After a Cessna flight to Loreto with a landing in a crosswind that was so tweaked out that it'd make Shawn White proud, we walked across the tarmac past the machine gun wielding army to the waiting van. We did a brief safety talk and car orientation then hit the throttle with the goal of getting ourselves back to el Pacifico by sunset. Again I'm reminded how amazing these cars are, copious suspension travel is pure magic. 80mph on roads 2' wider than the car with cactus on both sides, with jumps, whoops, chicanes, broad sweepers that allowed more rear wheel drift than a decade of Dukes of Hazzard reruns, all executed on more kinds of dust and sand than Inuit have types of snow, and of course, pokey cactus that decides to get you every now and then. Yup, all that and more.
One client "went astray" of the track "briefly" which led to a lot of "native vegetation" coming into the buggy. His co-pilot, who took 90% of the cactus infusion, was subsequently stripped to his boxers in the sun while FirstEnergy employees, such as myself, picked nearly invisible needles out of him for a while, whilst caressing him "dearly" as it's the only way you can find the ultra fine needles. At least his tan will be even... All fun.
What I was continually reminded of was how well these cars respond to terrain and driver inputs. They're tough as nails, but dainty in their own ways. It's all about giving them less input rather than more, and gently at that. They do the work, whether it be water crossing, boulders, silt fields, or whoops. The faster they're going the better generally, as it allows the suspension to float above the frequency of the washboard, and the momentum to keep the car on track. At times it's smooth as silk, other times your kidneys and shoulders hurt from being shaken in the 5 point harness. The old Porsche engines wound up higher, say 95mph. These have a wider band of power/torque so you can drive faster all day, but with less of a pure top speed - more like 85mph. Having said that, 85mph on the parts we were able to reach terminal velocity on is so balls to the wall it's hard to describe - the controlled bouncing along the road, the buzz of the clean air feed to the helmet, the roar of the engine near the rev limiter, and the vibration of the helmet visor under wind pressure were a sweet (and loud) symphony indeed. Dare I even describe how much fun it is to catch my 30 second man after a dozen caterpillar stops a day? Dare I say a good day is when no ranchers waved shotguns at us, only those who cheered were visible today.
Life is better with a margarita in hand, funny how that works. The bucket of beers on ice brought to our table took two chicas to carry it, which is a good sign for a bucket of beers. The dinner was so many items it was fantastic - beef, pork, egg, chicken, crab, lobster, fish, squid - all with beans, cheese, rice, tortillas, heaps of guacamole and SPICES. Green habanero is my love of the day.
Seriously it's like I've died and gone to heaven.
Thursday 29 April 2010
Loreto to Puerto San Carlos
Calgary vs. Mexico weather
After we departed early yesterday, rumors had it the airport closed. Sometimes life works out so right.
Wednesday 28 April 2010
Wide Open Baja
This is the closest to mountain biking as any 4 wheeled machine I've felt yet... except for 95mph over sand with no windshield is a little hard to replicate pedalling.
Sunday 25 April 2010
Tori: Renault Megane lessons
Legs: Welcome to Wicked Pummel
Saturday 24 April 2010
M Coupe bike mobile
The M Coupe is now a 2 person bike mobile, and I'm tickled pink. Which leads me to some reverse logic... Devin and Craig, of my carpooling to races friends, are always prompt in the mornings. Jon and Shawn aren't... but I may have to favour the latter two now, as it's a perfect set up to step on it ; )
I think my car has Toyota like problems. Whenever the inline 6 hears Rammstein blaring through the Blaupunkt speakers, the throttle gets stuck WIDE OPEN.
Mountain bike, Rammstein and sports car: man life is good!
Friday 23 April 2010
Trail Running
It's been a while since I've done any real trail running, but got out to do so this evening, legal relationship technicalities aside, from Todd the brother in law/running machine. About an hour and 20 minutes all in, on a great loop of Tom Snow's new stuff - beauty evening and great terrain. I think I'll be more sore than the experienced half of the running duo, but having a good time doing it is what counts. We might just have to be repeat offenders on this type of outing this summer!
Sunday 18 April 2010
Mountain Biking Kickoff
Saturday 17 April 2010
32, Grade F
Fitness - this one isn't too much of an issue, so easy to tick off the list first. Health, Fitness's indirect but correlated counterpart, will be revealed over time. So Far, so good.
Family - Fine there, aside From wherever this "adding to the Family" conversation ends up. I think that's Farther in the Future For now though, which in my view is just Fine.
Finances - yes on having some, yes on ability to continue the Fiscal prudence path, although I'm consciously letting absolute Frugality slip a little. Probably not worth Fretting too much about this subject overall, I suspect I'll Find a Fruitful, rather Free retirement one day, maybe even before Freedom Fifty Five.
FirstEnergy - yes on the career end, Fast, Frantic, Fun, mostly FulFilling. Fatiguing, but Fine on this Front, other than the Flourescent lights too much. It appears that a decade of pouring out all your energy into the right venue can Facilitate the creation of little Fortunes.Females - ahh, this one is always interesting. Sort of like the famous quote from Fubar: woman is a danger cat. This category is Fantasitic if you've ever met Ms. Fahey. Only Frustrating bit is Fahey's Far-ness, currently in Fontainbleu, in a Funky Fairytale residence enjoying her French Far-ness, which who knows, might be Farther Further Forward in time too. It has been observed our relationship is missing a Few legal Formalities, customary of long term relationships. We aren't Fretting that now, we Focus on that less than others it seems.
Fastness? Well, life is Fast... even aside from the recent new Four wheeled Friend in my driveway. Friends and Family near me probably can attest that in the last decade I haven't been witnessed sitting still for more than a Fraction of time. Bike wise, I have less Fast than ever, but try to sub in with little riding Fortitude and Fondness/Fanatacism for the sport.
I've had a little piece of paper taped to my shelf by my desk for a decade: don't suffer an unFulFilled life. Trying, just nobody wrote any manuals I can see on how to navigate this Fricken stuff.
Friday 16 April 2010
A day in the life of an analyst
Sunday 11 April 2010
Montreal Superfun
This city has an awesome party culture, or at least we found many more corners of it than we have at home. People are more hipster fashionista, not just the Calgary expensive jeans an t-shirt look. Everyone is social, and at least where we were, didn't seem to find any anglo resentment, even over in Matt's more french neighbourhood. Girls want to dance and party, there's a definite lack of snooty "why are you trying to talk to us" attitude, it's totally different. It's more like "hi, here's my Polish 35 year old babe friend, here's my blonde 21 year old friend from London, and here's my Korean friend, we're just dolled up and out for drinks and dancing, what are you guys up to?" in French accents and you kind of look around for a second at the group of them, then like check around for a hidden camera man from a the beer commercial crew to see if this is for real or what. Warren was popular in his chip 'n dale-ish tux. Speedo got interviewed by some Czech crew reporting on a bistro with ostrich heads mounted everywhere named Bily Kun. Ty, Matt and Josh pulled off some low speed, yet death defying tripling on Matt's 25y/o Schwinn 10 speed. Qua seemed to singlehandedly re-popularize the 70's surfer drink the Harvey Wallbanger to "rehydrate" in between dancefloor sessions. Ahh, good times.
Clubs are set up with super super sound systems (maybe the $18 drinks had some way of funding that) - when we sent each other funny cell phone pics or texts, my eyes were vibrating trying to read it from the bass thump, and you could feel your lungs vibrate when we breathed. It's good when the brick walls and solid beam/solid wood floors pulsate with the crowd's movements too right? I like undulating floors esp. when the staircase manned by big bilingual black bouncers in sweet threads is basically so narrow it's a one way.
We toured our buddies flat here for a bit, here's some random Q&A. The short of it is one of us has always been a little closer to the bohemian lifestyle than corporate lifestyle. Having an 80's Schwinn 10 speed, a third floor loft, and a depanneur 25 yards from home actually makes a hell of a lot of sense relative to 2 car garage, big box strip mall, mortgage in the burbs. Anyway, it also ed to a bunch of huh's and wtf's, for example:
Cool coffee table. Yeah I made that out of an old baby carraige I found (of course that's a perfect place for a publication I've never heard of, a music/art/oddity thing apparently: Girlyhead Magazine - "passion, pirates and ping pong - the romance issue". Uhh, right).
Hey, where'd you get these bowling balls in your kitchen? I light them on fire, they burn a lot.
Hey, where'd you get this hub cap? Off a car in the anglo part of town, I'm making something out of it.
Hey, where'd you get this big piece of wood (ie. Like a 70lb wooden 3/4 cirlce out of some exotic wood)? Just found it when I was walking down the street.
Hey, why do you have this hammer drill? Man last week I was drilling so hard I almost drilled behind my ear.
Hey, why do you have this "Handgun Hunting" book with some pot bellied guy in a 70's suit and aviator glassses hunting Tennessee boars with a .44 Magnum? The poses inside are crazy.
Hey, what's this painting of a naked girl? I bought it at a sale because she looks kind of like me doesn't she.
Hey, what's this owl? He watches my kitchen.
Hey, where did you get this couch? When gay people die of aids in NY, they auction their property. I got it at an aids auction.
Hey this is a cool bead curtain, I like it. Yeah take it if you want, I have lots more.
Cool freestanding tub, do you close the curtain when you shower? No. Doesn't water get everywhere? Yeah but I'm on the top floor.
Hey what are these fuzzy gerbil things with long string tails? My new girlfriend came over and wanted to come inside really fast, but her boots were hard to get off, so I just got a knife and cut the pom pom laces off her boots and she left them here.
I guess it's not totally necessary to have Q&A's line up in linear fashion when non-linear sidesteps will pretty much suffice.
Here's an assortment of superfun pics: