4/6/09

Well, remember how Shichi was smoking from the crankcase breather? Remember how I was going to wait until fall, or total failure, to pull the engine and rebuild it? Let me tell y'all about the Birkinstock weekend, shall I? First off, I left work around 1500 h and went to the house to pick up Shichi. I parked Ms. Clio in the driveway but out by the street to leave myself enough room to get the car out of the garage. That worked out pretty well, actually. I went in and told mom the plan then changed shoes and rolled the car out. It fired up nicely and I took off to the Motorsport Ranch. Yes, the crankcase smoked on acceleration up to the freeway but behaved pretty well the rest of the way. I hung out for a while then the majority of the group went into Granbury for dinner. Pat and I went to dinner in Benbrook with a new Seven owner who lives right near me. Saturday morning I just didn’t feel like getting up in time to make it to the Ranch for the 0800 h driver's meeting. I'd only signed up for the school in order to get our numbers up to the point where “we’d” have our own run group without having to deal with other cars of much different performance levels. I couldn’t care less if I got out on the track at all. So, I slept in and rolled to the Ranch when I damned well felt like it. I got there at 0830 h or so. They were in the middle of their driver's meeting so I just hung out. When they came out to go onto the track, I was goaded into joining them. I didn’t have an instructor but the dude we’d had dinner with Friday night hopped in the passenger seat. We followed Tony Calvert around in the parade lap session and saw where the line was supposed to be, more or less. Once off the track we had to run right back into the classroom for a total time waste classroom session. Ok, so the first one might not have been a time waste, but subsequent ones surely were. Anyhoo, immediately after the classroom we were right back onto the track. I went out again with the same dude in the passenger side. Funny thing was, the car did not smoke while on the track. I'm not sure how to interpret that. We did this session at full speed, and I kept telling the dude to ignore my line because it surely isn't the fast way around the track. Also, I didn’t give a shit. After the session, I parked the car and we went back into the classroom. This was a waste of time. When that session was done everyone else went back onto the track. I did not. I hung out and looked at stuff and chatted with folks and stuff like that. I'm not sure if there was another classroom session after that track session, but I'm sure there was. Then it was lunchtime. Pat, Tony, Bernie, and I had lunch at the new barbecue place there on 377. It was quite tasty. Back at the track, they went out for another session then had another classroom I'm sure. One of the regulars on the Birkin owner’s mailing list is some big muckedy muck oil engineer so they scheduled him to give a lecture. Oh wait, before the oil lecture we all lined up for the group photo with our cars. Tony and I decided we weren’t all that interested in a two hour lecture on oil so we skipped it. About halfway through the lecture, they called for the Lotus group to go out on the track again. Only two cars went out, Tony and some dude in another Stalker. They seemed to have a really good time out there all alone. I should have joined them, but didn’t. Eventually the rest of the Lotus group had their last session and then another regular on the mailing list gave a lecture on laser alignment. It was a pretty good explanation. I think the novices in the group who have never done an alignment got something out of it. After that we all packed up and left for dinner in Granbury. Tony followed me there and I noticed that the crankcase smoke was a little worse. He even commented on it when we arrived. We ate at the Spring Creek Barbecue and had our “Awards Ceremony” and hung out and chatted and stuff. As Tony and I were about to leave, we were met by a car full of high school girls asking all kinds of questions about the cars. I gave a passing thought to offering rides but then thought better of it. I headed home. I could smell wisps of smoke from the crankcase vent but thought it was the normal amount. All evening I debated which car I was going to take in the morning. When I thought the morning forecast was for 37 degrees, I pretty much decided on Ms. Clio. I thought, “I can handle the abuse, I'm going to be comfortable.” I went to bed with that being my plan. Ok, I think I'll leave off here and finish tomorrow.