Day 256 September 14, 2002

Well today doesn't really count as a work day at the cabin, cause me and my cohorts are going racing. That's right folks, NEEDMORE Racing is competing in an 8 hour endurance race at Oakland Valley Racetrack. Our team is led by my cousin Al ("Iceman"), includes Dave H., The world renowned Butchie, and my other brother Darrin S. My other brother Patrick was set to join us but was forced to cancel at the last minute. I know Kart racing has nothing to do with the cabin but I include it here for the heck of it. We had a blast. There were 19 teams consisting of 4 to 6 drivers each. The Karts have identically prepared 10 horsepower (Honda) engines, live axle, disc brakes, electronic timing transponders for computer timed laps and stuff. There are 19 mandatory driver changes during the 8 hours. 3 to 4 refuelings. None of us had truly driven this track before because they were using a different configuration from the one Al, Darrin and I had driven on at the practice day we took a few months ago. We didn't realize that until the half hour practice right before the race. We had a steep learning curve as we only got about 5 minutes each practice, enough for maybe 5 laps. We did pretty well in the race. We had some brake problems (bad master cylinder and cracked rotor) and switched Karts midway. The new Kart was 2 seconds a lap slower that the one with the bad brakes, so we switched back. We made a few small errors due to lack of communication, but we did manage to turn the 4th fastest lap time overall. We finished a respectable 8th. We gained experience and I expect we can be a top 5 team next time. Top 5 is fine. For now.

That's Al - #13

Me, smiling