usually we have to check the route carefully and have a plan for getting food. Will it be Subway again, or do we have multiple choice? The one advantage of not being in the Lotus is having plenty of cargo space. We had not one but two coolers with us, provisioned with ample supplies of cold cuts, cheese, condiments, beverages, and fruit. This gave us a few extra minutes of relaxation.

US 40 goes directly from Craig to Vernal. I drove that section ages ago, on my first trip to California. There’s nothing, really, to see on that road. Mike routed us through Meeker utilizing a couple of state highways. A few more miles, but less traffic and more appealing scenery. We connected back up with US 40 at the village of Dinosaur. Rather than go directly to Vernal and the hotel, we made a quick side trip to the visitor center for Dinosaur National Monument. We arrived there about 4:15.

This entrance to the park gives access to a 31 mile drive to a scenic overlook near the confluence of the Green and Yampa Rivers. It’s about forty-five minutes each way, so taking it this time was out of the question. Someday we’ll spend more time in the neighborhood; we’ll get to it sooner or later.

Our short break over, we resumed US 40 westbound to Vernal. Just after passing through the village of Dinosaur there is a large area adjacent to the road that recently burned. The highway makes a straight southern bound to this area, which was six or seven miles long and perhaps a couple hundred yards to the north. It looked to be quite recent, still smelled freshly charred. Writing this now, I looked it up and discovered that it just happened a few days ago. A 25 mile stretch of US 40 was briefly closed to fight the fire that burned 920 acres of cheat grass and brush on May 30th.

After we got settled in to the hotel we all made our way to the Vernal Brewing Company for dinner. I’m sure it’s hard to seat a table for thirty, so I try to be forgiving. We were offered a limited menu, with the choice of rib eye, salmon, or chicken. I didn’t see anybody with the chicken but did see ribs. Both Genae and I selected the rib eye. Service was good, given the circumstances, but my steak was on the cold side. In addition, it was about the thinnest rib eye I’ve seen. It seemed a bit on the tough side, but that sensation may have been enhanced by the dull cutlery. Not exactly satisfying for $75.

We were back to the hotel a bit after 9pm. It was a long day of driving. We covered more than the usual number of miles. We turned in, looking forward to more sightseeing tomorrow.

Terraforming

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It was somehow important to me to have a big yard. I do enjoy it, even though it’s quite a bit more work than a small yard. Another downside of the big yard is the corresponding big water consumption.

My irrigation system is seven zones. Zone seven is the triangular area north of my driveway. Not long after I bought the Elise we shut that zone down, capped all the sprinkler heads. I park the Chrysler there now. Shortly after that, I quit trying to plant anything in the vegetable garden, so we wanted to shut that off, too. Turned out we were able to cap all the heads but one. Still, between the two zones we cut our irrigation by about a quarter.

We have low water pressure as well. Because of the layout, this affects zone two more than the others. There’s one sprinkler that just keeps an arc of grass green. I had to run my crawler sprinkler to keep the grass green in August. So I need to do something.

In addition, the flower gardens are getting out of control. I’m not a gardener. The previous owner did a great job of planting perennials throughout the property. There’s a great mix of color and the blooms show up at different times. I was able to keep most of the weeds out for several years, with the exception of the morning glory. I never stood a chance against that stuff. The purple bee balm are very nice, until the morning glory tears it down. So I need to do something.

Last spring we lost the three mature arbor vitae we had along the back fence. A heavy snow peeled them like bananas. They were nice screening from the neighbors and I miss them. I need to plant some replacements. Also, while the raspberries in the northeast corner are doing great, the ones I planted later near the shed haven’t done anything. I know what I did wrong, and it can be fixed.

So here’s the plan. First, convert zone two to a drip system. Cap off all the heads but one, and run a line along the east and south fences. Tear out the overgrown weedy flower beds, replace a good section of lawn with stone. Cut some “windows” in the stone around the raspberries by the shed. Plant three small arbor vitae, a bit closer together than the old ones, but slightly better located. And run stone along the back fence to the big raspberry patch.

First, then, the easy part: have Ben come out and do the sprinkler work. He and a helper capped all the heads off, put a pressure reducer on the one working head, and run the hose. They also placed the weed barrier fabric over the lawn. They were done in about two hours.

I had paced out the proposed contour and decided I have plenty of blocks; I wouldn’t have to buy any more, just rearrange them. But once we had the fabric laid down, it became obvious I needed a slight change in plan. I should put a ring around the locust tree, not as big as the existing one, but proportional to it’s space. After laying out this change, I was ten blocks short.

The shopping list then is something like this:

  • 3 arbor vitae (5 gal)
  • 10 blocks
  • 2 more rolls of weed barrier
  • 6 perennials
  • 3 bags of topsoil
  • 4 bags of red mulch
  • 18 tons 1-1½ inch local river rock

The big expense on this project is the stone, obviously. That’s true in dollar terms and the amount of time and physical effort involved. I’ve done this a few times before. I put seven and a half tons of stone in the side yard when I replaced the fence I share with Jeff. And another eleven and a half tons when I took the grass out next to the driveway. In Gilbert I did both front and back yards, two different kinds of stone. I want to say twenty tons of one and fifteen of the other, but that’s probably wrong.

The driver who brought the stone told me he couldn’t bring more than fifteen tons at a time, so it took two trips. First he dropped twelve tons and an hour later the remaining six, right on top of the first load. I asked him what the conversion was between volume and weight. I knew rock this size would be more than a ton per cubic yard. He told me a ton was about two and a half feet cubed. I asked how many wheelbarrows he thought would make the ton; he said six or seven. I told him it would be more than ten for me. Making the prediction pretty much meant I’d have to count.

While I was spreading this rock it was inevitable I’d have a number of stray thoughts.

Before

What’s the definition of work? Force times distance. That was too much work for me to figure out. I knew mass and distance, but force was beyond me. How can I verify the truck driver’s estimate of the volume? The pile is roughly cone-shaped, about fifteen feet in diameter and five feet high. But it’s a bit elongated, and bulges a bit. What’s the formula for the volume of a cone?

I was unable to do the math in my head as I was working. And I had the wrong formula for the volume. With the correct formula and a calculator, we find that at 2.5 feet cubed per ton works out to 281.3 cubic feet while the cone is 294.5. So my eyeball guesstimate of the size of the pile wasn’t too bad.

After

It took me three weekends (and a few days in between) to move it all. I hauled 211 wheelbarrows full of stone an average of about 180 feet. It turns out I could have done with only fifteen tons. My neighbor took seven wheelbarrows and I spread about 30 loads where I already had good coverage. So that’s a total of 218 wheelbarrows which makes it a tad over 12 loads per ton.

Somebody told me it should take forty-five minutes to move each ton, but they didn’t ask how far I was moving it, so it could take more or less. I was taking a short break every five loads. With breaks, I averaged about five minutes per load. So that’s an hour a ton. Chad and Tim pitched in the last two days, so the last four and a half tons went a bit faster.

I’m hoping this is the last pile of stone I’ll ever have to deal with.

I didn’t do a very good job of taking “before” pictures, and I didn’t make great notes on how long it took to do the other tasks.

It was about an hour to rearrange the blocks and another hour to move several wheelbarrows of soil from the vegetable garden to the new ring around the locust tree. Each window for the raspberries by the shed took an hour, and routing the drip line under the brick path was another hour or so. Two hours to plant the new plants. Roughly four hours to dig up the overgrown flower gardens and two more hours removing shrub and rose stumps. Another couple hours laying down the weed fabric.

So eighteen hours to move the stone and fifteen for everything else. Thirty three spread over about three weeks elapsed time.

Columbine

I got the flowers planted just in time for a big hail storm, which was followed by a wet, heavy snow a week later. Being under the tree, they weren’t too shredded by the hail and I used the 5 gallon containers the arbor vitae came in to cover them when it snowed. They survived, and appear to be thriving.

The transplanted irises may be a different story. I know it’s not a good time to replant irises, but I figured I’d try to save some. If they die, they die, what do I have to lose? I only moved a few. They’re looking limp and are changing color. But they’re not totally dead. Yet.

Lake Haiyaha

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April 8, 2017

I don’t hike to very many places during the winter. Lake Haiyaha is one I’d like to visit more, but I can’t seem to figure out the route on my own. I used the summer route once, but I didn’t like it and won’t go that way again. So, until I get it figured out, I need navigational assistance. Thus far, that means I have Ed show me the way. This time, it was with a group of internet friends who get together once a year for just this purpose.

I went with the group a couple of years ago. It wasn’t the same group, really, but a different subset of the group. This time I got to meet for the first time a few of the folks I’ve known for a while online.

I find Haiyaha to be one of the more interesting lakes in the area during winter. The water level for all the lakes is reduced compared to summer, but the difference between summer and winter is greater here than any of the other lakes I visit, measured in feet rather than inches.

It was windy at the lake, as is expected this time of year, so we didn’t spend much time there. I set up the camera and we retreated back down the trail a bit for a sheltered picnic spot. When done eating, everybody started back down the trail. I went back to get the camera and caught up to them. I had to backtrack again. I wanted a sip of water and found that I had dropped my water bottle somewhere along the way, so I had to go back up the hill a way to find it.

The route isn’t well-traveled like most of the other places I go in winter. I don’t really care for snow shoes and on my other winter hikes I can get along just fine with microspikes instead. I asked Ed beforehand if spikes would be sufficient but he recommended the snow shoes. I was thinking it was bad advice until we were on the way back. In the morning, spikes would have worked just fine but with the sun beating down on the snow all day conditions got a bit different and I was glad I listened to Ed’s sage advice.

After the hike, Brent and I chatted over beers at the brew pub. The rest of the gang, plus others, got together for pizza later. Unfortunately, I felt the better use of my time was to go home and finish my taxes. Sometimes, adulting is hard.

 

Laps in the Chrysler

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April 2, 2017

I joined Lotus Colorado before I had a Lotus. At my first meeting John Arnold announced a track day at a brand new track, High Plains Raceway. I asked him if he’d laugh at me if I took the Chrysler. “What kind of Chrysler?” So the first car I ever drove on a race track was the Chrysler.

I have no idea what sort of times I put in that first day. In my misspent youth, I hung out a lot at Malibu Grand Prix playing pinball and video games. Their big attraction was the cars. They were rotary engined, bigger than go karts, capable of seventy miles an hour in a straight line. The track was a half mile long, never more than twenty feet in a straight line. Most folks had no problem putting in a 65 second time. My first shot I thought I was really hauling ass. It was 90 seconds. That first track day in the Chrysler, I thought I was really hauling ass. For the last couple years I’ve wondered what sort of time I could to in the Chrysler today, now that I know the track and have sort of learned how to drive a car fast.

So why do I bring this all up?

Several weeks ago I paid for an afternoon of lapping on April 2nd. Then I took the Elise in to the shop for some work. Unfortunately, she’s still there, five weeks and counting, likely some more weeks to go. I’ll save the gory details for another time, but the short version is that a defective Toyota part has caused some complications.

I made a half-hearted attempt to give my sessions to somebody else but found no takers. So I decided to satisfy my curiosity and run a few laps in the airport limo. The plan was to do an out lap and two or three laps then quit.

That first time, the 300M was ten years old and had been garaged all her life. Now she’s about to turn eighteen and has been sitting outside for seven years. The clear coat is peeling like a bad sunburn; windshield is cracked; rear-view mirror is off for the fourth time, adhesive failure. She’s tired, wanders a bit on the highway, needs new bushings all around. Any more than a few laps would be cruel to her.

When I got off the highway in Byers, the check engine light came on.

I ran a few laps anyway.

What an entirely different experience than the Lotus. The steering wheel feels giant when wrestling the car through the turns. I was all elbows, like a power forward grabbing that contested rebound. The car is nearly twice the mass of the Elise. It has more rubber on the ground and has brakes about the same size as the Elise. But with all that weight I felt like I was driving a bus, giant steering wheel and all.

After only a few laps the brakes were getting pretty hot. The pedal would get long along with the stopping distances. Not long into the session I also noticed that the car figured out I was doing something unusual as it turned off traction control for me. Pretty clever.

I expected to be the slowest car on the track, so I ran with the novice group. I wasn’t quite the slowest car. I only ran two sets of laps, an hour apart. The first session, I spent most of my time waving cars by me. A couple of very slow cars waved me by. I didn’t get anything like a clear lap. The second session was better in spite of being stuck behind a truck the whole time.

It was an F-150 Lightning. I don’t know my trucks. I’m working under the assumption that it’s an SVT because if it’s an older one, I got owned by a bigger, older vehicle with less power. This guy slowed me down only slightly. He had more power, could pull me on the straights and up the steep hills, I caught him in the twisty bits. I could have gone a little bit faster if he’d have let me by, but it’s always fun to run nose-to-tail with somebody doing similar lap times. Even if you can measure them with an hourglass.

There were two Lotus there, Ryan with his orange Exige and a new guy with a red 05 Elise. I think he told me his name was Cory. He’s had the car a bit over a year and this is his second track day. It’s supercharged. He gave me a ride and I tried to give him some pointers. I didn’t say anything for a couple of laps, to get a sense of how fast the car would go. I thought it would be a bad idea to suggest my braking points if he’s going ten miles an hour faster.

The car seemed to be more of a handful than mine. I think the track pack makes quite a bit of difference. I’m sure I’d have a better sense as a driver than passenger, but there seemed to be quite a lot more pitch and roll.

After we got the checker, he kept pushing it. I figured he’d go until we caught the guy in front of us, but he kept going fast, too. Then, cresting the hill in turn 7 he lost it, fully sideways one way, then fully sideways the other, big swings of a pendulum. The second swing wasn’t as big and I thought for a split second that he caught it, but no. The car was half in the weeds, showering us with dust and dead grass. He had a GoPro mounted on the windshield, but I don’t know that it was running.

Before we left, I wanted to put some air back in the tires. The car stalled when I went to back it up to the air hose. And it was reluctant to start when I was ready to leave.

So, here’s the lapping video nobody really wants to see: