Here With the Wind.....

We were supposed to be "Gone With The Wind" Wednesday, but due to the high wind forecast, and the eventual reality of same, we stayed put one more day.  Wednesday was also the day DirecTV was coming to move Tom and Darlene's system to their new home.  Of course, Tom and I had to supervise, and ask a lot of questions.

I think we did our job well.......the installer was able to use the existing DirecTV HD dish, so no new installation was necessary.  It was just a matter of installing the new LNB, and hooking the existing cables up.  Within an hour DirecTV was alive and well in Tom's new home.

On Thursday when we depart Wittmann we will drive east to the local Safeway Supermarket to fuel up.  Why Safeway you ask?  Well, every time we spend $100 we get 10 cents off each gallon of fuel we purchase, and we needed to do a major shopping anyway so we drove the VW 15 miles over to Safeway to do our shopping, and to check out the fuel station.  While the station itself looks plenty big enough on Google Earth we were unsure which access point would be the best for our 62 feet.  It turned out it was a good idea to check it out first, because the most obvious access point would have been almost impossible for us to maneuver through.  We found it would be best to drive to the first signal just past the store, turn left, and enter the driveway that takes you behind the store, and eventually to the fuel station.  Once we fuel up we'll hop on the 303 Bypass Road and continue eastward to I-17 and north.  As it turns out we already had about 65 points ($65 spent in the previous 2 months) and easily passed the 200 point threshold so we will get 20 cents off per gallon on Thursday!

One side benefit of staying an extra day was being able to see Tom's son-in-law, Jon, drive his stock race car at Canyon Speedway Park near Peoria.  When we visited Jon and Laura (Tom and Darlene's daughter) a few weeks ago Jon had taken us out into the garage to see the car.  This is dirt track racing, so the cosmetic appearance of the car is not a big deal.....obviously.  There tends to be a little bumping and banging going on during races.

64s

Basically these cars are just a bunch of sheet metal around a roll cage and stock V-8.  Jon spent the winter improving his suspension, and engine, and the hard work showed Wednesday night that he had been successful.  Of the 6, or 7 cars running practice laps his car was by far the fastest around the track.  The fuel for these cars runs about $9 per gallon.....the octane is quite a bit higher than 91.....:D

This was a guys night out, so Tom and I left Wittmann a little after 5 pm, arriving at the race track just before 6 to find Jon already there.  Tom and I were the pit crew this evening, which didn't involve much until the second practice session when Jon got bumped by a slower car he was attempting to pass....the result was a punctured right rear tire, which basically ended the night.  We helped Jon get the damaged tire and wheel off, and then straighten out the sheet metal enough so that he could put a replacement tire and wheel on to drive the car on to the trailer.  I manged to shoot a little 1 minute video of a few laps (doesn't include the "crash"), which, if you are interested, you can watch below.

We were home a little after 9:30, and by that time the winds had died down substantially, just as the forecast predicted.....this morning as I write there is hardly a breath of wind to be found.....just the typical Wittmann gentle breeze.

Thursday we are off........this is the real deal.....not a drill....we will be rolling our wheels on Thursday into the mostly unknown!

Thanks for stopping by!