Nothing really that big, but I ran pretty much my first 5k distance today. Jogged for 3.1 miles around the neighborhood in right at 33 minutes. Nothing spectacular as far as speed, but then again, 6 months ago, no way I could have run that. I’m getting in shape! My goal is a 25 minute 5K, so now I have a nice path to follow and can track my progress.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/22177607
So its been a loong time since I’ve posted on the blog, over 2 months! I’ve had a couple of races over a few months, and overall been super busy. Lots of changes in everything from a new position at work to personal life stuff. Lets just say that I’m living “by myself” now 
I’ve gone through the car after Daytona and performed some maintenance and a few upgrades to get it ready for the next race. Its the SIC, which will determine the SE year end champion. Right now, Kip VanSteenburg and myself are tied in points, so its winner take all at this next race. Only “performance” upgrade is to redo the alignment and corner weights to optimize the car for the next race at Roebling Road in October. I’ve also added a fire system instead of a plain extinguisher and replaced wear items like axles and wheel bearings so the car is in tip top shape for the important weekend. I’m hoping that with this new handling setup and the new rear swaybar, the car will be even more awesome then it was earlier in the year where I beat Kip at Roebling twice.
After that its onto the ARRC the first weekend in November. The car will be absolutely perfect for this race and I’m really looking forward to it. It should be faster then it was last year (added splitter, swaybar, etc) and I know I can drive the car a bit better then last year. Hopefully I can walk away from this even National Champ. We’ll see what happens.
Coming up next weekend though is the Petit Lemans at Road Atlanta. The ALMS is in town, along with support races from Speed World Challenge and the VW Jetta Cup. My friend AJ Nealy is racing in the VW Jetta cup and I’ll be there cheering for him like crazy. I’m also on a photo assignment from Grassroots Motorsports, so I’ll have my camera, an assortment of rocking lenses, and be shooting all weekend. Should have a few thousand shots probably and will post the best here after the weekend. Can’t wait!
Its not like *I* did this, cause of course its not allowed on AT&T, but if you were so inclined, you could you know, do this yourself, to enable Tethering, MMS, and also not break Visual Voicemail like some of the other guides do.
Follow the instructions here, except use a different ipcc file. The one on his site, I heard, breaks Visual Voicemail. If you use the .ipcc file that is found here you don’t end up breaking Visual Voicemail.
Basic Instructions for a mac (PC instructions in link above) are
Now there are additional steps to enable MMS if you’re so inclined. If I was doing this, I wouldn’t bother, as I don’t really care about MMS, and you end up having to mess with your att account.
I’ve been watching the show Good Eats lately. Coupled with the fact that I enjoy FoodTV sometimes, our neighbors house/baby sit for Alton Brown, so I’m a fan. I saw an episode on the home made smoker and it got me intrigued. I’ve never tried smoking, and frankly, I’m not that much of a cook. When I do it though, I tend to enjoy it. A few google searches later I find that quite a few people have made these successfully, and a tested parts list. Sold!
First stop was Pike nursery for the Terracotta pot and bowl top for $30 total. I pick up the recommended $10 hot plate at Walgreens, and an $8 Weber grate at Home Depot. I also bought a meat probe/thermometer at BBB as my pimpy wireless one from Brookstone took a dump 
$48 later, I’ve got a smoker!
I decided to follow some of the advice on the forums and locate the controls of the hot plate outside of the pot. That way, all the plastics are outside of the heat, and I can control the temperature as I please. It was easy as pie. One screw on top and everything comes apart. The base is strong and sturdy, so I decided to use it as the base for the entire smoker. Figured since it supports my weight, its good enough for the pot/top. I then cut out a piece of plywood to go in between the pot and the hot plate controls to keep the heat away from the plastic. Lastly, I found a small clay pot/water holder thing that I broke in half to stabilize the hot plate part on the bottom of the pot. I tried it on Friday night and got some great results, as I was able to hold 230-240 degrees on the lowest setting with no meat in the smoker.
Following Alton Brown’s directions, I brined the pork in salt, water, and molasses for 10 hours before cooking. Fired it into the smoker last night at 11:30pm. I used an aluminum pie plate (mistake 1) and Hickory chips (mistake 2) as that’s all that was avail at the grocery store. The mistakes turned out to be very minor, but I learned my lessons for next time. The aluminum pie plate burned right through and the hickory chips ended up right on the burner (iron bowl for next time). They burned/smoked quickly as they were small (getting chunks next time) and brought the temp up pretty high (250) right off the bat. I let that go for an hour or so, and as they burned/smoked off, the temp came back down to 220. Right before going to bed, I took the pork out and put some more chips in, but this time around the outside instead of right in the middle of the burner. I’m going to make a couple of U bolt handles for the grill grate to make this process easier for next time.
Woke up this morning to a 219 degree smoker, and the pork cooked perfectly! 200 degrees in the middle and super tender. I pulled the pork off the heat at 10 hours because of the middle temps. Alton says 10-12 hours for a 6-8 lb Boston butt, and I had a 5 lb’er so I think I was right on.
Its currently resting in time for the 11:30 pork brunch, but the little bit I pulled off the top to try was ridiculously good! Success!! This was very much a set it and forget it operation. I had to actually “do something” twice, as the first time I vented the top a bit to get the temps down, and the 2nd time I added more chips. The other 6 or 7 times I went outside was to just check the temps to make sure they were doing good.
Just got back and settled after a long weekend at VIR. The weekend started out awesome, and finished “ok”, but in the end, I did walk away with 2 more wins and a lot more experience.
I decided to do the back half of the test day, and it was absolutely worth it. While the testing tires were horrid, I was able to get some good track time, and get used to the track a bit. Its like Road Atlanta where you need some big balls to go fast. There are turns that you just have to commit to and go, regardless of whether you think you will make it out
Saturday qualifying I put on the fresher Hoosiers and rocked out a 2:17.8 lap. Thats only 0.6 off the track record, and was enough to put me on pole for ITA and also ahead of all the ITS cars again. We started the race, right after lunch, and the grid workes called the 5 minute warning super early. I wasn’t quite ready and barely got situated in the car and realized I didn’t have the camera on! Oh well.
I had a good start and ended up with about a 4-5 second lead on 2nd place. It was very hot out, and my rear tires started going off pretty bad, and the car became very loose. With that, and me playing “rabbit” for 2nd place, Chris Perera was able to catch up to me. He was driving over his head a bit though and went off in the last turn with 2 laps to go as we were passing a couple of cars that we were lapping. I saw this in my rear view mirror and relaxed and said “ok, this one is in the bag”. I was going to pass 2 more cars I was lapping in turn 1, but decided to just hold off and pass them later, or not at all instead as I wasn’t in a hurry anymore.
The first car ends up spinning out in Turn 3, hitting the car directly in front of me, and then stopping RIGHT in my path. SHIT SHIT. I duck right, off the track, and ended up hitting him in his drivers side with my front left corner. Ended up bending my bumper beam and screwing up the plastic bumper, but I was able to get back on track, right in front of Chris. I held off Chris for the last 1.5 laps and took the win. The alignment was 100% perfect, and it was only cosmetic damage to the bumper and cover
After the race, I swapped my brakes, fixed the bumper/fender, and also got some new tires for Sundays race.
Sunday started out much the same, in taking the pole and having a fast lap. I sped up about 0.2 and qualified at a 2:17.6. It was a better lap though, as I missed a shift, and got held up in 1 turn in my qualifying lap, so it could have been faster. No need though
I had a slightly different strategy for the race, in that I was just going to play with Chris and let him pass me, and then pass him with 1 lap to go for the win. He’s really good at chasing, but he’s not that fast when he’s leading or driving by himself.
He wouldn’t go around me though, even when I lifted on the straightaway, as he was trying unbenowst to me to go for the track record and wanted to draft with me. I was just going for the race win rather then the record and not pushing real hard. Eventually he decided to pass, and I let him by with 4 to go. He then made a big mistake in the lead with 2 to go and went off the track a bit in turn 14, giving me the lead and the race win….almost
I drove the last lap hard, and had a pretty decent lead on him going back into Turn 14. Chris broke a little early, as he was having brake problems, but not early enough. He ended up not slowing down pretty much at all and PLOWING into me twice at the top of the turn. He rear ended me first, spun me around and then smashed me on the side. I got back on track and drove around slowly to the checkered and still took the win.
Chris apologized profusely after the contact and let me know his brakes let him down. Even though the apology was sincere, I’m frustrated after thinking about it, as if the brakes were really busted, why did he only brake 100ft earlier knowing that the race was pretty much over?
In the end, I get to tack on to the body shop bill. Glad that the car was not fixed before this weekend, as now, I not only need a new bumper beam/bumper cover, I need a new passenger door, and frame/rocker panel work to get everything straightened out. UGH.
Because of the costs of all that, I’m going to have to skip the planned July race at Road Atlanta, and I’m not going to be back on track until August in Ohio. It will give me plenty of time though to get everything looking awesome, and also work on some mechanical issues. I have a slight power steering leak, a small oil leak somewhere by the oil filter, and also need to get that rear swaybar mounting fixed.
I’ve got the video off the camera for Sunday, and will be posting the qualifying shortly, and then the race video and crash on Wednesday.
