One of my "Net Friends", Ginger Jackson, invited us to come see her team Our Gang Racing compete in the H1 Unlimited Hydroplane races at the 2011 Detroit Gold Cup. Ginger is a volunteer and is responsible for preparing the U-17 Miss Red Dot's cockpit for the race. I know Ginger from a couple of forums, Facebook, etc... I always try to meet my net friends, sometimes I've traveled a few hundred miles out of the way to do it. When one of those friends actually comes to my area, AND she's accompanied by a 150+ mph boat. That's not an opportunity I'm not going to pass up.
Ginger was kind enough to arrange for Pit passes for Sara and I and it was really great to get some behind the scenes exposure.
The Pit trucks are really well laid out, organized with plenty of working space and necessary equipment.
They tear these things down between every race. They don't usually swap engines and many teams don't have spares ($90-125K ea) but they can if they need to.
Just as we were walking out of the bathroom, this guy broke through over the pits. It's a good thing we just used the head, we'd have probably wet ourselves.
Picture is right side up.
They were running this series when we first got there, I think's it's called "Superstock USA" but I'm not sure.
They ran the offshore series also they were pretty damn loud boats.
This is about as close as I caught to catching a good propwalk.
These are the same guys as the Discovery channel show, they actually won their series.
This is my favorite shot in the whole series. We were guests of the Red Dot team. They came in last in this heat (Sometimes a brilliant stragegy doesn't pan out) but they won the earlier heat and did accumulate enough points to be the points leader in the series.
This guy had problems later.
I love the deck-to-deck shots.
Dave Villwock won this heat, and the Gold Cup. This also made him the winning-est driver in H1 History.
Oops. That's not supposed to do that.
He finished the race that way though. First time an H1 boat ever completed a race with a busted canard wing.
Ginger is with the U-17Our Gang Racing Red Dot Corp sponsord boat. Very dedicated racers, they put on a really good show.
If they took "Rooster Tail Turn" wide, they'd get really, REALLY close to the seawall, especially if you consider it's a boat going `~150mph.
Ginger was presented with the Vic Nelawake Spirit Award. She's the first recipient, besides Vic himself, who received it posthumously.
I'm Gary McFarland/Gearheadgary. My wife Sara and I travel around the country and go to many events, meet a lot of folks, and take lots of pictures. I usually end up posting these pictures on various forums, with small writeups which is time consuming and never really turns out as good as it could if I just did it once and just sent people there.
I've had a website for a while where I tried to post articles on various projects or events and it was just too time consuming. Most of the time, my "Blog" on that page, was a year or so out of date. I looked around at several ready-made site options and the blog format seemed the most appropriate, and Google's Blogger is what I'm using.
For a while I'll keep the old site alive at My Old Website but I'll migrate those articles here so at some point I'll shut that one down completely.
As for the sorts of things we do, here's a few shots from some previous events and travels:
We take a lot of road trips. Some go without a hitch, here's a shot from the rest stop outside the Bonneville salt flats, it was the "First trip" that went off without a hitch, even though we were dangerously overweight.
Here's a shot from our second trip at the same spot.
On the Second trip, well, there was a hitch. Or two.
The PTO coverplate lost a gasket and the trans ejected it's 24 quarts of trans fluid on I80. We came to a stop at a truck stop just outside of SLC and there she sat. We had the bird towed to Smith's DDA (What name did you expect)? and they rebuilt our trans and got us on the road again for very reasonable money. Even though we were driving a hooptie bus, they treated us the same as they would a fleet owner. Very high integrity in that shop. In fact, something went wrong with the U joint that they installed and it really got bad around Gary, IN and Smith's paid for the repair under warranty. And the bus did get towed again.
Sometimes we get stuck when we drive our "Normal" rigs too.
This was at the Ashland summit heading back down to CA after having the holidays with the kids in 2003. Some asshat pulling a fifthwheel bypassed the DOT checkpoint and sure enough, jacknifed at the first opportunity. We were fine, we had water, food and a full tanks. I'm baffled that people will cross major mountain passes on a quarter of a tank and nothing to eat or drink. The Red Cross was there to thwart Darwinian consequences.
Another trip in the Durango was down to North Carolina, to see the East Coast Timing Association land speed trials in Maxton. On this trip we had our youngest daughter, Cassie with us.
We also headed out to Wilmington to check out the USS North Carolina Battleship.
Since we'd never seen the Atlantic, this was our chance to get our toes wet
Sara, Cassie and the Atlantic Ocean.
Sometimes our trips are on two wheels, on our 98 FLHPI Road King "Hogley".
Sara likes to take pictures from the back seat
More than anything, we try to make it to as as many automotive events as possible.
First and foremost, is the Woodward Dream Cruise (WDC). It's the world's largest single day automotive event, and the first thing that made me consider moving to Michigan. Ok the fact that our jobs were moving to Michigan had a pretty prominent role, but walking through Royal Oak, through the neighborhoods, with people partying in front of most every house, hotrods in the driveways and on the lawns, and smoky burnouts everywhere, made us think "Damn, this is pretty cool. I could live here!"
This shot was taken at our first WDC as Michigan residents in 2004, by Sara. Since at that time, she was the only one that had a camera, a Nikon E2500, she took most of the shots.
Living in the Motor City provides access to a huge array of other interests. We always try to make it to the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS)
This is the Jeep Hurricane from the 2005 NAIAS show, again, taken by Sara.
We also both got to take a seat on the Tomahawk. The Viper-Powered bike
Both of these shots are from the 04 NAIAS show, actually taken the same week we started our move to Michigan. They were taken with my tiny Casio EX-M2 camera.
Detroit is full of really cool stuff to go look at anytime, you don't have to wait for a show or go to a cruise. The Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield village, is worthy of traveling to Detroit just to visit this one attraction. Honestly, I don't think you could see everything in one day. Our first couple of years living here, we actually became paid members. There is an IMAX on site too.
One of my very favorite cars from my childhood. The Lotus 38.
There was one of the Chrysler "Turbine Cars" there too.
My Friend Mark Olson who runs the Turbinecar Website, had one of these as a kid.
(Well, his family had one for a while) and Mark has become the repository of knowledge for this unique vehicle. I think this is the car that is now is lovingly cared for by none other than Jay Leno.
The Greenfield Village, behind the Henry Ford is a treasure trove of historical interests. They even have an actual steam train to shuttle you around.
On a far less serious note, we've had some fun with our friends in Caintmakit Racing (CMIR) going to different events, a couple we've hosted ourselves, as well as the 24 Hours of Lemons race.
Here is the "Cavabeer" at Flatrock, the first Detroit area LeMons race.
Oh hey, there's my crimpers.
(And to all you lemons racers that think you're really clever and original by using all the beer cans consumed during the build as a theme for the car, this race was in '07 bitches.)
Video:
Plagued with multiple drivetrain problems, (No clutch, so the whole race was run in 2nd gear/ blew a half shaft in the wee hours of the morning, removing it from competition) the Cavabeer was left at the track waiting for someone to claim it for the engine, apparently, there is at least one person that didn't mind it's eleventy bazillion miles, not to mention the fact that it was just bounced of the rev limiter for twelve or sixteen hours or so.
The 08 Car was a 94 Acura Integra that has held up pretty well, here it is in it's inaugural "Detroit-Ish" race (I guess Toledo doesn't rate it's own race).
Behind it, is the other CMIR car, the "Crown Royal Victoria" car. Yes, that is .08 as the number.
We did very well on that race, finishing Third with the Integra and 10th on the Crown Vic. (That's out of a starting field of 52)
Sara and I haven't been able to participate since that race, but the integra is currently painted like a giant football, with a giant inflatable monkey stuck to the top. You figure it out.
In any case, I'm going to wrap up my first post now, and commit it to history. I've already got another couple of posts lined up to publish, but I didn't want to just dive in without some sort of introduction to the blog.
I'm also going to go back to my old website and migrate some of those articles that my friends have found amusing over here, I'll probably give them some update as well.
I'm sure dozens of people will read this blog and hopefully not all will be annoyed.
