RACING ON THE CHEAP

Along with some members of the Nob Hill Auto Club, I toured the Canepa Designs restoration shop/showroom/museum today in Scotts Valley, CA. There is some truely world class design and restoration work going on there. Bruce Canepa was a wonderful host and gave us a personal tour of the workshop, detailing the reconstruction of several cars scattered about the cavernous facility. The facility houses the ’87 Earnhardt Championship car, the ‘70 and ‘71 Penske/Donahue Javelins, Duesenberg chassis #1 (!!!!),  Indy roadsters, Pikes Peak cars, Can-Am cars, Hi-boy hotrods with Gurney Eagle motors, and on and on. Free of charge and worth the visit.

Do you think building your own race car and then trusting your life to it by racing it at high speeds is extreme? The real extreme sport is big wave surfing at Mavericks. Yesterday was the annual surf contest at Mavericks, a wave that takes special oceanic conditions to break about a half mile off shore of Pillar Point in Half Moon Bay, California. Yesterday and today brought the 40+ foot waves to the cold, NorCal waters about a mile from my house. I sat in awe watching these guys drop in on waves bigger than a five story building. The acceleration and compression these guys experience has to be seen to be believed. Remember the wave in the background of this photo I shot is probably over a half mile away! Just the paddle out is more than I could handle…

I saw this, umm, ‘custom’ TR4-tinental in the city today. The pics have to say it all cuz I’m speechless…

Six months ago my wife and I decided it was time to buy a second car. When we moved from Arizona the year before, we sold our second car and just brought along our 2001 Tundra (had to tow my racecar, ya know). We got by with just one car for a year, but it was time to make our transportation scheduling a little easier. We wanted an inexpensive, reliable, efficient, and still fun to drive car, and I’m happy to say the Matrix has turned out to be all of these. I found a ‘one-family owned’, automatic transmission Base model, with over 100K miles. It was well used but well maintained, needed a bit of cleaning, and I got it for a little over $5K (before the obscene California tax and registration fees, sheesh).  Since then we’ve already put over 10K miles on it, including a couple of thousand mile roadtrips. I’ve had to put on new front brake pads, a new battery, and a couple of tires, but it has been dead reliable and never missed a beat. It’s been averaging 29/34 mpg, and its actually pretty fun to drive. Its got enough torque to hit the on-ramps, enough horsepower for safe highway passing (as long as you’re not loaded down), good braking characteristics, sharp steering, suprisingly good handling, and good ergonomics.  The 5-door hatchback is real handy, drop the rear seats and it will swallow a trip to Home Depot, put the seats back up and it takes 4 six foot adults as well as my 85 lb Labrador in the back bay with no problem. The lack of cruise control gets a bit old, but at least the accelerator pedal has a light spring, and the center console is a little low to be a good arm rest for six footers. But overall, the Matrix hits on cylinders for the job it was intended to do. I’ll give it two thumbs up!

Sunday morning surf report:

Half Moon Bay jetty, sunny skies, calm winds, air temp 55F, water temp 55F, 2 foot swells with fair to poor conditions. Perfect for Ol’ Guy surfing. Paddle out, catch your breath, ride one in, paddle back out, catch your breath for a little longer, repeat three or four times, go home, plop on the couch and watch NFL and NASCAR. I don’t get many weekends off so this was a real treat. The summer tourists are gone, the locals have the town back until spring, and life is good. As Mr. Nicholson said “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”.