10/22/07

And another Southwest Sevens Festival is in the books. It was a little different this year as we had it out in the real world not at the Motorsport Ranch. I drove the Seven home Friday evening and parked in the garage. Saturday morning I hopped in and drove across town to the event hotel. I found the room we were in and registered then hung out waiting for more folks I knew to show up. Tony arrived and checked into his room then we hung out in the ballroom waiting for the event to really kick off. There was a presentation on autocross technique and then we headed across the street for the group picture. By now it was time to head for the second location which was a British car show at a British car shop. I don’t remember the name of the place though, sorry. It is the one on Airport Freeway between Minnis and Carson behind the massage school. Anyhoo, we pull in with about ten Sevens and all park. They served Red Hot and Blue barbecue and it was righteous! We hung out and baked in the sun for a while then headed back to the hotel. I assume some folks cleaned up and changed and stuff but I had to make a run to Wal Mart for some clear safety glasses since I was going to be driving home after dark. Tony followed me to Wally World and on the way out we saw Dick Brink talking to cops in another parking lot. We assumed he was being hassled for driving on slicks and wondered if we were going to have to bail him out of jail. We bought the safety glasses and drove back to the hotel, stopping for gas along the way. Dick’s car was still in the parking lot where we had seen it earlier as were the cops. Back at the hotel I found Phil Anderson and asked if we needed to go bail out Dick. “No,” he said, “He was in an accident!” As it turns out, he was making a left turn at the intersection and a douche in a pickup didn’t see him. He ran over the right rear fender, broke the wheel, and slammed Dick into the center console hard enough to dent it! Dick was fine but we speculated he’d be sore in the morning. We hung out for a while in the lobby until time to go to the car show. Some dude without a Seven asked if his daughter could have a ride to the show. I said I'd have room if I could put my bag and ice chest in his trunk. We did that and she strapped in. She was probably a “tween," somewhere in the double digits but not quite a teenager, too young, needless to say. We made a caravan and headed out. The Seven started doing its cough and sputter thing again. I was not happy. We set up and started doing car show stuff. Larry the shuttle bus driver from the railroad showed up and hung out with me for a bit. Scott Kilgore came by and talked for a while as well. The three of us took off to look at the cars on display. Somehow I “lost” Scott when I noticed that the guy bringing out box dinners had arrived at our display location. I told Larry I was going to sit down and eat and he took off. Phil and I went around and looked at all the cars again after we ate. They had a drawing for door prizes and some went unclaimed for a while. They kept announcing these numbers but no one came forth. As Phil and I were about to walk into the Taco Bueno to use the litter box, they said they were going to re-draw numbers for the unclaimed door prizes. I said to Phil, “You know they are going to call one of us, right?” Sure as shit, the first number they called was mine! Well, my tiny little girlie bladder was not going to be denied so I went ahead and peed. I figured one of my cronies would go accept my prize. As I got back to the car I found a really nice spotlight thingy on my front seat. Score! We hung out for all the trophies and stuff then headed out. Oh, Scott Kilgore found us as we were all leaving and hung out for a bit talking to Tony. I said to them, and it was true, that I had exactly one hour to get to the gate of my shop before being locked out for the night and took off. The car sputtered and coughed down Precinct Line road but ran fine up onto the freeway. I thought maybe it was a cold-engine thing and shrugged it off. No, about Jacksboro Highway it started slowing down. The more gas I gave it, the slower it went. I also noticed the temperature was going up. I pulled off and let it cool down. Once the temp was good I shot back onto the freeway and it ran fine. Well, except for the lights which were flamethrower bright. The ammeter fluctuated a bit above and below the zero mark as revs climbed and fell as well. Idling at the Bryant Irvin exit, the lights dimmed considerably but brightened back up as I drove. I got to the gate of the shop at 2159 h, one minute before being locked out. I parked the car and noticed I had two voice mails. One was from Pat asking if I'd autograph his copy of Automobile Magazine. You have gone out and bought the November issue, right? And the other was Tony asking, “Who the hell was that guy?” He went on to say, “He was still talking to me as I was driving off!” I called him back and told him he’d been “Kilgored” and laughed. He promised vengeance. I laughed some more. We hung up and I hopped in Matilda to go home and crash. Sunday morning I headed to the Texas Motor Speedway for the autocross. I drove Matilda. I got there and found Pat, Nora, and Dawn waving to Tony as he headed for the grid. We walked to the fence and watched as the first run group ran. Tony did pretty well for a noob; he lowered his lap times by over five seconds from first run to last. Once the whole Sevens group had run, we all gathered in the paddock and headed to lunch. We ate at a barbecue joint in, um, somewhere. It was ok, not great, not bad, just ok. We had our “awards ceremony” for the SWSF and then all went our separate ways. I bought a Birkini top from Dick Brink, who was surprisingly NOT as sore as we had speculated, owing to being in much better shape than a man of his years deserves to be, when a man of my age isn’t. Nice comma splice, huh? Anyhoo, I bought a top from him but haven’t had a chance to try it out. I went to the shop after the barbecue place but had to run home almost immediately due to (tee hee, I said doo-doo!), well, yeah, that. I decided to forego heading back to the shop and instead wasted the rest of Sunday watching TV. Oh, my Dethklok CD arrived and I've been listening to it exclusively for the last two days. The metal isn’t as “speedy” as I'd hoped, but there are some good fast-finger riffs in there. The best part is reading along with the lyrics. That is some funny stuff. The song “The Lost Vikings” is probably the funniest. It tells of a group of Vikings, duh, who forget the map to the battle but are too proud to go back for it or ask directions. I'll leave you with this from the Metalocalypse theme song, “Swisgaar Skwigelf, taller than a tree. Toki Wartooth, not a bumblebee. William Murderface, Murderface, Murderface. Pickles the drummer, doodle doo, doodle dee, doodle doodle, dee. Nathan Explosion! Dethklok, Dethklok!”

p.s. I'm so pissed off I'm not even sure I want to post the rant I wrote or compose a new one right here about how computers... with the... reboot... wait for... I'm livid to the point of speechlessness. I can't even form coherant venomous epithets about how much I hate computers and all you computer sycophants. Keep drinking that Kool-Aide, the revolution will come and we Luddites will strike!