August 19, 2002
10:25 pm PDT
Dubwar.
My weekend was spent at Dubwar up in Buttonwillow, 120 miles from LA. I woke up Saturday morning to put on my new horn, a Hella manufactured old-style Beetle horn. Since I didn’t want to cut any wires, I bought some spare wire and a few connectors to act as a go-between for the stock connector and the new horn. It took about 30 minutes, most of it figuring out how to crimp the spade connectors onto the wire. Then came a few minutes of fun, where I probably woke up the neighbors meep-meeping with a big shit-eating grin on my face. A lot of memories came back to me when tapping that horn.
I dropped by UCLA to pick up my digital camera’s memory card. Like an idiot I left it there the other day and forgot to take it home, so now I’m in the office on a Saturday just to get it. One good thing: In’N'Out in Westwood. I got myself a cheeseburger and fries, then sped off to the Church St. onramp to the 405 to wait for the SoCali caravan to reach me. I’d called earlier and found them on the 405 just north of the Irvine Spectrum, by my estimate they would be near me at 12:30pm.
At 12:45 I called again and found out there was a delay: three of the cars were involved in an accident due to a sudden stop in traffic. They were off the Manchester exit, so I figured I’d just drive down there… which sucked. I knew the 405 south would suck, but oh, well. 6 miles in 25 minutes. Yuck. We were there for over an hour, during which time I scored a radio from Julie, a woman planning on competing at Dubwar with a stock dealership loaner because her own car ended up in a shop due to unforeseen circumstances. Finally we were on the road, and somewhere just north of the 405/5 fork we were joined by a few cars that had been waiting around for over 2 hours to join up. Wow.
The trip up was fun. Caravaning tends to be a technique and it does tend to break apart if you hit traffic or get signals crossed. Radio chatter was a new thing for me, since I’d always caravaned in silence in the past. I have to say I never lost my lead car once… though they’d pull off and play in the traffic so I’d look for another lead car to follow. We got to Buttonwillow in record time, and I checked into the Motel 6 where I shared a room with Joe and his sister Liz.
The party, however, was across the street at the Willow Inn. So the three of us were there shortly after dumping our stuff in the room. I found a few others I knew from the forums and get-togethers, and promptly got water-gunned by a guy named Ian. Damn, knew I shoulda brought the water gun out of the car. Soon enough it was evening and I’d gotten in a beer, a Mike’s iced tea, an almond tequila shot, and an anejo shot. The beer came from Gabe, the iced tea from Doug and Craig. The almond tequila was Rene’s, and the anejo was mine.
A nice buzz but not enough to stop me from realizing I really wanted a steak after seeing the sign “”Willow Ranch”" across from the motel. Joe and Liz, along with Julie, Don, Mauricio, Mike and his girl, and a few other fellow were supposed to find me when they went. I hadn’t heard from them so gave Joe a call. Ah! you bastard! they were already there! So I started walking to join them.
Then a golf cart nearly ran me over.
Some guy brought over an electric four-seater, nice looking thing. They were doing donuts around the parking lot while a party was getting started. Apparently the driver got started way early, and now was driving recklessly around the lot. He nearly hit me, then as I kept walking I heard a big crash. I didn’t bother looking back, my animosity towards him being high enough to think, “”Serves you right, asshole,”" but the overpowering feeling of hunger driving me forward and dismissing it right then and there.
I had a 12 ounce New York steak with vegetable soup, corn on the cob, beans, a roll, and baked potato. All for a lovely price of $13. While not as good as Harris Ranch, which was unfortunately still 70 miles north of Buttonwillow, it was a great deal and, honestly, a damn good steak. I had to eat a little fast since everyone was already done, but no worries, I was hungry. =)
When I got back I found out about the cart. It had tipped over, injuring two of the people in it. The driver had superficial cuts and bruises, but his girlfriend was loaded onto an ambulance and sent to the hospital because of a concussion. A bonus for the unfortunate incident was the arrival of a CHP officer in his Camaro. I’d already seen one at Neowerkes the previous week, but this one was running. Driver was more of an asshole than I’d thought. Instead of going to the hospital to see his girl, he was walking around asking if anyone filmed the accident because he wanted to check it out.
Right.
I took the Stoli Vanil bottle I brought out to Manny and Jeff’s room, where an ample supply of ice and Pepsi was available. I’d've preferred Coke, but you can’t be picky when it’s not your bill. It worked fine enough to make a great tasting “”vanilla coke”", of which I polished off perhaps half the bottle all by myself over a period of two hours, with an inbetween anejo shot and in the end capped by half a bottle of Mike’s hard lemonade (Rene took the little bit of vanilla coke I had left and traded her bottle).
By midnight I was downright toasty. Rene gave me a free shirt, which I promptly made into the ninja mask I used to make with t-shirts when I was a kid. Then I donned my Tilley hat and proclaimed myself a ninja cowboy. These are the times you regret remembering the things you did while plastered, and envy those that can’t remember a damn thing. Of course, if I woke up a complete amnesiac, I’d have trouble with this.
Past midnight proved entertaining. Quite a few people had retired to the pool, or to their rooms. So private parties one and all, the parking lot an empty void… except for a stalwart few. Craig, showing the little accident he suffered on the way up (yes, his car got the worst of it in terms of dollars), did a grand burnout. The locals showed what their little Honda could do on milk crates. And yes, there was a Denny’s.
I think it’s a Law of Nature that after 12 midnight a Denny’s spontaneously comes into being within 100 yards of your sorry drunk ass. I can’t explain it any other way, as I only spotted the sign when my eyes glazed over and saw a brilliant splash of yellow and red by the highway. Those of us still awake trudged on over there and while waiting for our seats, spotted one of those little coin games where you drop a nickel, dime, or quarter into water and if it lands on a tiny platform you win something based on what you dropped.
Lo and behold! we won. Not once, but twice. I’d always won out of these things with dimes, and this time was no exception. With help from Joe manipulating the platform swivel, I landed a dime and won a chocolate cake. Later, Donnie tried it with a quarter and got a grand slam breakfast. Joe again gets the assist.
After a two egg breakfast I trudged on back to the Motel 6 with Joe and Liz and we crashed. The next morning was slooooooow. After checking out around 10am, we drove over to the Willow Inn to look for those of us still around. The rest we found at the Chevron hanging out. I’m still not sure why they were at a Chevron, but okay. While sitting there, I suddenly realized something. The previous night was the first time I had gotten truly hammered without thinking once of Satomi. I didn’t wallow in self-pity for an instant… the thought never came to me. And now it only did while I was munching on an egg mcmuffin Joe and Liz got for me on their McDonald’s breakfast run.
Huh.
I guess slowly but surely. But yeah, I’ll call that a milestone on that path to recovery.
We caravaned over to the track and got there before eleven. Now at this point a lot of the pics I took can show you the events of the day as I caught them. No pics from last night were taken by me, as I didn’t bring the camera with me for fear of losing or breaking it during the night. But event day, I did have the camera out and I snapped some pics which are here.
The highlights of the event for me number three. One was riding shotgun in Greg’s 1990 Audi Quattro during his third fun run in the AutoX event. The AutoX is essentially a timed raced through a slalom-like course. You navigate the car through a relatively flat but curvy road with cones placed at various points to narrow the path or mark points where you need to slalom. It was an exhilarating ride with me holding on and thinking, “”Damn, Greg can drive!”"
If I ever want to do any sort of racing, it’s gonna be AutoX.
The burnouts are always fun to watch. Mostly because it’s a spectacular display being put on by people intentionally destroying their tires, or if goaded into it, trashing their motor, clutch, and whatever else can go wrong (or right) in a burnout. What’s a burnout? It’s when the road is slicked with water and a gang of people hold your car back as you gun the engine. The tires squeal and rubber is burned, releasing toxic smoke. And yes, it’s fun to watch.
The last event I stuck around for was the expert road race. Skilled drivers pitting their performance engines against each other – ah, racing. A silver Corrado held the lead for most of the four lap run, with a yellow Rabbit starting at 4th position slowly gaining ground. On the third lap, at a part of the course no one could see, something happened because when they came back in view, that yellow Rabbit was in the lead and ended up winning the race.
After that, I decided not to wait for the awards and the raffle, and along with most of the original caravan we headed back south. I was radioless for this trip since I had to give Julie’s radio back, but spent the time listening to my CDs in my newly acquired CD changer. I got home around 6pm and drove over to Han’s to watch the X-Games and witness the MotoX double backflip. Then I went home, hung out with the cat, and passed out before midnight.
A fun weekend, overall. And for me, that realization on a Sunday morning while holding an egg mcmuffin in my hand is burned in my mind. It’s nice to know life goes on in a tangible way, is all. And that was definitely tangible.
