| Dialup, no. Seriously, go write a thesis on the differences in the molecular structures of The Barney mobile and The Zinistr mobile. ******VERY VERY PIC INTENSIVE!!!!******
Thursday
Track Day!! WOOHOOO! 4:30am wakeup call…boooo! That’s right kids, 4:30. Up and at ‘em. We fumble around and get dressed, make sure we have all our info and papers for the track day, and rendezvous in the parking lot to caravan out. We have trackstar, me, YugoBernie, Marshall, Robo, and Junxster with a Milo co-pilot. It’s still dark. We hop out on the highway and have to stop because Marshall forgot to fill up the night before. Must have been that massive bowl he smoked. We get back on the road and are heading to the Glen. As we get into town and are driving along Geneva Lake, the sun begins to come up and makes for quite the scenery as we drive. We stop for petro and nourishment at the Sunoco a couple miles from the track. We then head to the track, register, check in and find our spot in the paddock with nixit, who had arrived at 3:30 am to help chase squirrels off the track. We go to the drivers meeting and start prepping the cars for the track. I need to swap out my brake pads and bleed my front brakes. Get the pads done on one side when they call my group to grid. SHIT! Scramble to change the pads on the other side with the help of boileralum and dogpile (thanks guys!). Get to the grid on time and meet my instructor. Really nice guy named Jim. We go out and immediately I love this track. So much elevation change and lots of high speed corners. Not to mention a few late apex corners and some good straights! Get back after the first session and wait for the brakes and wheels to cool so I can bleed my fluid. Hang out with the guys and then head to another instruction class. Get back to the cars and start bleeding the brakes (thanks again, boiler and dogpile!) Passenger side goes fine. Go to loosen the bleeder valve on the drivers side and I hit my arm on the dust shield…split it open like a fish. Yay. I need stitches. But I don’t have time for stitches, I have track time to enjoy. So I duct tape it up (gladiator cuff) and head on about bleeding my brakes. Get that done just in time to go to lunch. Grab some grub and back to the pits to check tire pressure just before heading back to the grid. Session 2 goes great. I’m getting faster and learning the line much better. DAMN this shit is fun! Back in the pits and hanging out, I try to get the cam mount that Spongey lent me to hold up well enough for track use and it just doesn’t give me any confidence. So no in-car video ? The call goes out for Open Track session which is where the instructors take their cars out. I get a ridealong with my instructor and that was a ton of fun! He has an 85 Porsche 911. It sticks to the track like it was on rails, literally. Learned more and had a blast! At the end of the session, the passenger of the Porsche GT3 needs to expel his lunch before getting back to the pits. It was hilarious. So then we hop right back into my car for the 3rd and final session of the day. All is going well, I’m getting faster and passing lots of cars. BarryZ was my first victim. A few cars later and I’m running up on Junxster. Sweet. I get the point by from him and step on it. But I’m not getting full power….and what’s that whistling? Uh oh. I get by him and dive into the next turn. Hard on the gas, boost runs to 16psi, then a loud whistling and it drops to 11psi. Shit. I give it another half a lap and tell my instructor I have a major boost leak and that I need to bring it in. I point Junxster by (dammit) and head into pit road. Pop the hood to see if it’s something I can quick fix, but I can’t find it so we call it a day. So we get back to the pits and pack up for the trip back to the hotel. We stop for gas in town just outside the track and apparently there is a Model T convention going on in Watkins Glen. So we had an Old School vs. New School meet in the gas station. We had a nice caravan of about 8 Zs until WhiteGhozt went the wrong way on I-90. So 3 of us went about 40 miles out of our way ? We get back to the hotel and reconvene with everybody and decide to make our annual ZCON trek to Hooters for dinner. Dunno what the deal is in ‘Cuse, but the Hooters girls were ugly and the service was horrible. But we did leave with “The Sodomizer”. Head back to the hotel and shoot the shit in the lobby for a bit. Well, everybody else did, I was trying to stay conscious….and I wasn’t doing to good. I nodded off about 3 times, and decided to head to the room after the third time….before those other fuckers decided to mess around. So I go up and crash. And I awake at about 6am to a strange rucus in the room. WTF is that God awful noise? Is there a bear in the room? Is someone revving a bulldozer outside the window? Oh, boileralum must have decided to crash on the floor. Said Bulldozer 
Steve Millen was nice enough to pose for a few pics.
 
The wound…
Friday
Friday was auto-x day. And although most of us had signed up for it, we decided to skip it and eat the $20 entry fee. We were way too tired from the day before, and frankly it probably would have been a bit of a letdown after the previous day’s experience. There was no way we were making the 7:30 drivers meeting, even though it was only 15 minutes away. It turned out to be the right call since it decided to rain. We got up around 9ish and went to Denny’s for breakfast….again. Conversation about the day before and camera wars ensued as usual. Back at the hotel, we try to decide what to do with the rest of the day until the closing banquet. Half the gang decided on the mall while a few of us hung back and were just lazy in the room all day. The weather was crappy so no point in scouting for scenic locales. So we watched TV and played on the internet most of the day. We order some food (found a DAMN good deal on pizza and wings, and it was good too!) and Barry “Big Tipper” Cohen gives the delivery girl a $2.73 tip….at which point we all give him tons of shit ? So, by the time we finish lunch, the rest of the gang starts filtering back in with stories of k-mart and the mall. We get ready for the closing dinner and head downstairs. Damon and Mindi have secured us 3 tables in the rear corner of the hall (status quo for us as we tend to be a bit obnoxious with all the talking and camera flashes ?). The dinner was boring as usual, made bearable only by the camera wars and razzing of the auctioneer. Afterwards we convene in the lobby one last time and shoot the shit, mostly about next years convention. As it gets late we say our goodbyes and see-you-next-years and so on. Another week has flown past. Boileralum giving his opinion on the S-tune 350 he smoked earlier in the week…
 
“So I was milking my goat last week when genic called….”
 
That’s a half-and-half I’m holding there…
It was extremely windy when we left Denny’s. And Smitty and Milo decided to dance.
 
“You smell funny”
 
“HEY YOU GUUUUUUYS!!!”
 “Seriously dude, the ‘97+ JSpec tranny only weighs 3 ounces more than the USspec.”
 
Oh, and after the night of drinking and drunk dialing, Seedy sends out an emailing telling the tale to some of the guys who were also not in attendance. Playboy responds to the email with “Glad they don’t have my number!” So, I gave Mr. Playboy a call when we woke up at 8:30ish on Friday morning…which is 5:30ish in CA ?. He didn’t answer so I left him a nice voicemail. A few hours later, I get a text message…
Saturday
Damn. The week is gone already! It always goes way too fast. We get up and start getting packed. I go outside to the parking lot to change out my brake pads and clean off my wheels from the track day. Don’t need to duplicate the little love tap that happened last time I left my racing pads in for the trip home…(Hi Chris!). So as I’m changing my pads and boileralum and dogpile are watching/helping, Bernie walks up to my open engine bay and notices that my passenger side TB coupler had slipped off a bit. Hellooooo boost leak at full boost! *Whew* Glad it was something simple. So boileralum fixes that for me and I finish up the pad swap. I run back to the room to grab a shower and finish packing. We do a quick sweep of the room and load up for the trip home. A quick stop for fuel and then some breakfast at Dunkin Donuts and we hit the road. The trip home is pretty uneventful and smooth. 
And there you have it folks, ZCON in a nutshell. A great big giant nutshell. Stay tuned for next year in Dallas. It promises to be the best yet….
Later,
Spencer
AIM: sbsTT14 PETZ member #4 '91 300ZX TT Stage V+
'96 Jeep Cherokee Sport
"also tired of ppl driving in a straight line for 1/4 mile and thinkin they're hot shit" - hey GotBo0st 22:17:26 09/26/04 "Moral of my night, fucking young people who inheret money, and dont know shit, but think they do are dumb fucks." - suprakillinz 02:37:37 07/02/05 "You are stupidier than dirt." - AzHeat 21:23:10 08/05/04 "Welcome, and I'd listen to Spee" - BigTDogg (MA) 18:21:41 02/17/04 "SCORE: Spee=1 The rest of us=0 (n/m)" - jaymztt(seWA) 19:17:12 07/23/04 |
The definitive ZCON write up. Part III: Thursday - Saturday - 
