LOG 35, Day 4

Posted on September 3, 2015 by dhill

Monday, August 24

The printed schedule indicated an 8am start for track day, but this was incorrect. At the buffet last night, Ross made an announcement that we should be there at 7 instead. So it’s another early morning; I left the hotel before 6:30, stopped at the gas station to top off the tank, and headed south on I-25 to PPIR.

I was thinking I’d arrive just on time, thus being one of the later arrivals. To my surprise, the gate wasn’t open yet and we were queueing up in two lines. It didn’t take long to see that I was one of the earlier ones and we’d soon have people stacked up on the interstate. A few of us started directing traffic down the side road to a dirt lot. So much for the 7 o’clock start; the schedule would be shifted an hour.

After signing the track’s waiver at the gate, we stopped at another line before entering the track where we turned in our paperwork and picked up our numbers. I’ve done nearly 30 track days and this is the first one I’ve had to have a number.

I’ve only run laps at PPIR once before, with CECA. That time we were in the garages which was quite nice. Plenty of room to put our gear, out of the sun and wind. No garages today, though. After emptying the car and affixing our numbers and letters (I was A group, car 25) we went into the classroom for the drivers meeting.

Usually they go over all the rules – which flags are in use (typically just yellow, red, and black) and tell us where we are allowed to pass. They did talk about flags but passing zones must have been discussed in yesterday’s meeting, which I missed due to being here at the autocross. No worries; I’ve been here before and know the drill. I did get some good news and some bad news. The good news was that I didn’t have to have an instructor with me, not even for the first session. The bad news, I had to keep the soft top on. So the camera got mounted on the harness bar rather than top center where I have the new adhesive mount. I later found out I wasn’t allowed to take a passenger.

I didn’t count the A group cars. There were perhaps a dozen for the first session. Greg in his formula car, a couple Esprits, a couple Evoras, a couple Exiges, me and few others. We were the first group to run, so I was in a bit of a hurry after the meeting. This is when I found out that after upgrading my phone, I needed to sign on to my RaceChrono account in order to get lap times and OBD data. Unfortunately, I was unable to remember my password, so no data acquisition today. Oh well.

This was my first track day since I started wearing the Fitbit. I was curious how much I really work in the car. But I didn’t think of turning it on until the third run, and then I forgot to turn it off for a half hour. Maybe next time I’ll do better.

Today wasn’t really a track day – it officially was a driving school. That’s why I couldn’t take a passenger – only instructors were allowed passengers. Much as our autocross was run by SCCA, the driving school was run with the aid of the Mercedes Benz club. I’ve never run with them; because we were using their insurance we weren’t allowed to go topless unless we had arm restraints. This has never been the case for me before.

Because this was a driving school, I was a bit surprised to see nobody had put cones out on the course. Usually the organizers place cones at the apex of each turn at a minimum, plus turn in and run out. I assume they got the cones out after our first session as they were there next time. In any event, I had my line figured out after a few laps.

This is not my favorite track. No, that’s not true. It’s my least favorite track. We run on about three quarters of the speedway plus the small infield section. The road course section of most ovals takes up the majority of the infield. Here at PPIR, more than half the infield is taken by parking lots, garages, and other buildings. With so little room for the road section it’s a bit rinky-dink. And, of course, I’m not going to push very hard on the speedway section – a mistake here and you’re in the wall. All other tracks I’ve been on have plenty of room if you go off – there’s nothing to hit unless you really screw up.

Most of the cars in my group were faster. I passed a yellow Esprit several times, and a blue Evora. But because we were not a large group, I only had to wave by faster cars a few times. In the second session, just as I was catching the yellow Esprit, Greg caught me in his formula car. The yellow Esprit waved him by, then waved me by. By the time I completed my pass, we were well into the turn on the speedway. A few corners later I was shown the black flag. Oops, I should have waited to pass him. I think I was the only driver given the black flag all day.

Between sessions I visited with a number of people. Most track days, I know many of the people from other events – the local track rats. Today I had the opportunity to socialize with folks from all over, including a couple from Ottawa. They had flown in, so weren’t participating; he said he enjoyed running at Loudon, New Hampshire. They solve their small infield problem by running a road section outside the oval.

I only ran three sessions. I normally have an extra five gallons of gas but didn’t bring the can with me on this trip. I normally try to run as many laps as I can – get my money’s worth. But missing a session here didn’t bother me that much. I was all packed up and on the road by 3:30 and home by 5:30. I’d almost forgotten how much fun rush hour traffic can be. I’m spoiled by working at home.

I couldn’t check out the Fitbit data until after I got home. I always knew I was working hard in the car – I’m often breathing pretty hard, and your basic rule of thumb is four heartbeats per breath – but I had no real sense of how hard. The Fitbit tells me I was in peak zone for three minutes and the cardio zone for fourteen. Total that’s a bit over half the time. When I wasn’t in the cardio zone my heart rate was still above 100 much of the time. So a half hour running laps in the car is not quite as strenuous as hiking for a half hour.

LOG 35, Day 3

Posted on August 31, 2015 by dhill

Sunday, August 23

Our first event of the day is the group drive to the summit of Pikes Peak. We had arranged with the city (the Pikes Peak road is operated by Colorado Springs) to be on the mountain before anybody else, so that meant another early rise. We left the hotel at 6:30 in a giant caravan to the North Pole parking lot where we lined up and waited for the Rangers to give us our passes. We pretty much filled their lot. Rangers passed out brochures – these were our tickets in. They did this instead of putting stickers on everybody’s windshield.

We passed the dozen or so folks lined up at the gate. It was pretty well known that we wouldn’t be staying within the speed limit, but we were told not to go crazy – if we overstepped we would be shut down. I later learned Clive Chapman led the charge. We were nowhere near the front of the line, but it was certainly the fastest I’ve ever made it to the top.

We got there 40 minutes before the store opened. It was cold and a bit windy and several folks really wanted to use the restrooms but we had to be patient. When they finally opened, the clerks said they weren’t warned so many people would be there; they were overwhelmed. It’s always cold and windy on top of 14ers, so the weather wasn’t unexpected. The smoke was bad again, but not too bad, and we were above it.

I assume most people headed out on one of the three scenic drives. We did our drive to Cripple Creek yesterday because I had autocross in the afternoon. Genae isn’t at all interested in standing around in a parking lot for three or four hours so she went to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. I headed to PPIR.

We were on the schedule for 2pm. I’d been telling people it would be more like 3 or 3:30 but there was no general announcement. I wish I’d been able to get more people signed up the evening before. It was kind of hectic – I had forms and numbers and a notebook but no where to spread out. The wind was blowing, so everything had to be in the passenger seat of the car. At first I was able to deal with the entrants one by one but before long they were arriving two and three at a time, I eventually had everybody’s forms and had assigned a class and number.

The SCCA guys were great. We had a short meeting then set off to walk the course. Before the cars were let loose, Bill and Jon set the “slow” times in their wheelchairs. I’m pretty sure Bill has done this before – he had a more favorable final drive ratio or better charge in his batteries or both. Skip ran in his Baby 7, a one-third scale Lotus 7 go-kart. Eric and Kelly Dean not only had their Lotus but entered their Tesla as well.

I was working a corner for the first group. Second group was Elise and Exige, first group was everybody else. Nobody ever hit a cone in our sector, but we had several people DNF. The most fun was trying to get Skip to complete the course. The first time, he cut about a quarter of the course off. Each time after that I tried to point him in the right direction.

SCCA said we’d get four runs, I asked for 5 if we could be finished by six. In any event, we’d all miss the track day drivers meeting that somehow got scheduled for 5pm. We did get five runs and were done a few minutes before six so nobody would be late for the Mexican buffet that started at seven back at the hotel.

This was my second autocross. I had four different passengers on my five runs, going out solo only once. My first time was a 58 and I got better each run until the last, when I got sideways. Had I kept it straight, it would have been my fastest run. I’ll admit to being pleased that I was setting pretty good times. At my first autocross, I was about mid-pack among the rookies but only at the top end of the bottom quartile of all competitors. Today, most of our group were rookies or hadn’t done autocross often or recently.

Everybody seemed to have a good time, so I think it was a successful event. I hung around for a few extra minutes to collect the results, which Cynthia and Terry volunteered to collate.

I was back to the hotel just in time to stand in line for the Mexican buffet. After we ate, Ross made some announcements, then I got up and presented the results. People were very gracious and applauded everybody, even me when I said I’d gotten second in the Elise NA class. We all collected our trophies and sat down to watch Ross do a Tonight Show with Johnny Carson routine to chat with the evening’s guests – Clive Chapman, Arnie Johnson, and Dave Bean.

Unfortunately, I missed much of what was said. Just after it got underway I realized our results didn’t include Phil. He’d been running autocross with SCCA all day, so he already had done his paperwork and gotten a number. I didn’t put him on our entry list, so I never got his results. Turns out he was second in our class, so I gave him my trophy. I felt I couldn’t take the third place trophy from the guy we announced, so Tatiana and Jeremy gave me the 2nd place autocross for the race prepped car class. There were no entrants in that class.

It’s a pretty cool trophy, even if it’s not exactly what I won. Tatiana and Jeremy did a fantastic job making these; it’s a pretty neat little memento.

LOG 35, Day 2

Posted on August 30, 2015 by dhill

Saturday, August 22

The first event on the docket for Saturday was the panorama photo. We arranged a location with a view of Garden of the Gods and Pikes Peak. We first time LOG attendees were told that quite a few people want to arrive at the photo location early so they could get a prominent spot up front. So we volunteers had to arrive early; we were to direct people onto the lawn and get them lined up in good order. So I was up before six even though the photo wouldn’t actually happen until 9:30.

I didn’t count but we had something like a dozen folks directing traffic, starting in the street, winding through the parking lot, over the sidewalk, onto the lawn, then around in a large arc to get people lined up in concentric semicircles. Some had asked if we were going to try to arrange the cars by model or to abide by the “Ross Rule” – adjacent cars can’t be the same color. Attempting either of these would be futile and time consuming. Our task was simply to get them lined up.

Volunteering for this task had two nice side effects. First, I got a spot in the front of the photo. Second, and perhaps more interesting, I got a good look at every car as it came in and was able to chat with many of the owners. I never did see an official car count but there were something like 130+ cars there. Of course, I’d seen the cars in the hotel parking lot but generally the owners weren’t there.

Of note, there’s a rare Autumn Gold car with Colorado plates. Only eight of that color were imported to the USA. One was totaled and another went to Norway. I wondered how we had a local car like that and I’d never seen it before but somebody told me he’s from Pagosa Springs, so he’s not really local. Another interesting and rare color was Ice White. I’d never seen one before and asked if it was a custom color. No, just rare. A couple from California have an Isotope Green Elise. It wasn’t the only IG car there, but it was the only IG car with matching fuzzy dice and beanies.

The weather couldn’t have been much better – the morning was cloudless and clear of smoke.

Once we got everybody situated, we just had to wait until the sun was high enough to chase the shadows of all the cars. This allowed plenty of opportunity for folks to take pictures. Some put in more than the usual amount of effort – one guy brought out a drone. We take two pictures – one with people standing by their cars, one without. Each photo is comprised of about eight shots. I ordered a copy of the one with people.

After the shoot we headed back to the hotel. The rest of the morning was a Concours. Two, really – the judged one and the people’s choice. We didn’t enter the judged one, it’s more for the classic cars anyway. And we had no chance of winning the people’s choice for two reasons – first, there were a hulluva lot of great looking cars and second, we weren’t there. Most folks would be doing the road trips after Pikes Peak. I was doing autocross, though, so now was the time to do it.

First I had to try to resolve a dilemma. I was signed up for the track day but because I was out of town all week I didn’t have a chance to get the car inspected. BOE Engineering was a sponsor and had a large presence. So I went to their trailer and asked if they’d be kind enough to take care of it. The guy I talked to said I should return at 3 and they’d take car of me.

Three drives had been mapped out – a short one, a medium one, and a long one. Because we had to be back by three, we had little choice but the short one. Which worked out fine, as that was to Cripple Creek. I’ve lived in Colorado for more than forty years but have never been there. Genae’s never been there either.

US highway 24 headed west from I-25 is always crowded. On a summer weekend, it’s your basic stop-and-go bumper-to-bumper slog. It started loosening up once we passed the turnoff for Pikes Peak, tomorrow morning’s destination. Before long we were in Woodland Park. I’m pretty sure I’ve never been west of Woodland Park on US 24 before.

At Divide, we make a left turn to head south on CO 67. The road was bumpy and crowded but scenic. I say “crowded” but it wasn’t too bad. There were no long strings of cars, and we were even able to pass a few slow ones. It’s a very scenic drive. The route we took had us loop back to US 24 via Teller County Road 1. It carries less traffic and was quite pleasant.

We’d like to go back explore more of the region. The town itself is no longer interesting to us. When limited stakes gambling was first allowed, one of the big selling points was that the revenue would be means for historical preservation. I view it along the lines of the Vietnam war: “we had to destroy the village to save it”. I have no basis of comparison for Cripple Creek, but huge swaths of old buildings were removed and replaced by casinos in Black Hawk and Central City.

We stopped for a bite at Arby’s in Woodland Park and in spite of two navigational errors were back to the hotel a few minutes before three. I went over to the BOE trailer but the guy I had talked to earlier wasn’t there. The BOE guys said I should talk to the Concours Auto guy next door. He said I could show up at their shop Monday morning and get my inspection. Clearly, he wasn’t tuned in to the fact that track day was Monday. I thought I had him talked into doing one there in the parking lot but he decided not to. He said his liability insurance wouldn’t cover him if he did the inspection away from his shop. Does them doing an inspection actually imply liability? I don’t think so, but whatever.

So I went back and cornered one of the BOE guys. He and his colleagues closed up their trailer, then they abandoned him with me. I told him I’ve been throwing lean codes with the new intake. He told me a tune would run me eight hundred bucks. I think I’ll pass on that and just put the stock airbox back on. He also suggested I replace the bullet studs the previous owner installed and use the ones I have on the left rear. I will take that under advisement. He was very friendly and helpful.

Saturday evening was the big banquet. Genae had talked to Ann about the dress code so I planned to get all dressed up. My maximum is a sport coat and a tie. I think it’s the second time I’ve worn a tie in six or seven years.

The banquet starts at seven, with a social hour prelude. Instead of being social, I needed to get set up at a table and try to register my autocross attendees. We gave no notice we were doing this, and I didn’t even get a table until the last minute. Ross told me to share the table with the panorama photographer. He needed the whole table. The other table already there was for Bobby Unser to sign autographs. Finally the banquet staff brought me a table.

I needed to get each entrant to fill out SCCA’s weekend membership form and assign them a class and number. I had printed a bunch of numbers to be taped on the cars. I had a dozen of each digit. So I spread all this out on my table. It was funny watching people trying to figure out what I was selling. Something like 35 people had signed up for autocross but I only managed to get a dozen taken care of.

Not long after I got set up, Bobby Unser and his wife arrived and sat at the table to my left, signing autographs. He had a line of five or six people at one point, but generally there were only ever one or two people at his table. A woman approached me and said, “I understand you’re signing autographs.” I’ve either been mistaken for an 81 year old man or somebody was looking to get an autograph of somebody they know nothing about. I point to Unser and tell her, “You probably want him, but I’d be happy to give you my autograph.”

Later I made the same joke with another woman. She said, “You’re very attractive and all, but…” just as Genae walks up. “She was flirting with you.”

At seven I packed up my numbers and forms and headed to our table. Genae had the beef, I had the chicken. We’d been carrying the dinner coupons on the back of our name tags. Chicken was on yellow paper, salmon on pink, beef on red. When my name tag was showing the wrong side out, it identified me as “Chicken”. After we ate, Bobby Unser got up on stage and told stories of Pikes Peak and Indy, then answered questions. He’s a fairly entertaining fellow.

One question was, “How did the deaths of other drivers affect him?” He says he never feared death, and, as bad as it might sound, was indifferent to the deaths of his competitors. He had to be. He was injured many times; spent a lot of “sheet time” (time in the hospital). He now has difficulty walking and can’t stand for any amount of time.

Festivities wrapped up at ten to end a full day of LOG.

LOG 35, Day 1

Posted on August 26, 2015 by dhill

Last weekend was LOG 35. What’s that, you say?

Lotus Ltd is the national Lotus owners club. Every year they have a national meet – the Lotus Owners Gathering, or LOG. This year is LOG 35. People come from all over the country, some driving their classic cars, others flying in. Activities include a concours d’ elegance, banquets, and scenic drives. There’s always a panoramic group picture of the cars. There may be a track day or an autocross as well.

Elite

Lotus Ltd handles various administrative tasks, but the majority of the work is done by volunteers, usually members of the local chapter that is hosting the event. This year Lotus Colorado hosted it in Colorado Springs.

These are major events. We basically took over a Marriott hotel and overflowed to another hotel nearby. We used all the hotel’s conference space – ballrooms, meeting rooms, a tent pavilion outside, and, obviously, the parking lot. We had a store on the premises. They even let us take down all the art they had in the common areas and display our own. The portrait of JW Marriott himself was about the only thing of theirs we left up.

To make one of these work, pretty much everybody in the club has to contribute. I volunteered (or was selected, it’s all a bit fuzzy) to be the autocross event chair. I think I had the easiest of the jobs. On the more difficult side you had people working with the hotel, obtaining sponsors, finding guest speakers, making trophies, making signs, running the concours, running the drivers school, and the list goes on.

As I said, I had one of the easier jobs. SCCA actually put on our event, all I had to do was liaise with them and make sure the entrants filled out the right paperwork. That said, when I took on the task I had never even attended an autocross.

I knew that an autocross is a competitive, timed event. A course is laid out on a parking lot using traffic cones. Cars run the course one at a time. Competitors are divided into classes based on size, horsepower, tires, and other factors. That was about all I knew. I fixed that by attending my first autocross back in March.

So that’s the background.

Friday, August 21

Let’s actually start Thursday evening. I flew in from Albuquerque, arriving at about seven. I didn’t have a window seat (I prefer the aisle) and the guy next to me kept the blind closed for the entire flight. I was surprised, then, to find that smoke from the wildfires in California and the Pacific northwest filled the air. Visibility was only about five miles and the sun was a dull red disk. When I got home, I pulled the dirty clothes out of the suitcase and repacked it with clean.

S1 Elise

Friday morning Michael and I mounted the track tires on the car as I was doing both the autocross and the track day. I needed to wash the car as well, but there wasn’t time for that. The track wheels were clean, though, which went a long way to making the car presentable. When I backed the car out of the driveway the tires were rubbing something awful. Somehow we’d managed to mount the left rear wheel on the front. I’ll blame Michael, but it was silly of me not to see it right away. That remedied, I ran off to the barber to get myself presentable.

We packed all our stuff in Genae’s car. We had far too much to carry in the Lotus, but the real reason to take two cars was so she wouldn’t be stranded. I left the house a few minutes before she did. I mentioned to her that I’d avoid the interstate but didn’t think to mention how much longer my route might take. I w

ent through Sedalia and Palmer Lake; a much more scenic and relaxed drive than I-25.

By the time I got to the hotel, Genae had checked us in to our room. We made two or three trips carrying stuff from the car and when that was done we registered for LOG. It’s much like registering for a conference – go from table to table, signing forms, collecting a goody bag, getting a name tag. We even got signs for the parking lot so we’d be in the same spot all weekend.

Westfield Eleven

We arranged to have people park by type of car. To get into Lotus parking you had to do the “Lotus limbo” – drive under a horizontal pole. This kept the riffraff out. The more rare classic cars were closer to the festivities, the newest and most common cars (Elises, natch) were the farthest away. Conveniently, though, the car wash we set up was in our area so I took advantage and had her bathed – she was cleaner than she’d been for two years.

Genae is a big fan of Godfathers Pizza. They make a taco pizza that’s her favorite. We’ve tried making them at home but haven’t come close. A bit of research told her there was a Godfathers on the Air Force Academy, so after the car was washed we headed that way.

Civilians and visitors have to use the north entrance. It used to be that you could just drive in, but now I’m guessing its SOP to stop every vehicle. When we pulled up we were about eighth in line. Some got waved right through, some took a bit longer. When we pulled up, the sentry asked for my ID and I gave it to him. He also said “I’m gonna have to ask you to pop the trunk.”

There’s no “popping the trunk”. I shut it off, got out, opened the boot. Nobody else had to open their trunk. “What’s a car like this cost?”

Europas

Our GPS wanted us to take Parade Loop, but a sign indicated it was closed. I asked the sentry how to get to Godfathers and he said just to stay on this road. So we did. The road took us around the north side of the campus complex, past the practice fields and to a guest parking lot. No restaurant in sight.

The next turn on the road revealed the visitor center, so we stopped in there and asked for directions. “Drive your vehicle to the guest lot. There’s a glass front building there, that’s where you’re going.” These are not the best directions: all the buildings are glass front. Genae phoned Godfathers for about the fourth time and was told they were in Arnold Hall. (This, presumably, is named for General Hap Arnold, Chief of the Army Air Forces in WW II.)

We joked that this pizza better be worth all the effort it took to get here. The restaurant is part of a small food court along with a Subway and a wings place. It’s now the last Godfathers in Colorado.

The evening was spent socializing – drinks in the hotel bar, wandering around the parking lot seeing who drove which car from where, and then dinner in the pavilion. We had our choice of turkey or roast beef followed by a choice of desserts. After dark we even had a short laser light show back in the pavilion followed by announcements of the next days activities and schedule.