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The trip started in San Gabriel Valley, up to San Luis Obispo, Morro Bay. Spent the night in Morro Bay, and visited the Top Dog Cafe. Cool place with LOTS of dogs everywhere. Dont these people have jobs, its a Wed!

After, we hit up the 1 HWY going north. Our ultimate goal was to pass Monterey, and then catch the 101, up to Palo Alto

Toffuiti @ morro bay

Stopped in Big Sur for Cheese Fries, Coffee, and the View. Thank god my car didnt need gas there!

Toffuiti hanging with a 2nd gen civic hybrid. (they are discussing how terrible this road is for their MPG’s)

And of course, the final MPG’s of the Trip. Not shabby eh?

We all saw it coming. After AE86 Corollas saw price increases of $500 to thousands of dollars, the touge/canyon racer crowd saw the potentials in Miatas aka the MX-5. A couple months later, we saw fat fendered Miatas running around California with 0 offset sportmax wheels, and a new early 90s civic was born!

But a Miata as a testament of your own rebellion against society? Really man? Come on. I heart miatas too, you can’t have more fun with 1500 bucks, RWD and a vert. But we all know how the rest of the world sees em. Remember that.

This past weekend, I attended the Lone Pine Time Trials for the first time. Headed up Friday night w/ the lady & stayed at the Dow Villa Motel, which is pretty decent for a motel.

The 5 hour drive up (through 7pm LA traffic with a pit stop for Dinner @ Willow Springs) wasn’t too shabby at all. Of course, it probably helped that I had a passenger.

Early Saturday morning, I bought some mini breakfast: trail mix bar & Rock Star energy drink, hee hee. While the car was being fueld, a CHP officer rolled into the gas station near me.

Officer: “Is that an Acura or something?”
Me: “No, It’s a Nissan” *smiles*
Officer: “So, it’s just got a body kit?”
Me: “Yes sir, just a body kit.” *wipes windows*
Me: “Have a good day officer!”
Officer: “Okay, bye”
*vrrroooommmmm*

He was actually decently nice, probably more curious than anything, considering there was a parking lot full of real race cars where I was staying, haha.

view to the west:

view to the east:

Anyway, the view is AMAZING. I’ve never travelled this far up the 14/395 Death Valley side. The Sierra Nevadas looked absolutely gorgeous, and despite the heat, the breeze kept things bareable.

Once I arrived, I met some regulars, a few “kids” from Santa Barbara who were camping at Lone Pine coming back for their 10th Lone Pine event, a few familiar faces from Solo 2 (Renee, Craig, Jayson, Ken, and Mike, to name a few), and a variety of other people. For such a big course, it was a relatively small turn out - probably 40-50 drivers total. I really hope more people make it out next year; the more the merrier.

I had thought it would be mostly autocross people, but it turned out to be mostly road racing guys coming out for this event.

The track looked like it was going to destroy my Hankook RS-2’s & Federal 595RS. However, at the end of the day, the wear was no worse than a practice day @ El Toro.

It was pretty entertaining to see cows early in the morning grazing by the track. They left me some presents near my work area, eewww, ;).

Being an autocross guy (and barely one at that), the course was very intimidating, 2.5 minutes of almost flat out fun. The parade laps we had in the morning helped us familiarize ourselves with the course & “sweep” the course of grass, weeds, and gravel.

In my lil automatic 240sx convertible, Kandi, I was able to hit around 75-80mph on the straights going into the decreasing slaloms. I believe the faster cars/guys/girls were getting into the 90-95+ mph range. (more…)