10/7/08

I'm not going to say, “I've got nothin’ today” today except to say it that one time just then. I got a call from Steve/John a little while ago asking if I thought a right-hand drive Birkin would be a sellable commodity. He has a shipping container coming from South Africa bringing a 510SSS and said Birkin. He wants the Birkin to “pay for” the shipping container. I told him I thought it would probably sell. Of course now I want to buy it. I'm pretty sure I could get enough for Shichi to pay for it but I'm not really sure I want to let mine go. Of course what I really don’t need is two of them in my stable! How friggin’ cool would that be though? With a bog-stock Zetec engine, that thing will probably have 40 to 50 horsepower on Shichi. If it has any modifications done to it, it is likely to be much more powerful. I suppose I could be convinced to let my Datsuns go in order to have a pair of Birkins in hand. I'd go from being the Datsun 1200 guy to being the Birkin guy in one fell swoop. Then again, Dick Brink still has it all over me in the “I’ve owned more Sevens than you” category. Feh, we’ll just have to wait and see what this car is like when/if it ever arrives. Ok, so it looks like pat and I are not going to the 24 Hours of LeMons race in Houston after all. I'm not sure if I ever even mentioned that, now that I think about it. See, John, Pat, and I were planning to go to the 24 Hours of LeMons race in Houston the weekend of the 18th and 19th. I wrote John off without consulting him because he has plans this weekend and I'm sure he couldn’t get a second weekend pass in the same month. If I'm wrong about that, well, sorry. Anyhoo, Pat and I began to plan it again yesterday. He was looking into hotel rooms for Friday and Saturday night. Yeah, apparently something called Hurricane Ike wiped the town of Galveston off the map a few weeks ago and all those folks are still tying up all the rooms in the area. We even thought of staying a few hundred miles north in a little burg called Bryan/College Station. Seems there is a university of some sort in that town and they are having something called “a football game” that weekend. They’re booked solid as well. I knew my sister and brother-in-law had an apartment in B/CS so I called to see if there would be bed/couch/floor space that Friday. Nope, they are going to be there with friends for said “football game.” With a lack of places to sleep, and the fact that we’ve both been invited to go camping with some old college buddies the following weekend, and there being a swap meet on one or the other of those weekends, Pat asked if I could be talked out of the trip to Houston. I told him, “I didn’t get where you are today without being able to be talked out of a trip to Houston!” So, it looks like we’re not going to Houston for the 24 Hours of LeMons. I suppose I could ‘splain what the 24 Hours of LeMons is. It is a race for $500.00 cars. Apart from safety gear, competitors can only spend $500.00 on their cars then they get together and wail the crap out of them. It isn't truly a 24 hour enduro however. They do stop for the evening at midnight or something then take it up again in the morning. Oh, and there are all kinds of draconian rules and stuff. First off, the “Judges” assess the cars during the tech inspection and penalize cars, sometimes at random, a certain number of laps before the thing even starts. It is possible to start the race one hundred or more laps behind all the other competitors if it looks like you spent too much for your car or if you have some other random thing the “Judges” don’t like. Also, around the halfway point of the race, the “People’s Choice” car is awarded a prize and the “People’s Curse” car is summarily destroyed. I've read that if you are caught bumping, rubbing, or other generally frowned-upon activities, they’ll pull you in to assess sanctions. For instance, if you bump someone from behind too many times, they will weld a plate, with spikes pointed into your radiator, to the front of your car so that the next time you hole your own cooling system. I think I remember something about a 1,000 pound concrete chicken, or something, that they can, and will, drop into/onto your car, secure, and make you drive with for the remainder of the race if they deem that penalty to be justified. I believe there is some kind of air-brake wing thing they will zook onto your car if they think you are too fast. I may have imagined that last one, but I wouldn’t put it past them! Anyhoo, that is the gist of the thing and we wanted to go see the carnage ourselves since they were coming to a track near enough that we though it justifiable. Alas, ‘tis not to be. Oh well, maybe next year. And on that note, I think I'm going to call it a rant.