SCCA Northeast Divisionals - Day 1

Talk about one big mess up on my part. I think my stress hit the roof after everything that happened today, and sadly it took my concentration away from the course. I was expecting an email explanation of the SCCA schedule and so I missed out that early registration was on Friday night. So as soon as I got there, I had to run to registration, get my wrist band and register, run back, unload my car, run back and get these SCCA specific stickers, run back and put them on, get my car to tech, get it back, and THEN walk the course with the little time I have left. I was determined though and kept my chin up, until I found out that there was still no break for me as I was also in the 1st heat.

Got my car to the assigned grid location, checked my tire pressures until I noticed that we left the masking tape designating the tire sides on the car from the previous night. Whoops! Once I did my first run, another issue happened! My car was too loud to pass sound test of 90 DB at 75ft away. Now before this was never an issue due to having my cat but since it was removed, my car got louder ( I didn’t expect that much louder).

I was about to disqualify myself as I knew there was nothing I could do. I know everyone here as sort of a second family and I was going to ignore the rules and give it another go. As I was about to leave, people from another region came running over to see what was going on and immediately offered to help. Man by the name of Alex Shchipkov came with a elbow pipe and we shoved that into the end of my exhaust. Low and behold, that helped me passed the sound test and I got my runs in for the day.

Big ups to John, his wife Angela, Alex and his (wife or girlfriend?) Olga, Rob and Brian for all the help getting me setup, making sure I was good and could get my runs in. I can’t thank you guys enough. Free beer and dinner on me if any of you are ever in the area!
At the end of the heat (4 runs a day), because this is a special event that has to be run like nationals, I had to get my car weighed after my 4 runs. With a ¼ tank of gas, my car weighed in at 2879. Man I need to go on a diet! Once we were done the scales, we had to get back to grid and await to be “released” by looking at our times, cone counts and see how we did for the day.

Once we were done that, we got a nice long break. At night once we were all finished our runs we got to get a decent BBQ dinner from Redbones to top off the day. It was nice to sit down with everyone, sit back and relax and just shoot the crap for a while. After all that, I packed up and got ready to head home for the night in which I should be ready to rock tomorrow. This time I should be able to clear my head and focus on my game.
Big ups to Dave for the pictures in my blog today.