Track Cars...

The Ariel Atom, made in the US by Brammo Motorsports. 2 passenger, street-legal race car - weighing just about 1000 lbs and 300 supercharged hp. Now before you tell me that's nothing, so-and-so's Viper or Corvette has 500hp, remember that most of today's "sports cars" weigh about 3000-3500 lbs - in other words, the Ariel has the equivalent power-to-weight ratio of a 1000hp Viper/Corvette!

My friend Shance recently forwarded this article, which got me thinking about track cars again. (yeah, these are real fantasy cars right now... don't hold your breath for a ride.) The Ariel Atom, Porsche 911 GT3, Radical SR3, Caterham 7- these are probably the top picks in my mind right now. (assuming a fantasy budget of around $100K or so...)

The Atom is definitely a contender. Top Gear has an awesome video of Jeremy Clarkson driving the Atom without a helmet, and you can see his face distorted from the G-forces/wind.

Radical makes some cool looking cars. Main drawback is that they aren't street legal. Performance is on par with the Ariel. Evo Magazine rated the Radical the Trackday car of the year in 2003.

Seen a couple on the tracks - and I haven't been as impressed as I thought I should/would be. It seems there is a driving school at Spring Mountain Raceway in Pahrump, NV where one car drive these cars to get a test drive of sorts. I might have to try that... :)

Caterham 7's have always been retro-cool, but I've never been that fond of their looks, and I don't think the performance is on par with the Ariel or Radical. One of Sarah's friends from the UK got married in one of these cars - I thought that was pretty cool.

The Porsche just seems a little underpowered with almost 3x the weight and "only" 415hp. Still the most practical of all the 4 cars mentioned here though. (Yeah, you read it here first, folks. I called a Porsche practical.)

Of course there's always the option of a purpose-built, single seater formula car like the Pro Formula Mazda... 240hp rotary engine, 1100 lbs - These are probably the ideal car for corner carving, and have the most technology built into the cars - brake bias, sway bar adjustments in the cockpit, along with extensive data logging... It seems too much like work and less about weekend fun than the other cars here...

Oh well - one of these days... :)

Taste of Lexus & SF Greek Food Festival

On Saturday I went up to Alameda Point to mooch off the free food from the annual "Taste of Lexus" event - Lexus's annual event where they let select invitees test drive their new cars, and compare them against the competition. Apparently last year there were too many moochers, leading to long lines and waits for test drives, so this year, I didn't even get on the list! Fortunately my friend Tim put me on his guest list, so I got to go anyway.

The clear hype was around hybrids (specifically the GS450h) and their as-yet-unreleased LS460, the "self parking" car. Joke is with the speed it does this, someone would probably have snuck in behind you and stolen your spot. It's not fully automated, the car does the S curve back in, but the driver still has to step on the brakes, turn the wheel and pull forward. It's kinda scary thinking about the cars that can drive themselves & park themselves. Pretty soon, you'll step in and only be able to tell the car where you want to go. How it gets there, and how fast it goes there, is going to be entirely pre-programmed. Awesome. I hate it.

This year, the event was still packed full of moochers. In the 4 hours or so I was there, I got to test drive two cars - a GS300 and a BMW 750i, and I didn't get any crabcakes! We had to queue up for entry, for orientation, for food, for test-drives, and (get this!) even to exit! One interesting observation though - this event is almost 99% asian in the population makeup. Not that I'm racist or anything, but it sure seems like nothing brings out the asian masses like free food... The crowd would mob any server coming out with a tray, until they discovered the tray didn't have crabcakes, then they went back to pretending to look at the cars. When crabcakes did come out - they were gone in under 2 minutes! (so I'm told by someone who witnessed the feeding frenzy)

On Sunday, I joined my old roommate Shance & his girlfriend Michelle to check out the San Francisco Greek Food Festival. Besides the usual Gyros, we had souvlaki and dolmades (rice dumplings wrapped in grape leaves). But by far my favorite were the greek doughnuts - Loukoumades - covered with honey and cinnamon, and topped with cinnamon. We had about 2 dozen for dessert, and I got another dozen for Sarah to try.

Sarah's flight back was delayed rather substantially, so instead of heading to the airport around 10pm, I ended up there at 2 in the morning... Monday was a definitely a hard start.

Extent of Injuries Exaggerated...

OK - the injuries were not quite as bad as initially thought. I had an appt with a sports medicine doctor last week, who felt that I may have just sprained my rotator cuff. He prescribed some physical therapy - so we'll see how it works out. Now I have to find a PT place that accepts my insurance...

On another note: I can't believe I lost my week 4 fantasy football game - 75.98 to 75.11. Drops my record to 1-3-0. I could've just burnt my $50. Sheesh.