People are a little different up here...

Was hanging out in this part of LA called Atwater. Very artsy. Went into some furniture store and there were these sweet chairs... for $3500. No thanks. Oh yeah, EVERYONE uses Macs around here.

How much was that?

So I was chillin with my sister and her family along main street in Santa Monica. There are a bunch of little boutique shops around so we go in a few. Checkin out some clothes in this one store, and it has a t-shift for $66, a button-up for $150, and a zip-up hoodie (was pretty sweet) for $275! Uh... yeah...

Walking down and check out another store. I completely plain, nothing special at all, black t-shirt for $71!

Learned a new term

So.... with asians, there's the term FOB, or fresh off the boat. I learned a new one today for US born Indians, ABCD; american born confused desi. It's a term all the India born guys use for the US born guys.

Electric go-karts?

So there's a chain of kart tracks around So. Cal. called K1.

The good:
indoor and air conditioned
don't smell like gas after driving
they actually have some torque so if you get a bit sideways, they have some power to pull you out

The bad:
relatively low speed
because they're low speed, the tracks are small and tight
because the tracks are small and tight, they don't like you racing 'wheel-to-wheel' and bumping each other

Basically, they want people to try to get the fastest time possible, but not race each other. As soon as a car comes up on a 'slower' car, they wave the blue passing flag, even if the slower car is just barely slower.

My friends and I thought it was lame, so on our last session, the 7 of us did a rolling start lined up in two lines next to each other like in a real race. Needless to say, there was a LOT of bumping an pushing into the barriers the first two laps.

Sittin on Dubs

It's a bit odd to me.... but the upper middle class and weathly folks around here try to be cool... Basically, I see some of your stereotypical well-to-do white families rollin on 26" chrome on their Suburbans. Seriously, you see the soccer mom behind the wheel and wonder what's going on.

At least they're not riding on spinners like back in the dirty south.

Crazy plants!

According to my sister, these are called 'birds of paradise'; she saw them in Hawaii. These particular ones were at the Griffith Observatory. And there's some right outside my apartment too! They look like they can bite your finger off.

Just another day at the track.

I went up to Buttonwillow with my bro-in-law Clint to rag out the car a bit. This track day was put on by Speed Ventures (http://www.speedventures.com/) and on this particular day, they had a Lotus Challenge. So there were ~20 Lotuses (Loti?) there.



And being So Cal, there were a dozen+ Honda S2000's with many of them gutted out and wearing some very sticky rubber. Also, being So Cal, you have some high-end cars such as a BMW M5, and a couple of GT3s. Oh, and being So Cal, you get some of the import holy grail cars like the R34 Skyline.

So, first time on this track in the car (did it a month back on the motorcycle), and managed a 2:15. That's probably about 15 seconds faster than I did on the motorcycle as I was able to push much harder without fear of killing myself. It got over 90F which was causing issues with my brakes. The whole point of doing a trackday in April was to avoid the heat as the track is out in the desert. Lucky me, the heat wave hit exactly on the weekend; it was over 10 degrees cooler the next day. So basically, my brake pads which are a 'aggressive street/light track duty' pad, had an issue called material/pad transfer. Basically, some of the pad material bonds to the brake rotor which causes a poor surface and the brake pedal to pulsate.

I ran in the advance group which has open passing anywhere; in the lower groups, passing is only in designated areas and also only with a 'point-by' where the lead car signals the following car to pass them. The Long Beach Grand Prix is coming up and Speed World Challenge is a support race. So there was a fully raced prepped Porsche 911 (sponsered by K&N and driven by Paul Brown) and Viper out on the track with me running ~1:52-1:54. Needless to say, those cars came up from behind VERY quickly.

Oh yeah, I only went off-roading once :)

What GTR is that I spy?

Well, I was having some work performed on my car by M-Workz, and went to pick it up. M-Workz is run by Steve Mitchell who's an ex-Nissan engineer. His shop was used by Nissan as it's base of operations during testing of the GTR in So. Cal. He also put together two of the first GTRs to land on American soil (bodies and powertrain arrived separately and were assembled together here).

I has hoping to catch a glimpse of a GTR while dropping off my car or picking it up. Lucky me today... because not was it just a GTR, but the Mines GTR from Japan! Just arrived the night before and it's here for filming in the 4th installation of the Fast and Furious series. Sorry, only pic I have is on my camera and I'm too cheap a bastard to pay to upload it.

One way but not the other

So... you know those light beam/IR sensors that keep a garage door from closing on something? Well, apparently, if the door is closed and you block the sensor, the door can still open.

Not just plastic!

I got a new/replacement credit card in the mail today, so I went about destroying the old one. I started folding it in half and bending it like a paper clip. I noticed that it start to split between the 'layers'. Also, the 'film' covering it was coming off. So basically, at least Discover cards are like this, the credit card is two pieces of plastic bonded together; one is each side. Then, a sticker/film covers each side and contains the magnetic strip and graphics. So now you know...

Foreigners and crazy gym people

So I went to the gym at about 10am on Saturday morning; I'm usually playing volleyball, out for a ride, or watching college football during the season. Well, the gym is SLAMMED. Completely full, a good 300+. I find it a little odd because Hermosa is known for partying so the fact that all these people are awake and working out hard is strange.

Tonight at the gym, there were some german girls. A few weeks ago, some guys from Estonia. Last summer, China's womens volleyball team was training at my gym. I saw them on the beach too playing against who I think was the team from Sweden. And then there are quite a few French people around here.... ran into a group of about a dozen out at the bars one night. And the French restaurant here in Hermosa, Creme de la Crepe, has real French people working there.

You've probably seen it before...

So this is Griffith Observatory. It's nestled up in the hills north of LA. You've probably seen it before because it's been in a number of movies. There's a little monument thing to James Dean because one of his movies was filmed there; you can buy some James Dean stuff in the gift shop. My sister says it was in one of the Charlies Angels movies. Most recently, I was watching Transformers for the 5123415th time (in french this time though!) and it's in a couple scenes there too!

What license plate?

So.... while you're suppose to have front and rear plates here in Cali, it seems that you don't really actually need a plate at all. You see, when you buy a new car from the dealer, it comes with one of these dealer plate/advertisement things. My old neighbor drove his car like this for over a year. Heck, he still doesn't have a real plate.

So you'll see cars all the time around LA with these dealer plates. Oh, if you actually have a real license plate, but not a front plate, and you park downtown, the meter maid will give you a ticket for no front plate... at freakin 10:40pm at night.