Adventure Updates:

This will be a car-themed post, so I would like to start by posting this picture of the Grand Am instrument cluster, showing 1) the Pontiac cruises nicely at 2300rpm, making it amazingly fuel efficient and 2) these guage-pods look like boobs.

This is for Notorious.




This story begins, really, in my cubical at work. There i have easy access to Gmail chat and i could converse with trusted minds about complicated questions. It's also where I could spend free cruising ebay and craiglist, lamenting over THE eternal question: Which car is the best compromise of cost, performance, reliability and looks. I even came up with an equation for comparing two cars: $1000 = 100lbs = 0.25sec quicker to 60mph = 1yr since manufacture. It's actually a really good equation and I think I should patent it, which is of course why I'm publishing it first on the internet... so i can get feedback. (any of you fuckers patent this first and i'll cut you). So for example, if you had two cars that were equal in all ways, except one was $2000 cheaper and the other was 1 sec quicker to 60mph, you would be best served to buy the car that was quicker, because it's two units better.

(if i have to explain any further, you shouldn't be reading this blog)

Regardless, i knew in the back of my mind that the end product would yield happy results such as these:


Mountain driving and facebooking in your new sports car... Who could be happier?

Then i found something that caught my eye in Savannah. Truth is, i knew by then what it was i was looking for. In fact, I'd test driven two of them and knew perhaps too well, just how much fun it was going to be; How much fun THIS was going to be:


This was taken just before (or maybe after) the twisties

From that realization, it was just a matter of logistics. Financial institutions, insurance companies, The Department of Motor Vehciles... it seems in the last 6 years since i've run this patter, none of these organizations have gotten any better at NOT making me want to kill myself. Whatever; Skip lunch for a week and you can work out most of the details for an out-of-state car purchase.

With paper work in hand it was a very simple matter of driving to Ohio, picking up my travel associate, driving to Cincinnati, flying to Memphis, flying to Atlanta renting a car, staying the night in a mansion in the suburbs of Atlanta, getting drunk in the hot tub, driving to Savannah, signing some paper work and shaking some hands, enjoying an absurdly large and cheap shell fish platter, driving two cars to Atlanta, returning the rental to the air port and visiting the huge KFC Chicken so we could start the trip home.

Easy-peasy.


this is the happy stick. The other one.

With the happy stick in hand, (the other one) I immediately set out to find roads worthy of the car. In my mind, I imaged something like this:



I called Johnny Moto and he suggested we swing by the Dragon in Deals Gap Kentucky. As they say, "The Tail of the Dragon at Deals Gap, with 318 curves in 11 miles, is America's number one motorcycle and sports car road." I was sold. (What they don't mention is the 50 or so miles of awesome leading up to and away from that section.)

The whole road looks like this with an elevation profile somewhere in the area of this right here.

Apparently this is the most legendary road in the states, possibly second only to the Autobahn, which from what I've seen, is MUCH less exciting. I didn't know any of this until I was 30 minutes into sawing the wheel and jamming the gears through the most insane, narrow, tree lined, mountainous road I've ever seen (including my dreams and fantasies). Seriously: Hair-pin after Hair-pin until your arms feel like rubber and there's nervous sweat beads on the small of your back.

We were incredibly lucky to have passed through at exactly the right time. It seems late on the day Sunday, mid February, must be the perfect time because we encountered approximately zero traffic on this road and only had to pass (easily) one or two cars on the exciting roads leading up to and away from the dragon. The surroundings consisted of mountains, trees, dams, trees (though very few leaves), lakes, rivers and a guy selling BBQ out of a gas station parking lot, though all i saw was a blurry yellow double line and all I heard was the happy bark of 2 liter engine.


The south is full of side of the road signs like these.

From the dragon it was a short bop over to Knoxville where a quick bite turned into a bunch of drinks that turned into a hotel room. (I suspect and hope this is the natural progression of life on the road. What am i saying? I KNOW it is.) The car slept in a garage, though I considered inviting it to bed.


The car

From there it was a fun though uneventful ride back. 700 miles in the new car made the Grand Am, which is a pretty sporty car, all things considered, feel like a school bus and the first time I hit the brakes I thought I was going off the road. The Miata is simply amazing at going, stopping, turning, not having a roof and making you feel like a rock star. I am eagerly anticipating the warm weather. Until then, it waits for me in Ohio, not unlike a lonely, lonely, hot girl left unattended in another state.

Oy.







For those who aren't interested in my goofy stories, i will leave these links for amusement:

For the physics and mechanics lover