The twin turbo is languishing in the garage ... Work's been nuts with some crazy hours, and I've barely been able to see my kids over the last little while. Now I am being tossed to Silicon Valley for a biddness trip ... and all of a sudden I am feeling a little better about work. ;-)

Is there anything going on in the San José area, or at Laguna Seca? It's been a long time since I've even been able to hitch a ride as a passenger, and I'd love to attend an event on the weekend. Even if not, I still plan to drive down to Laguna Seca, just so I've seen the place.

Pointers, suggestions, invitations (? (IMG:http://www.frrax.com/rrforum/style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif) ), all are welcome!

Nik

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Black [-----] LT1 twin turbo (neglected)

Laguna Seca is gonna be in some renovations soon for few months IIRC.
i've been wanting to go karting, there's some place in SJ apparently... does anyone know anything about that?

Lemans Karting is in San Jose. Looks like fun. We have a CMC weekend at Sears Point at the end of the month, come on out!

LSR schedule is here: http://www.laguna-seca.com/TrackRental/ not much happening this year for club dates because of the big shutdown for repaving. We (NCRC) had a couple days there in Jan, and are at Thunderhill Apr 16 and May 5. LSR is a county park and AFAIK, is generally open to poke around the grounds.

NASA at Sears Point Apr 29-30 would be a good pick. If you make it over to Santa Cruz, stop by my shop and say hi.

Thanks, everyone! I got some excellent pointers.

RedHardSupra--I didn't realize until I looked at your profile that you were right by Laguna Seca. Man! Lucky you ... The only thing we've got around here is a bunch of gravel encrusted circle track courses, with trees and boulders way too close for comfort. When I lived out east, at least we were close to a real racetrack (in that case near Mosport in Toronto).

Not to mention that the local Corvette and Porsche clubs are pretty serious about racing here on Vancouver Island--I thought I'd walked into a wasp's nest the first time I saw a bunch of 911 turbos and Z06s shod in R rubber sitting casually next to a line of cars painted white to be crushed by monster trucks that evening.

Julia and Alan--thanks for the pointer to Sears Point for April 29-30! I'm going to try and make it to the track at least one of those days. I've never seen a NASA practice or race, so this is really tempting.

I also found the karting place--http://www.lemanskarting.com/maphrs.shtml. Looks quite neat, maybe if work absorbs too much of my waking cycles, I'll double up on my sthma puffers and try to feel a little younger to regain some sanity. I haven't driven a kart since the mid-'80s.

Alan, where's your shop located in Santa Cruz? I looked at your profile, but I didn't see the address. I might pop in, if I get a chance. I'm not a paying customer at the moment, so I won't try to zap any of your time ... I might beg you to let me sit in a car with a cage and a Kirkey seat in it, to think that over as a future mod for my car.

Generally, after logging a bit of time with Google Earth, I was surprised how relatively close we are to central CA from Vancouver Island (Sears Point seems to be about 730 miles from my house). I'll have to keep that in mind for future trips. ;-)

Cheers!

Nik

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Black [-----] LT1 twin turbo (yearning for a blast down the coastal highways)

New shop is at:
363 Coral St
Santa Cruz CA 95060
831 427-3296

Give me a call before you come over - my usual hrs are late AM to Late PM, every day. I may have a Kirkey shod car in the shop, hard to say what I will have in 2 wks. I do have several different seats in the stroreroom.

What a treat. There's nothing like dropping your work for half a day and heading out of the hotel in San José for some impromptu race track exploring in California, even if you can't do any on-track driving.

Saturday, I drove up to Sears Point via San Francisco and caught the tailend of the CMC race. What a treat! There's just something about watching a bunch of Mustangs and F-Bodies dogging it out. I have some nice shots of the yellow and red Unbalanced Engineering cars, of Julie's Trans Am and of a couple of black 4th gen Camaros (one missing a piece of front fender at the end). I think I even spotted Alan Blaine talking near Julie's car. There were quite a few other cool F-Bodies there as well and I was walking around some of them looking at the installed cages. There were lots of cars of all varieties: An orange '69 Z28 parked in front of a track-prepped white and blue '65 or '66 Mustang, the odd Lotus, anything between Midget cars and Ferraris. It was a real treat to walk around in that sea of cars and snap some pics of build details here and there. It seems folks were generally having a great time at the track. Afterwards, I trolled around to higher ground at Sears Point just to see what's up there.

Sunday, I drove down to Laguna Seca, and it was the complete opposite of Sears Point. Since there was nothing going on other than a bunch of unfinished construction, the place was virtually deserted. A few campers, and that was pretty much it. After driving around the perimeter for a bit getting a feel for the layout, I parked behind the stands in the shade and trolled around on the infield. I saw a triplet of red Vipers with Michigan plates sitting outside the Skip Barber school. Since the souvenir store is right next door to the school, I now have a picture of 3 red Vipers sitting in front of the souvenir store, with the store's sign clearly visible. Unfortunately, the souvenir store was just as closed as the rest of the track, so I wasn't actually able to buy any Vipers. :-)

I've got to finish the twin turbo soon and do some shakedown runs, so that I can drive down to these fantastic racetracks from British Columbia sometime for some on-track fun!

Nik

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Black [-----] LT1 twin turbo

This post has been edited by maddrtwinkletoes: May 1 2006, 04:03 AM

Sorry I did not get to meet you in person Nik! Would love to see your pix! Glad you had a good time.