0:00
/
0:00
Acura ZDX Killed After 2 Years: Epic NSX Road Trip to NSXPO w/ Gas Drama & Winery Fails!
Acura ZDX Killed After 2 Years: Epic NSX Road Trip to NSXPO w/ Gas Drama & Winery Fails!
0:00
0:00
0:00
0:00
About this episode
Acura's recent discontinuation of the ZDX sparks a discussion about the brand's future direction, focusing on coupes and hybrids. Hosts Dre Mullins and the guest recount their epic NSX road trip to NSXPO, sharing stories of near gas shortages, scenic detours, and amusing mishaps along the way. Highlights include unique stops at wineries, encounters with fellow enthusiasts, and the challenges of managing a roof box during the journey. The episode captures the camaraderie and excitement of car culture, making it a relatable listen for automotive fans.
Topics:
acura zdx
nsx road trip
gas shortages
winery visits
car culture
road trip challenges
electric vehicles
automotive camaraderie
Cars:
Acura ZDX
EP295
In this episode of the Hard Parking Podcast, host Jhae Pfenning dives into Acura's recent decision to discontinue the ZDX electric SUV after less than two years on the market. He shares his thoughts on its design, GM collaboration, and why EV SUVs like the ZDX and Rivian often struggle to turn profits in a shifting automotive landscape. Then, special guest Dre Mullins joins for "Dre Day Volume 3," recounting their separate epic NSX road trips from Phoenix to Tacoma for NSXPO 2025. From scenic detours through Lake Tahoe, Napa Valley wineries, and Oregon's Redwoods to mishaps like speeding tickets, soaked Jordans, and near-misses with gas shortages, they swap hilarious stories of adventure, traffic woes, and group dynamics in high-performance Acura NSXs. After Dre's exit, Jhae wraps up with solo tales from the NSXPO—including track days at The Ridge, casino nights, and a nail-biting return trip —plus a teaser for next week's chat with Acura's Jonathon Rivers. Sponsored by Spark Forge AI for streamlined business communication. Perfect for Acura enthusiasts, EV fans, and road trip lovers!
Main Show Sponsors:
Right Honda: https://righthonda.com/
Right Toyota: https://www.righttoyota.com/
Arcus Foundry: https://arcusfoundry.com
Autocannon Official Gear: https://shop.autocannon.com/
Contact Hard Parking with Jhae Pfenning:
email: [email protected]
Website: www.Hardparking.com
Patreon: www.patreon.com/hardparkingpodcast/
Instagram: instagram.com/hardparkingpod/
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@HardParking
Filter:
|
Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Car
Acura ZDX
"...ecently announced that they are discontinuing the ZDX. If you're a car person, you probably already kne..."
Select text to request an explanation
I realize, after doing some troubleshooting, that one of the vacuum pumps has failed.
It's completely failed. It won't hold suction or anything.
This is our parking brought to you by Right Honored and Right Toyota out of Scottsdale, Arizona.
Coming up on today's show, Dre Mullins, Dre Day comes by the studio and we talk about our road trip
up to NSXpo. We both went different routes, have different stories. I almost ran out of gas.
I'll tell you about that and more. But first, Acura has recently announced that they are discontinuing
the ZDX. If you're a car person, you probably already knew that. Some of you watching this
and listening to this don't really follow car news, which is why you're here for me.
You know, I think that the ZDX, I like the car. I don't necessarily think it was necessary,
but Acura has since, in the last 30 days, said we're kind of refocusing. We're going to do more
coupes. We're going to do more sedans. We still like EVs, but we're going to make more improved
hybrids in the future as well. I think it's just one of those global strategy changes that
every car manufacturer is facing that we've seen a lot of that. The ZDX was only around for
less than two years. I almost tried to convince my wife to get one. I think it's a great-looking
electric vehicle. I think it shares some stuff with GM. I think it is co-produced with GM,
General Motors. I wonder how the ZDX is going to be remembered. I know they couldn't really
sell very many of them, but there really wasn't a demand out there. I think it's just
something that Acura wanted to produce. They kind of say they had a cool EV SUV out there,
and most EV SUVs are money pits, no matter what brand. Rivian, I don't know if Rivian's
turned a profit yet. I know it took Tesla. You can quote me on this, I think 15 years to have
their first profitable quarter. At the end of the day, it's a money-making business,
and it hasn't made sense. The writing on the wall is it just didn't make sense right now.
Again, I'm a fan of the ZDX. I think it looks great. I would have loved to have
driven one for a weekend or so. At this point, no thanks. Coming up after this word from Arcus
Foundry's SparkForge, Dre Mullins. It's a quick story for you. A listener lost a big job, missed the
call, never saw the DM, probably because he has listened to this podcast. It happens, and it's
fixable. Running a business shouldn't mean juggling a dozen apps and missing opportunities.
SparkForge helps you reply faster, capture more leads, and get more reviews, all without
adding hours to your day. One simple place to handle calls, texts, and social messages,
so you can focus on the work that pays. It's like finally putting your business on cruise control
without losing the steering wheel. One login, one platform, all around your control, consolidate your
tech in one place to save time, money, and headache. The future is here, and it's powered
by SparkForge AI from our friends at Arcus Foundry. Jump into a 30-day trial today by
using code hardpark at getsparkforge.ai and stop letting yesterday's tech eat tomorrow's profits.
Joining me in studio is Dre Mullins back for the third time, Dre Day, volume three. We both just
got back from NSExpo. We both drove our NSXs across the country, Phoenix to Tacoma,
and we both took two completely different routes. I logged 4,200 and approximately
seven miles of mine on the trip. Oh my God, you got it down to the mileage? Oh, I know.
I was in the car for days. In the car for days. So what I want to do is I think it'd be fun if
we were to kind of go through and talk about our journeys. The homework was to take note of some
things. I ran out of time. Rather, I didn't manage my time as well as I would have liked,
and so a lot of it I'm going to be going off of memory, but the backtrack we both left
Saturday, September 13th, and based on what I called you from the gas station waiting for JC,
we probably left at similar times. That's correct. How did your first day go?
What exciting things happened to you on Saturday on your way up? Okay, so where did you go? Where
do I go? Where do I go? So take the journey from Mesa, Arizona to Tacoma as well, but
we're out the day as we actually made a few stops. So we ended up, me and my wife,
we decided to go trying to take a scenic route. So we actually left from Phoenix area up to Vegas
to go visit her brother for a little bit from Vegas. We continued on a journey to Lake Tahoe,
South Lake Tahoe. So you took 93, right? Because when I called you, you're going to
like Wickenburg and all that. Absolutely. 93 sucks, by the way. It is horrible, man.
I remember it being better. No, it gets worse because once we left Vegas, once you get,
I want to say North West of Vegas, it's, if you've ever driven like West Texas,
it is the same thing, but more desolate. So I didn't really save too much, but as far as like
scenic route or anything like that, but it was an experience. So I'm glad I've knocked it out
and I probably won't do that route again, but it was an experience to go through.
So you guys stopped in Vegas. Did you stop for like lunch?
Yes. Yeah. So actually what we did, we just had brunch with her brother and his family. So that
was the beginning of the journey. And like I said, we just, just took the little scenic route
because we knew we were going to South Lake Tahoe. But we got into Lake Tahoe when it was dark. So
kind of defeated the purpose of getting there. So we actually had to enjoy Lake Tahoe in the
morning and just kind of walked around the lake. I didn't realize how huge Lake Tahoe was.
Right. It's massive. So it's like in the middle of the mountains, I had no clue.
It was a great experience. And then from there that morning...
Okay. So what did you do in Lake Tahoe? You said you just walked around,
was there anything that stood out or just, how was the traffic? Cause I wanted about that.
But I, when we went, when we were in Tahoe, we, we went, we flew into Reno.
And then we drove to Tahoe from Reno, which I don't know if that's...
Maybe about an hour, maybe.
Northeast Lake Tahoe.
It is about northeast. I didn't go to Reno, but yes, kind of remember off the map,
looking where to go. It was a bit about northeast, but the traffic getting into Lake Tahoe area
was actually pretty hectic because like there was some type of concert going on.
There was a couple other events and venues, which would explain why a good portion of all
the hotels are booked and why we were kind of fighting, looking for a place to stay that
night. So what I'm hearing is you didn't book ahead of time.
Well, I did, but I could have done a little bit better because like I said, I was,
when I was picking the rooms, I really wasn't like, I was just like, I'm just going to pick a
room. But then everything was like booked, booked, booked. And I was like, well,
something must be happening, but I needed just finding a cool budget in that was open.
But... Did you get in trouble? Did the message out you?
Let's just say she had better words at that time, but it was a road trip and I only knew
we were going to be there for a few hours. So it was pretty much stopped,
kissed a little bit of shut-eye and then keep it rolling next morning.
Got it. And then so now we're on Sunday. So let me back up and talk about my Saturday then.
So we met up at the shell off of, I think, Carefree Highway or whatever it is up there,
whatever the exit that you took, I actually took the same exit in the opposite direction to wait.
Now this is my first time. A lot of people have seen pictures of the car with the box on top.
Right. So the story of the box is my dear friend Will said, hey, you should take my box if you
drive up. I go, I don't know, man. I've never done that before. And I went to Google images
and I'm like, all right, well, NC1 or 2017 intersex carrier on top, nothing zilch.
Okay. Now, what I found out after I got back is there's a gentleman in Canada who has a black
intersex that put a black box on top of his car. So it's out there somewhere.
So is the NC1 intersex with the black box or okay?
Yep. Yep. All right.
Because it wouldn't make any sense to look up your car.
No, no, you're right.
Different cars. And it's like, all right, well, sure, it'd be kind of cool. Right. It'd be cool.
So I went over there did the test fit and over the course of the next six weeks,
you know, the time just, you know, move really fast. Got you.
And so as I showed you, I did a bunch of drawings and things. I'm like, all right,
this doesn't exist. We got to lift the thing off the top in the back because it looks dumb,
just centered on the car. It looks better. All the sports cars you see on the canopy kind
of extending to the spoiler or something else in the back. Right.
So designed a kit for that. But the C suckers are good. Okay. But my biggest concern,
having never tried it, I didn't want to drive it, didn't want anyone to see me driving around,
right? So the only test is sucking it on top of the car in the garage for four or five days,
putting some weight in there. Okay.
And then putting a level on top of the box to see if it moves at all.
Okay, because we had one hinge point, everything else I cross drilled and had quicker these pens.
So even if the pole slipped this way, it couldn't slip because the pin was in there. So just kind
of do this. There was one spot on each side of the back that I didn't drill through. And that
would have been the only point of potential failure. Gotcha. Two cups in the back,
the four cup system in the front, tight as hell. Nothing happened. I had all the podcast
equipment in there. I put a couple old brake rotors in there from the old NSX.
It was heavy. Cool. So that morning we set out and this is the first time I've ever driven
with that box on top. So how nervous were you? I mean, like, you got an experimental box sitting
on top of a brand new car. And this isn't something that you're just going to go online.
This was to just work. You're like crossing fingers, right?
Right. I wasn't going to a car show or cars and coffee. I was driving to Tacoma
over 2000 miles away. Right. And so I didn't really know. I felt pretty confident. I emailed
the company said, Hey, they said that we have elevation. People online say elevation can affect
the suction of the cups because of the air. So I'm like, so I went and googled, okay, from Phoenix
to Flagstaff. It's it goes from 1000 to 7000 feet. Yep. At some point in the trip, Glacier
National Park, you know, 8400 feet, 7500 feet, Yellowstone, whatnot, every every part. And then,
you know, if you get to Tacoma, we're back on a lower sea level, like 1500 or 2000 or whatever.
So yeah, little nerving. So they say just check it. Right. So our first stop was Flagstaff.
And I said, Okay, JC, we get to Flagstaff. I need to pull over and I need to check the
check the boxes because the good thing about the sea suckers, I got a little pump system
vacuum. Gotcha. So you can see by the indicator when it comes out of his losing suction. Oh,
really? Okay. Yep. So if you see orange, not good. Right. If it's black and it's a little longer
than it was before, it's still good. But you just walk around, just hit every single one of
those buttons at every stop, make sure it's good. Didn't really have a problem on the way up.
Okay, which is perfect. So Saturday, we took a route. We went up through Page, Arizona,
which I guess I knew it prior, but I had never been there. Okay. That's the famous spot with the
Grand Canyon, access to the Horseshoe Bend or whatever it's called. Exactly where you're at.
Yep. So we've never been there before. And it's interesting to see the terrain change,
right? So much. It looks like Badlands or something. Yes. It just changed so much.
So we stopped there. So I learned that's where that is. And then we took another really,
a really nice route in between somewhere and somewhere I forgot, but south of South of Salt Lake
City. Okay. So Saturday, we stopped at Salt Lake City. And then friend of the show, Kyle Nielsen,
who has the Long Beach Blue Type S NSX with the Science of Speed Pure 900 Turbos and the
White TE-37s. Okay. Yeah. He met up. JC was tired. He had the shoulder surgery. He just
wanted to go straight to bed. Yeah. I'm surprised that he actually went on the long haul like that.
Just got a shoulder back functional. Yeah. And we'll bring that story back forward later,
but he's limited. And so he's driving back and forth. His shoulder was, you know, getting
kind of sore. So he'd get kind of ordinary toward the end of each day, which is fine.
But he wanted to rest. But Kyle picked me up. And, or actually I met Kyle at STK
Steakhouse. Good for people watching. Okay. You know, it's a Steakhouse that,
have you been at STK? No, I have never. So we used to have one here in Scottsdale.
It's kind of like a Ruth Chris style. Okay. So compare it to the one that we have been together,
bourbon and bones. Would it be on that level or? I would say it wants to be on that level.
Okay. Okay. So I know what kind of Steakhouse is. Yeah. STK is cool. It's good food.
Gotcha. Gotcha. It's a little glitzy. You walk in there and, you know,
some kid will walk in with a girl in each arm. Swear to God, this happened.
Okay. Or you'll see it'll be bachelorette party style. You don't really see that at bourbon and
bones. No, no. It's more of a little up. I wouldn't say upscale because they're both
Steakhouses, but you know what I mean. You've been to both or you've been to bourbon and bones.
We have this table next to us and there's a guy with two girls and he looks,
I don't know what he is. He's probably early 20s, hip hop-ish looking. Okay.
Got the sunglasses on and the hat that he hasn't taken off. It's after dark.
Okay. Yeah. Right. And this, we look over and this girl's like,
he's like up taking pictures of her.
Okay. So maybe he's a supporter of Instagram page, huh? Huh? Maybe?
Whatever. But there's another table opposite of them, probably 10 feet over and there's,
people come walking and there's like eight or nine girls and like three dudes.
So this is STK. But my boy Kyle, he's great, great host. He's like,
if you come to my city, I'm taking you out. Okay.
I don't care what you say. I'm buying your dinner. Oh, that's what's up.
Oh, he's a great guy. I love the guy. Okay. But he knows everybody. He's the NBA elf.
So he does the games at Utah Jazz. He's known. If you Google NBA elf, that's Kyle Nielsen.
Okay. So he's well known in Salt Lake City. I had no clue, but this is awesome.
Yeah. He calls the owner. He's like, Hey, do you have room for two,
maybe three tonight? I don't have reservations. He's like, show up, we'll get you in.
That's exactly how this work. He's cool with everybody. Everybody loves Kyle.
Everybody loves Kyle. But while we're there, there's like two or three other people in the restaurant.
Kyle, what's up, man? You know, he knows everybody. It's dope. So that was, that was my Saturday night.
Okay. And so we're, we, I forgot, where do we stay? We stayed at one of the Marriott properties
because I'm trying to become lifetime platinum. Understood. Yeah. I think maybe
Sheraton or whatever. So taught me through your Sunday. My Sunday. All right. Sunday is a
little bit more exciting because we had made plans to link up with the rest of our party. So that was
going to be J Jones and Tuck. The goal was to meet up in Napa. So we left from Lake Tahoe, drove,
you know, right across Cali into Napa area and decided to hang out there and do two wine tastings.
So on the road trip. Yeah. Yeah. On the road trip. But we ain't no, no, no. So check this out.
We stopped driving. It was a drive to Napa and then from there it was like, Hey,
we knew we were chilling there. All right. So it wasn't wine tasting and off to Tacoma or anything.
No, but we wanted to take advantage of the time. And then we knew that we had a, you know, a little
bit of a journey ahead of us. So here, let me let me look at the wineries because there was two
wineries that we went to. Let's see here. The first one was the V Satui. Satui, S-A-T-T-U-A-I
winery. Now that one there, we just did the wine tasting at their facility and just kind
of laughed and joke back and forth. And then that's when my wife was able to give one of our
members of the party a new nickname. But, you know, we'll get into that later because.
Are we going to get into it later? Because I want to know.
Well, we'll let him, we'll let him talk about that in a minute, but we'll just say that he
learned the thing about gravity and glasses and bumping. And then, you know, his new
nickname became a, what we call a spiller. Okay. So we just laughed and joked about that
for a few days. And then from there, there was another winery that I thought was freaking amazing.
It was the Castillo de Armosa. And these are Napa.
These are like, so actually. These are both in NorCal?
Yeah. Well, in that area. So Calistoga was the, well, actually, let me back up.
St. Helena, California was the V Satui winery. And then the Castillo de Armosa,
that one there was in Calistoga, California. So that's all in that whole Napa area.
But the cool thing about the second winery, man, it was built like a medieval castle. So
looking at the website, you kind of look at it and you're like, ah, okay, that's kind of cool,
kind of whatever. But when you actually go into this winery, it is literally like,
like Mason, like rock built, like a medieval type castle.
You assumed you guys took pics?
Yes, we did. So I'm out to forward some to you and you can kind of put some up.
Yeah, I'm going to need those as soon as you get them.
I will. I will make sure I send them to you because we actually kind of did something
kind of cool in that one. They didn't really have any wine tours available at the time when
we got there. But, you know, our wonderful waitress, she kind of pointed us in the
direction was like, hey, no one's over here, but if you go take a look at some stuff,
you know, enjoy. So we actually went on our own little wine tour through their wine
cellars inside that particular winery, which was freaking amazing.
Now, I don't know if we need to like go through the video or maybe live for lights or
some and maybe, you know, do some edits for slapped him or anything like that.
But it was a lot of fun kind of exploring and going into the winery.
So that was pretty much day two for us because then from that point, we just
already had parked out and ended up staying at night at a bread and breakfast.
The name of the place for that one was the Calistoga Wine Way Inn.
It was a little like Airbnb bread and breakfast, but it was real easy, simple,
and much, much better than the hotel the night before.
So I was back in the great graces of the wife.
Right.
And we were ready to move forward the next day.
What? Tell us more about this sipper spiller.
Oh, well, is it one of the J's?
Well, see, we'll leave it at one of the J's.
And hopefully one day I'll let him tell this story and go into it.
So here's what people don't realize is when we travel, there's always a lot of J's.
Yeah.
So if everybody understands the group, it's going to be J, then we have J Finney,
then we have J Jones, and then we have Dre.
So usually if you just get the right annunciation, we're all going to turn it.
Last year, we had John Hansy, which is J.
And we had Joe, which is also a J in the same group.
Then when Jason's around us, then that's another J.
It's just a lot of J's.
Yeah, a lot of J's.
Let's see what else happened on that day.
No, what happened?
Oh, the spiller.
One of the J's.
One of the J's.
So you got to remember, well, they were actually, let me back up a little bit.
The goal was to meet Napa at one.
No problem.
I'm leaving, you know, Lake Tahoe, GPS.
Hey, you'll be there about one, one, ten, no big deal.
As I'm driving, I get this text message.
Hey, we're going to be in Napa about noon.
I was like, okay, that's about an hour off.
No biggie.
So they had a head start on the winery area before we got there.
So they got there early and pre-gamed.
Yes.
So I guess they're a little pre-gamed.
They're all assholes.
So we were trying to get caught up.
So as we got caught up, we noticed that we were just trying to catch up to the
race and get a couple drinks down with them.
They were a little bit more fluid than we was.
And then like I said, they were going to.
Which, which one of the days?
This is going to be J, we're going to go JJ.
Okay.
Jordan's.
Jordan's, we'll call it.
Oh my God, that's another story.
I know there's a Jordan story.
It was that on Monday or was that on Sunday?
That's going to be on, see here.
Sunday, Monday, that's a Monday.
All right.
So that'll be a Monday story.
Yeah.
So, uh, but now he would just talk and we're all having a great time.
And the host was amazing.
Yes, he tipped over a glass, but this is the cool thing about it though.
As that glass tipped over the tinder that was helping us with the wine tasting.
I think he caught that glass right as it went down.
Wipe the wine off the table.
So smooth.
Refills his glasses, slid it back in front of him before I can almost catch what happened.
So like some Mr. and Mrs. Smith shit.
He's a spy.
I'm just a, it was amazing.
The only reason I even knew about it is because my wife happened to catch and
observe everything and then let everybody know.
But that's, that was an amazing little situation.
So that's a stark contrast to my Sunday.
Because I mean, you guys are the, you're the party group.
Right.
And so my, my thought was, okay, I can either do the party thing.
Yes.
Cause we hang out the group, I said, or I can take advantage of what I considered to be
not really once in a lifetime, but something super unique that would justify me
wanting to even drive my car right from here to the destination.
And so Sunday morning, we get up Salt Lake and we drive through Jackson,
Wyoming and Jackson Hall.
So we get there in about five hours.
We, and this is, this is peak touristy season.
This is what I'm telling JC.
I'm like, okay, well we're going to stay in Salt Lake and then it's only about four hours.
So we're going to get up, we're going to drive there.
We're going to have lunch and we're going to push on to, to Bozeman.
Okay.
So we're going to go Jackson, have lunch, drive up through Yellowstone,
check out the T tons because he's never been there.
I was there in 2016.
I said, well, I would love to drive through here again, like a cool car.
Why not the NSX?
So you have these two NSX, you guys are driving with three, right?
We're driving with two, the white one and the yellow one.
So keep that in mind because you had to have seen people and being like,
where are all these cars?
Because we broke a lot of necks.
Yes.
We broke a lot of necks between JC and I.
And so this is peak season, peak season in Jackson.
If you want a hotel room, it's like $1,500.
Yeah.
That's why we stayed in Salt Lake.
Made perfect sense.
Yeah.
And he's like, oh, we always people because he's sore, grumbly old guy, but you know,
he's, I told him he needs to go back to Jackson with Pam, his wife.
Right.
So they can enjoy it and they can stay off the beaten path, non,
you know, peak touristy season and have a great time.
Right.
So we go to this cowboy saloon and they have, it's one of those places that's
frustrating because they have this lawn bar and they have all these tables
and they have one place order food.
There's no servers.
They'll come to your table with drinks.
But if you want to already have stand in line order at the window.
Okay.
Yeah.
But the bar, they're not bar stools.
They're saddles.
Oh wow.
Okay.
So you got to straddle up on the bar and sit there on the saddle.
Yeah.
While you're drinking your beer and eating your chicken strips or whatever, right?
Yeah.
With the big thing right here.
I got a picture.
Okay.
Maybe I'll post it on the podcast.
I don't know.
But the thing is we're both looking at, you know, our phones and like, okay,
at least three routes that we could take up.
You go through Yellowstone and say, here's what's going to happen.
We're going to get back on the road.
We're going to get some gas.
We can get back on the road.
And after a while, you can't miss it.
We're going to go by the Jackson airport.
You're going to see the T-tons on your left.
Beautiful.
There was no snow on top, unfortunately, from what we could see.
Right.
But it's a great place to pull over and take a photo.
I said, I think we want to do that.
And he goes, all right, cool.
So we get back on the road and we're driving and we're, you know,
going up these mountains.
I'm like, huh, this is kind of interesting.
Haven't been in a while.
You know, 2016.
So I'm driving.
I'm like, huh, why the mountains are, I'm in the middle of the mountains.
Right.
After a while, the mountains are on my right.
There's not a lot to my left.
It's like, welcome to Idaho.
And because I'm like, okay, I know you have to go to Idaho to get to it.
Right.
And then I see a little town and I go, oh, I think I remember this gas station.
Oh, okay.
I think we're good.
We're good.
Two, two boring hours later.
Two and a half boring hours later.
I get to the end of the road and it says Bozeman left.
It's a T in the road.
Right.
West Yellowstone.
Right.
And I go, hey, let's pull over.
I'm going to get our bearings.
I use the restroom.
So I pulled up on a map and what we did is we went up to,
we went up the western side, the wrong side of the Tetons all the way to the
western entrance to Yellowstone, which is fine, kind of, but it's not really the intention.
Right.
I said, JC, we went past the park.
I go, it's literally right there.
You've never been before.
We can go in, I showed them on the map.
We take the little Yellowstone loop to have an inside loop.
We can take the loop around and it'll be about a two hour delay, but we're here.
Bozeman's only like three hours from us at this point.
And it's like, I don't know, four and a half, maybe four, 30, maybe five o'clock.
He goes, okay, let's do it.
I go, good.
Okay.
So we go into the park and we're driving.
We get some good pictures.
Now the thing that I didn't tell them about Yellowstone is when you're in the park,
there isn't traffic unless people see something.
Then everybody stops.
Then it's bumper to bumper and you're at the mercy of traffic.
And that happened to us a couple of times.
Going into the park.
Just anywhere in the park because it's a loop.
Right.
So we're in the park.
We're driving and we see, I don't know, there's elk things we normally see.
And I was like, Hey, we're on the radios, right?
Hey, you see the bison?
He was like, yeah, I see the bison.
It's pretty cool.
And we pulled over to the springs, hot springs.
We walked around a little bit, took some pictures.
And then I go, all right, we're going to drive up this road.
And I'm looking for a spot we can pull over and take a photo
because we didn't take a photo of the Welcome to Yellowstone.
You know, you like to, you like to get that stuff when you're on a road trip.
Right.
Especially with a cool car.
Yeah.
Get in front of it, you know, do it for the gram, right?
And so we pull over to take some cool pictures.
And I'm looking at the map.
I'm like, all right.
So we can take the loop and still get out of here.
We're driving for 15, 20 miles.
At this point, we're up to almost where Old Faithful is.
And I'm looking at the map.
And first off, 90% of this road trip, we don't have real cellular services.
The SOS on the phone.
So the maps are kind of goofy offline mode.
And I go, man, at 35 mile an hour, at any given time,
we could stop.
This, this loop is a lot bigger than I thought.
So I radio, it's a, hey, JC, here's our option.
We can go down, turn around.
We can just go back out.
We can go out the top.
We can go out the West Yellowstone entrance.
We came in the North Inches or the, or the West.
He goes, let's do that.
All right.
We turn around.
Sure.
Shit.
We get caught in traffic twice on the way out.
Gotcha.
We finally get out of the park.
West Yellowstone is cool.
I've never been, it's like a little town too.
There's a town literally, I think, called West Yellowstone.
I've never been there before, just outside the park.
Kind of cool.
He calls them, what do you call them?
He called them Time Sucks.
You go to the town, you get out, walk around for two hours.
People shop, Trinkets, all that stuff.
One thing about this road trip is there were a lot of these
little towns, I don't know about on your route, but our route,
in the middle of nowhere, there's a lot of little towns that,
man, I would have loved to have gotten out and just kind of like
walked around a little bit or taken some pictures of badass murals,
abandoned American Indian town, Native American Indian towns where
they decided to just paint the entire side of the hotel that's shut down
or the motel, and it's art, and it looks sick, and it looks even
sicker with a white Type S in front of it.
It's funny you say that because that's one of the things that me and
my wife were kind of talking about in our road trip.
When you're with a group, time comes a little bit different of a commodity.
So you don't want to be the one to be like, I see some,
because I'm telling you, there's visions of what you saw,
like I see something cool.
That is the greatest backdrop ever.
Let me get a picture of this little town, this little setup.
Let me put my car here or collect a bunch of these pictures,
but you start seeing that every so often.
All you're doing is slowing down your convoy.
So it was like that moment of like, ah, I want to stop and pull over
and get this picture, but you didn't want to like hold back the group.
So I know exactly that because when we did the road trip last year,
all of us went over to Texas, every gas stop, if it's you,
it's five minutes, right?
If it's a group, it's 12, right?
Right?
It's, and then you just, you just add that every food stop.
You can go in and out and grab beef jerky.
You can sit down and go to McDonald's,
you're in and out there 15 minutes.
If you want to do that, you can go to restaurant,
hit another in 20 minutes.
If it's a group, it's 45.
Yep.
Like every time.
So you want to be, you want to be caught.
What is it?
You want to be caring or like cognizant of your other group.
You don't want to be like, Harry, let's rush, rush, rush.
Everybody's good.
Everybody wants to talk.
Make sure they got their, you know, items.
Anybody forget anything?
Nope, we're good.
So continue.
Absolutely.
So then we get out of the park and, you know,
we just have this one little stretch of road.
I want to go on Gallatin, Gallatin Highway or something like that.
And it takes us to Bozeman and you can tell, oh my God, dude,
you're driving and you're going along the river.
I don't, I forgot what river it is.
It's not Colorado River.
I don't think whatever the river is and you see it.
And it's taken up.
It's about six lanes wide and you can see the wrap.
You can see the whitewater rapids and all that kind of shit.
And you just go, you're just like, this is the highway and this is the river,
you know, just like this until it gets dark and you can't see anything.
And then we get into Bozeman and, you know, that's, that was Sunday.
Sunday.
So now us, our Sunday, we're waking up, we're leaving Napa Valley.
So we've decided that we're just from Northern California.
We're going to go to the Redwoods first.
And then from the Redwoods, we're going to dip back to the coastline
and go up the coast of Oregon.
And then stay the night as far north as we can get in Oregon.
I think we ended up getting to, what is it, Crystal Beach?
I think it was Crystal Beach.
Is that where you guys took all those cool photos?
Yes.
So let me kind of back up a little bit because when we left,
that's when we got our, my first ticket.
Tell us about the ticket.
All right.
So we were doing good, keeping a good pace.
And it was a nice little one.
Whose fault was it?
I want to say collectively it was all of our fault.
No, no, no.
Whose fault was it?
Was it Tuck's fault?
I would have said, hey, listen.
Was it Tuck's fault?
I don't, I'm not blaming anybody.
We all were speeding going faster than the 65, okay?
All right, so let's talk.
But let me explain what happened.
And then I'll let your audience and they can comment below,
you know, who they think's faulted is.
All right, so there's three intersects.
Mine is NA naturally 276 horsepower and that's about all.
And we have NC one that's putting out almost around a little over 700.
And then we have another NA one putting out a little over 400 horsepower.
Well, they were well in front of me.
And I was like watching come to find, oh, as we're going,
as you know, coming over the hill, wonderful CHP.
All he sees is three intersects is flying up the hill.
And he just blocks of his brakes, comes around and then turns and gets behind us.
Now we're driving for a little bit.
But like I said, they were in front.
Would you guys not have your radios?
At that time, it was too late.
It was like, we already, he saw us and I was like, just whatever.
So he ended up following us, getting in front of us,
follows to a point where the road bottleneck.
And that's where he decided to pull all three of us over.
So he, so come to find out, he stopped at my car first
because I was in the rear shooting stuff back and forth.
Come to find out he's prior military.
He was like, we are already a radar.
Somebody had doing over a hundred.
Another guy doing well over 80 something.
And yeah, he rolled over age, I think 75.
And I was like, oh, speed demons.
So I'm sitting there.
All right. Well, well, which, what was it?
Anyway, it's a long story short.
After shooting stuff, he's probably military.
I'm probably military.
He was like, all right, this is what we're going to do.
75 over everybody.
So he gave us all three of those tickets.
But like I said, I was in the back.
So whatever.
Now, I know that they were trying to get pools
and try to like, maybe get a little video.
And they just might even lost life for a second.
Not looking ahead, but.
Nobody has a radar detector, I'm guessing.
No, no, no, no.
We were relying on.
I borrowed one for the trip.
You know, it's funny.
One of the members of there was like,
yeah, I forgot mine at the house.
So I was like, it would have been nice,
but it is what it is.
You can't forget your radar detector.
I don't, you know what?
I don't like using them really,
because I tend to like stay below a certain speed
or I try to stay with traffic.
I've gotten so many tickets in my life.
It's not really worth it for me
to try to go a million miles an hour.
As long as I can, I just kind of in little spurts.
It's especially when you're on a road trip.
It's the town you're unfamiliar with.
That makes perfect sense.
Because I haven't had one since I sold my old NSX,
but I'm like, I'm going on this road trip.
And it saved our ass quite a few times.
I bet it did.
Because what, I mean, you're rolling to the town
and you see it go from 65 to 55 to 45 to 35 to 25.
And that's when you get pulled over going 32 and a 25,
especially in a nice car.
And so that combined with ways in your eyes,
you need all three today.
Because I always question, it's like,
okay, in 2025, do you even need a radar detector anymore?
You know, and I would argue and say, absolutely,
not in the city, but in the middle of East Jesus, absolutely.
No, you're right.
And I didn't think it was my perspective,
but you're right.
You see it just do those speed drops.
And there's always that country bumpkin,
like country cops sitting right there
because he knows you're going to miss that last.
And then he's like, here you go.
Well, even on the highways, right?
It could be because some of the speed limits
that we saw were 80.
Right.
We had 80.
We had posted speed limit 80 a couple of times.
Okay.
And so I think even 85 in Idaho on the way back, I want to say.
Which might be like Texas?
I think so.
No, maybe that's just 85 in Texas outside of Austin.
But definitely 80.
What happens is it goes from 80 to 65 and then back to 80.
So that's when they get you too.
Right.
Because when it says 80, everyone's going 80, 80, 89.
I probably have been, honestly, my average speed limit,
probably my average speed probably would have been
on the highway in like 93.
Right.
If I didn't have the box on top of the car.
Mm-hmm.
I was still speeding.
Be sure, because I just, you know,
going with the flow of traffic.
But my Monday, we're on Monday now.
I'm going to back up to your Monday.
Jordan's got wet.
Tell us about that.
Tell us about somebody climbing trees.
So the climbing trees part was in the redwoods.
So when we were starting our journey from Napa,
we stopped at the redwoods.
That was Mr. Tuck, man.
He's one with nature and he was going trees,
got some videos of that, pictures and whatnot.
But awesome time.
Forgot how beautiful that park is.
Leaving that park, when we were going up the coast,
skipping to Monday, this is Oregon.
So there's a couple of lighthouses.
Come to find out.
The two lighthouses that we planned to go visit,
the one day that they're making clothes was that day.
Of course.
So like whatever, we just got to watch the lighthouses
from the distance.
And what we ended up doing is to get a better
vanished picture, Jay Jones,
he was trying to cross this little stream
so he can kind of get a picture of the lighthouse
from like the far, one like coast side,
a little ways away.
It's kind of hard to.
And he'll set the table here.
All he wears are Air Jordans.
He probably has 50 pair.
Probably more.
Probably more.
He's got all the drops.
He's got them in special boxes.
Yes.
And he's inside these Jordans.
And he's not, now we see from a distance,
he's negotiating the stream.
The stream is not small enough to jump across,
but it's just big enough that if you kind of hit
a couple of stones, you'd make it across.
Right.
Like an alley or something.
Yeah.
But you're in Jordan.
So you can only imagine that water,
rocks that are in water are pretty smooth.
So it's like we watched him balance for a second.
The next thing you know,
then George became completely soaked.
And he was like, oh well.
How far down was it like ankle or like mid-calf?
Oh no, bro.
No, we're talking about submerged.
We're talking about his above his ankles
was solid.
His joints were submerged and the waterline was up
to like between his knees and a calf.
So they're in there.
Damn.
They're in there.
Damn.
All right.
Well, that was Monday.
Yes.
You guys sent some awesome photos.
And I would love to go to the Redwoods.
If I had more time coming back,
I may have swung down that way.
Right.
And cut over.
Didn't have that time.
So Monday we left Bozeman.
And Monday's drive was pretty boring.
But you're going, you know, you're in Montana,
a lot of native Indian area, a lot of nothing,
out of all sorts of range.
We go up through Helena, which is funny.
I think it's Helena or Helena,
but you went to a winery.
Winery?
Yes.
With that word in it, Helena.
And also it was like, when you said that,
I was like, oh, that's wild.
But we go and we go all the way up to Northern
Montana to enter Glacier National Park.
Okay.
Yep.
So we went up, over, down, and then to Spokane.
So we drive up there and it's certain,
we're watching the weather over the mountains.
We're like, which are the Rocky Mountains?
I didn't realize that at the time,
but they're massive.
Yes.
Like beautiful, massive.
I know Rocky Mountains, but I didn't think,
you know, way up there.
Yes, they are.
So we're going up there and we pick our route.
Okay.
So we'll go with two.
Now I paid for us to go into Yellowstone
and the thing is he was going to pay for us
to go through Glacier.
Gotcha.
Weather's kind of crappy.
It's raining on us.
Like, okay, we're not going to go all the way to the peak.
We're just going to take this route
and we're going to the Glacier.
So it says, welcome to Glacier National Park
and all that kind of stuff.
Beautiful drive.
Dude, I can't even explain how stunning this was.
Right.
Especially with the rain, honestly,
it just kind of set the tone
because you have the fog and the mist
and the mountain peeking through
and the colors are starting to change
with some of the trees.
And it was so thick and the pine trees,
I think they're pine trees, were so dense.
Like, if you got lost, no one would ever find you.
That's crazy you say that
because that's exactly what I saw
when we were going through those little rows in Oregon.
That's exactly how I felt.
Yeah.
You see, like, you look to the right,
you see like a row of trees,
maybe another row right behind,
but it's just thick.
They're all like 150 feet tall, you know,
and it's just as massive.
So anyway, we go down,
we stop and have lunch in this town called Kalispell.
Okay.
When we're through all that kind of stuff,
kind of a cool little town.
And it's funny because a friend of mine
hit me up on Instagram.
He's like, hey, Kalispell,
I grew up like right around there.
I'm like, what are the odds?
I could see that middle of nowhere.
It's kind of a cool little town, though.
Right.
And then we go from Kalispell,
we go down through Coeur d'Alene.
At this point,
I kind of wanted to roam around Coeur d'Alene
because I know it's really known
for being super cool.
It's kind of like the new hit place
that everyone's moving.
Really?
I said, JC, you want to go to Coeur d'Alene?
And maybe I could tell he was just done with his day,
which is fine.
Which is fine.
All right, we're just going to go to Spokane.
That'll be the last stop
before we hoof it over the next day
to Shelton and Tacoma and stuff.
So we stay kind of a really nice
boutique Marriott property
called Davenport.
Okay.
And yeah, that was our Monday.
Aw, man, yeah.
You had a very different Monday than mine.
I did.
I did.
Well, ours, that's our Monday
is once we called it a night,
that Tuesday getting up,
that's when we all split up.
So it was like...
Which is crazy
because you guys were together
for a couple of days.
You guys were going to the same place.
Correct.
But you got there different times and dates.
Yeah, well, Jay Tuck,
he wanted to go visit some friends
in Portland area, I believe, in Oregon.
So he went that direction.
Jay Jones is a fiance at the time.
She was flying out the next day
and they wanted to go spend some time
in downtown Seattle.
So they went that route.
Just so we know, it's still his fiance.
They just haven't got married yet.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Did I say fiance?
I said fiance, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
At the time.
Okay.
At the time.
Yeah.
Unless something happened in the last week.
No, no, no.
Nothing happened.
Okay.
All right.
Don't put that out the bed.
That's bad to you.
You didn't put that out there.
Right.
Not good.
Right.
But anyways, then me and my wife
wanted to take advantage
because we knew it was the track day
was coming up.
So we decided to go run up to Vancouver,
Canada, and just stay the night,
have a couple drinks of dinner there,
and then come back the next day.
How was that?
So that was Tuesday?
That was Tuesday.
So we woke up on Wednesday
and came back that next day on Wednesday.
That was great.
Vancouver, I guess they said
they just ran us a lot up there.
But the people are really cool.
And it's one thing about leaving the country,
it's funny to hear like slide,
comic and jokes about Americans
in other countries,
because you kind of got to agree
with some of the jokes.
It's weird that you would hear that
without being there for like 24 hours.
They were real quick,
oh, American?
Oh.
So you're, you know,
how's everything with the orange man?
I'm like, ah.
Yeah, I think we know Canada basically sucks.
Everybody, every Canadian I know,
nice place to visit.
But that's awesome though, man.
Because by Thursday,
I don't know, I skipped a day.
But by Thursday,
everyone's gathering at the track
and Jay Jones is the first to show up.
Yep.
I'm like, all right.
Well, where's, where's,
where's talking Valeria?
And I said, where's Dre and Leo?
Like, oh no.
That was my bad.
I miscalculated driving leaving
that Thursday morning.
Because then talking Valeria show up
and I think Jay Jones had already left.
Yep.
I go, where's Dre and Leo?
I don't know, anyone called them?
And then eventually you guys showed up.
But I'm, you know,
my Tuesday because I skipped a day,
you know, we just get up
and it was just straight coming from Spokane.
Right.
You know, we filled up with gas
and we go our separate ways
because I met up with Chris Fry,
they got with the Honda Z just like mine.
I understand.
Met him up in Bellevue.
We had lunch, cool, great,
kind of a fusion sushi place.
Great selection of liquor too.
It was awesome.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah, awesome.
Then I went over to see Alex and Jen,
friends of the show,
dear friends of mine.
Right.
Hung out for a little bit.
Alex, I brought him to the track on Wednesday,
took a bunch of photos.
You weren't there.
No.
But I have those on my computer.
And then, you know, Wednesday it was,
oh, that was Tuesday.
And then we went to the casino
and all hung out on Tuesday night.
Okay.
So how was the casino, though?
I want to say it's called Low River Casino.
It was cool.
None of us like really gamble that much.
Right.
But it was the casino,
it was close to the track,
Ridge.
And then of course,
Wednesday morning I get up
and I decided to drive to the ocean,
take a bunch of photos because
my friend Alex, I was like,
well, Alex is going to come down,
but he's not going to be down until later on.
I don't really want to be at the track from
7.30 to 8.00 a.m. until 5.
I might as well figure out what I'm going to do with my day.
So that was perfect.
And I got back and the media team was like,
damn, Jay, you want to go back to the ocean
before you leave?
We saw you went there.
We want to take a bunch of photos and videos.
I'm like, no, I don't have time.
I would because I mean, it's a great,
great media team.
And then we're willing to do it.
You know, I'm going to take a page
out of Jorge Aquino's book, shout out,
shout out to the media team.
He gets shout out to everybody.
Yep.
But yeah, that was, and then, you know,
there it was, Expo happened
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday,
and Sunday, and we began our journeys.
Back on, just one more thing,
shout out to the media team too,
because I was able to see the little snippet
that they released on the
on the teaser.
Yeah, the teaser.
There you go on the Instagram page.
Man, that looked really good.
I really can't wait until the whole video is released
because I was really excited
off the little snippets that we got.
That's why we continuously bring them back.
Because Rebecca, she understands the vision
the club is trying to put out there
and the direction we're trying to go.
That's a skill set of hers.
So she knows by now, this is her third time
with her team covering it.
And she like, she replaces parts each year,
depending on where they're located.
She tries to find people local to that region
because it's more cost effective on the club.
Understood.
And it's got to be people she trusts.
Correct.
Because Mason,
those doing the video, and he's from here.
Gotcha.
Yeah, in Phoenix, because she's really good
and he works with her right now.
And then the other two, she's worked with before.
And I think they were here
and they moved to Seattle area.
And they just happened to be local.
And they just happened to be local.
And then just happened to be incredibly talented
and easy to work with.
Well, I mean, me starting with NSXpo in 2022.
That was her first year doing it.
You know, it was crazy for us.
I've watched them develop
and they've gotten better and better and better every year.
So I am big up to Rebecca, your whole team, everybody.
Like you guys have come an amazing long way
and continue to just up the bar.
And I want to just go ahead and thank you
and take, you know, great job, big ups, everything
and continue to do what you guys are doing
because it was awesome.
Well, I'd love to go through NSXpo,
but I know you have a hard out.
So I do appreciate you coming through
and I'll just do the rest of it on my own.
Oh, man.
Hey, can you handle the rest of it on your own?
I think so.
All right.
Well, hey, thank you so much for J.
Invite me over, having a little bit of time,
kind of chopping up about our little road trip
up and down from a, well, was it Tacoma?
Washington, you want to say that?
Yep, Tacoma, yep.
And to the next episode, man,
we'll be episode four next time, right?
To the next episode.
Thanks, Dre.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
All right.
Let me take a quick break here.
Okay, we are back.
Dre had to leave an important appointment to go to,
but I still want to talk about Expo
and a little bit more stories from my journey,
so stick with me on that.
Coming up next week,
I sat down with Jonathan Rivers or John Rivers,
as his homies call him, after NS Expo,
after the banquet.
And I had him on last year.
He has a YouTube channel called Drive Culture.
He's also one of the higher ups in Acura,
a good friend, and hopefully we can do it every year,
but that will be next week.
So we'll talk a little bit more about
what the brand Acura has going on
and our NS Expo experience
from the perspective of our title sponsor,
Titanium Sponsor Acura.
So the event, we stayed at Hotel Morano.
We had two day track day at the ridge,
which is in Shelton, Washington.
So we stayed at Hotel Morano,
which is in Tacoma.
Really nice hotel, a little older,
but at some point it was pinky out fancy.
It's still pretty nice.
We'll just put it that way.
It's still pretty nice property,
but you know,
and I talk about this every year
and I'll talk about it again.
We have a lot of people who came to NS Expo
for the first time
and what that means is,
you know, going into it,
they're a little unsure.
What is this event?
It's just a bunch of old people
standing around talking about their cars
and all that good stuff,
but it's an entire weekend full of stuff
and it's always more like family.
I had to get up on stage,
like typical as the current club president,
talk 10, 15 minutes and bore everybody,
but it's, the events are always cool,
but it's what you do in between the events,
whether you're hanging out in the lobby
or hanging out in hotel rooms.
It's been kind of a thing
up till two or three in the morning,
just drinking in people's rooms
and talking and having a party.
I'm sure the people staying in
on the floors that we weren't
or in the adjacent rooms
were probably pretty upset
because we got pretty loud.
You know, not necessarily a lot of
laughing and just crazy shit,
but just a lot of talking and drinking,
but it was an excellent event.
And again, you know,
next week maybe we'll talk about it more.
I haven't reviewed that,
obviously I recorded it already,
but my journey home with JC was
just as interesting in a sense that,
in a sense as our journey there.
So the event concluded on Sunday.
So JC and I, we left and we were,
our first night was in Twin Falls, Idaho,
but of course I wanted to stop by
and say hi to my dear friend,
Wes Tankersley of One Drink Wednesday.
You guys see us all the time
on Wednesdays at seven o'clock PM,
Pacific Standard Time on our YouTube page,
sorry, on our Instagram at One Drink Wednesday.
You can also get to it if you watch me.
You can also get to it if you follow Wes Tankersley.
But I met up with JC and I met up
with Wes Tankersley and David Diggs.
David Diggs was on this podcast last year.
He's a musician recorded with a lot of people.
We have some albums out there,
but we met up for a nice dinner.
But the trip there was not without some interesting things.
So as I mentioned before,
I have the roof box, the carrier box on top of the car,
custom rack system that I designed with my friend, Will,
did a lot of research, had a pretty good system,
didn't really have problems with the entire trip.
It did partially collapse the back of it
when we were going through Glacier.
And what happened was, and then that was JC
and on our way up, I picked a spot,
we're driving, it's misting outside,
kind of raining and I go, that spot.
As a car person who likes photos
and likes scenery and likes nature,
the thing is, I love nature.
I don't do a lot of nature things,
but I just love seeing nature, anything natural,
it's just awesome, it's just a complete escape.
I saw a spot and you get the mountains in the background,
the big, you know, Glacier National Park in the background,
the leaves were changing, it was misty,
I go, that's the spot.
We need to go back to that spot and take a photo.
And so we're driving looking for a place to turn around.
And you're going through these winding roads,
interstate two or highway two, state highway two,
whatever the white one is with the letter,
that's the one we're on.
And we're driving for three or four miles
and JC says on the radio, you know,
maybe we should find another,
we'll just wait for the next once-in-a-lifetime photo
or the next beautiful spot I get on the radio, I go, no.
I go, no, that's the spot.
I'm going to find a place to turn around.
So poor JC, very patient, by the way, with me,
because he doesn't get or understand
any of this photo stuff, usually his wife does that.
You guys already know that I'm really big into things like that.
So I find a spot for us to turn around.
So we're backtracking up this rainy road.
It's not pouring, but it's just enough to get on yours,
which by the way, his wiper failed on him too,
which probably wasn't helping him too much.
So we backtrack, we get to the spot.
And so I go to pull off the tarmac onto this huge,
kind of gravelly, like half circle.
So it's not a, it's a spot you could tell a lot of people
pull off to take photos, but it's not a paved spot.
So what happens is you end up getting a two or three inch drop
from the surface of the road to that little dirt area.
And so when I did a U-turn, the last part of my,
you know, the, my rear tires went off of it and went down
the drop and that drop was enough to jolt the bracket loose.
And then my camper on top just went like that.
So I got out, fixed it, wasn't hard,
but that's the only time that the thing came down
the entire trip and we were going through elevations,
all sorts of temperature, all sorts of extremely strong winds.
Got the car up to 90, I don't know, 98 miles an hour,
passing somebody on 80 mile an hour road.
But most of the trip I was in the 80s because,
you know, I had the box on top, which I'll talk about that
a little bit later about the wind noise
because that was a big question that I got.
So anyway, so we're driving up and so that was the,
that was the only issue I had on the way up.
On the way back we were in, I think we're,
we're still in Washington.
It's kind of hard to tell because we're going to Idaho
and I have to look at a map,
but we were in Washington a lot longer than I thought we were.
And at one point we were in Oregon
and then we went from Oregon to Idaho.
But we had pulled over in this little town to get gas
and it was kind of drizzling outside the rain, not a problem.
I checked the pumps on the sea suckers
and everything's good.
I do that at every stop, check the pump,
check the vacuum levels, gas up.
And as we're pulling out, before we get back on the highway,
just be, so we're going through town, probably three miles,
before we get back on the highway of this little town,
JC radios, he goes, Hey, you're a bracket came down again.
So I looked in the rear view, I go, shit, okay.
So I pull over, takes about a minute to get the bracing back up
and get the vacuum pumped in.
So we get on the highway and within two minutes happens again.
I'm like, shit, this is going to be a problem.
I could tell JC is getting a little irritated,
but he's also patient.
But what are you going to do, right?
There's really nothing you could do.
So I get out, I tighten it.
This is unusual.
It's happened now twice in the last six minutes.
So I tighten it down, I make sure the suction mounts are in.
And then we're fine.
We're fine for the next 200 miles.
Like we have another three or so hours,
maybe four hours to get to Boise proper meridian idol
to meet up with Dave Diggs and of course, Wes.
We get there, have dinner, everything's good.
And then we go from there to Twin Falls, Idaho.
One of the most beautiful overlooks I've ever seen in my life
at the time, we didn't really get to see it
because we got in there later at night.
We got there at 1030 at night.
Just before we pulled into the hotel parking lot,
you know, bumpy side roads, thing comes down again.
Now, when I say it comes down, imagine the roof of a car,
not the hood, but the roof.
And this system has one bar across the top that's holding,
it's got a bar and each side of it has a twin suction cup system.
And then I have the bar running to the back of the box
and then it goes down to my trunk,
kind of suspended up about a foot off the back of the car
so that I can see out the rear view.
So the back part is what kept collapsing.
And so we pulled over where it slated at a town play suites
and I realized after doing some troubleshooting
that one of the vacuum pumps has failed.
It's completely failed.
It won't hold suction or anything.
JC is tired, understandably so.
He wants to have a celebratory bourbon
to celebrate how great in a sex boat went
because it was fantastic.
I had set up on stage.
This might be the best in a sex boat ever.
But for anyone who has attended multiple in a sex boats,
people were always going to mention Seattle
as either being the best or being one of the best Seattle Tacoma.
It was that freaking good.
Nothing really to complain about.
And the stuff that you would complain about is so minor
from an organization standpoint,
from an events standpoint, everything was pretty much perfect.
But we hosted here in Arizona
and people said ours was the best.
And so all I can say is that Tacoma was arguably,
like someone could make an argument
for that being the best in a sex boat.
But I digress.
So JC wanted to celebrate after being out
in the parking lot, monkeying with this thing.
To make matters worse, we parked at the wrong hotel.
Now, how do you do that?
So Marriott and a few other brands,
what they do is they take two of their properties.
I've seen them do this a lot now
and they put them up together.
Just like you go to the fast food
and you see a Taco Bell that's also a Long John Silver's.
Kind of that A&W root beer and Burger King.
It's the same thing.
I don't know if that example really exists,
but hopefully you know what I mean.
So we parked at the wrong one,
but it's still the same giant property.
And so I decided, okay, let me take some of my stuff
up to the room because JC texted me
what room it was in.
I knew he was waiting on taking a celebratory drink.
I know he's tired once he goes to sleep.
At this point it was like 10, 30, well, actually,
at this point it was like 11, 15.
I had to leave half my shit still out in the parking lot
with the car, with my car keys.
Why is that crazy?
Well, because you can't take the key
out of the storage box, camper, ski rack,
whatever we're calling it,
if the hinges aren't clicked all the way down.
You just can't take it out.
And I couldn't get the top down
because the thing was kind of like slightly twisted
on top of the car because of all the issues I was having.
So I had to think, okay, is this going to be
one of those stories where I go inside
and I come out and my car's stolen
or someone stole my key?
I have to, I can't think like that.
I can't be negative.
I was like, all right, let me just go up to the room.
So I walked to the room,
which again, we're at the opposite hotel.
So it's a five-minute walk just to get to the front door.
Go to the room.
JC's on the phone with his wife.
I finally, he finally gets her off the phone
and I'm sitting here the whole time thinking,
I don't want to be rude, but my car, my keys,
everything's still out there.
I only brought half my shit here.
I got a major problem I got to deal with
because if I don't get this fucking vacuum,
if I don't get this thing fixed,
I might be stuck in Twin Falls, Idaho.
Where did we get the liquor?
Let me back that up.
You didn't ask but I'm going to tell you.
Wes, of course, great guys he is on the trip.
JC rated it up to me and he goes,
hey, do you have any whiskey in the car?
And I go, well, I have this really cool bottle that I bought
and it's still sealed.
I just bought it because it's cool.
And so he said, I don't want to make you open up a bottle.
And I started thinking, okay, he wants to drink something.
So then I called Wes.
I go, hey, can you get together some like Idaho Bourbons,
maybe Seven Devils or something for my buddy JC
who's driving behind me.
So when we show up for dinner,
Wes has these three little glass containers
with three different Bourbons in it,
Wes to the rescue.
So when we get to the hotel,
that's what we ended up drinking.
Is a celebratory.
So we get the two coffee cups.
And JC is like, which one do you want?
I go, I don't care they're yours.
They were a gift to you.
So if you want to have one with me, fine,
but you certainly don't have to.
So we drank one of them,
I think straight from the barrel or whatever.
I go, okay, I can't finish my drink.
Which by the way, if you ever try to drink Bourbon,
just Bourbon on itself out of a coffee cup,
you think that a Glen Caron gets you with the whiffs?
Try to inhale while you drink that.
I bet you can't.
Especially if it's a high proof something
you just can't even breathe.
So anyway, I said, I gotta be back.
I gotta go fix this thing.
JC says, fine.
So I leave the hotel room.
I'm in the parking lot for an hour and a half
trying to figure this thing out.
I am dead to nuts thinking.
I am stuck in Twin Falls, Idaho.
I get on the Seesucker website.
No distribution anywhere around me.
And this town isn't a small town.
It's small, but it's big enough to have a home depot
and a Walmart and all that kind of stuff.
So it's not a micro sized town.
But I'm thinking, Jesus,
I didn't want to ask JC for help.
His shoulder is busted.
I talked about that with Dre earlier.
He's had multiple surgeries.
He can't literally lift it at that high.
He's older.
He's tired.
He's worn out.
We had a crazy weekend.
He just wants to get home.
I want to get home too.
It's now Sunday, well after midnight.
I've got to be home by Monday evening.
But I brought my laptop because
just in case I had to work remotely,
more on that in a little bit.
But I didn't have to use it, fortunately.
So I'm out there in the parking lot
and I'm just thinking like, freak, man,
I got to figure this shit out.
How do I do this?
How do I make this trip back home?
14 hour road trip or 14 hours left on this road trip
with a busted roof box.
So I take everything out of the roof box.
At this point, I already taken the cups
off the back of the car
because one won't stick.
I took it off just to make sure
and just tried to stick it to the glass.
Nothing, no suction, nothing.
So I stuffed the trunk
and I stuffed the passenger seat,
but I still had shit that I just couldn't fit.
That's how I thought I was going to be stuck.
JC didn't have Ruben is NSX, it was packed as well.
And then I thought about it.
I built this bracket to be broken down.
I had a bunch of quick release things on it,
like I said earlier.
And all I needed was another bar,
which I had, I just wasn't thinking clearly.
It's the bar that goes underneath the box
because you have a bar in the front
and you have a secondary bar.
So if I had a sedan,
both bars would be on top of the car.
The reason I didn't have that on the NSX
is two things.
Number one, it looked cool the way I had it.
Looks, you know, looks.
Number two, the boxes instructions said,
try not to mount the bars anywhere closer
to each other on top of the car,
no closer than 29 inches.
So at least 29 inches.
This was right around that.
And so, you know, the distance
on the top of the car is not that big.
So I figured, okay, let me think.
Let me take the existing ones that work like crazy
and move them forward about a foot.
And then I could take that other bar
and take the suction cup off the legs
on the quick release system,
which is what I did.
So I took that whole thing apart.
I put the one cup that actually worked
on the second bar on the roof.
I took the bad cup
and I put it on the bar as well
for a sense of balance.
I pumped that thing down,
took that heavy ass box,
put it back on the car,
got the whole thing locked in place,
got the whole thing loaded,
and thank God, thank God it held.
And I was really nervous in the morning.
JC came through because I needed a strap.
Like, I don't know whether it was quick,
those crank straps or whatever
because I had all my podcast equipment
and a big bag and that bag weighed about 30 pounds.
I needed to keep that bag on top of the car.
So on the inside of the box,
there's a couple anchor points.
So I ran the strap through that
and it held that in it.
And with the lid closed,
it prevented that big huge bag
that I had in there from sliding back,
causing unnecessary strain on the back
of the box on top of the car.
That way it all stayed centered
right on top of where I was sitting.
So the next day, it was a little unnerving
because it was a new setup.
But made it all the way home.
But we're going to back up just a little bit
because that was just one problem.
So we took 93 down,
highway 93 down from Twin Falls.
And you could take that most of the way down to Vegas.
It's the most direct route.
You get off at 93 at some point
and go through some other roads,
some other highways
and you rejoin 93 right around Vegas.
We have three quarters of a tank.
We see the truck stop.
Okay, we'll just push to the next one.
Three quarters of a tank,
that's on an NSX,
that's about 150 miles on an NC1.
I had it on an EV mode
or a regular sport mode,
not Sport Plus,
which I drive around in the city all the time.
Sport Plus, you can literally see
the needle moving
if you just stare at it for a while.
So we're both driving and we're radio.
Okay, we'll go to the next one.
How much gas you got left?
I think you know where the story is going.
We're both are doing pretty good.
We go to,
because usually you look and it's like,
okay, 80 miles to the next turn.
And usually at every intersection,
there's a gas station,
like every intersection on a route.
We get to the next intersection.
There's an old burnt up gas station
from some other shop,
although it's a little trash yard and nothing.
It's like, all right,
I get on the night,
you know, I get on Siri
and I look,
the nearest gas station from there
is another 55 miles up the street.
At this point,
we're both staring down the barrel
of an eighth of a tank.
So I radio to JC.
I go, hey man,
I see a loves truck stop.
It's 50 something miles away.
The NSX,
the NC1 says I have 30 something miles
left on this tank.
Now I know what you're saying.
Car manufacturers usually
bake a few extra gallons
in there past the E indicator
when you're out of gas.
True enough,
I know the old NSX,
when that needle touches E,
you still have about three gallons in the tank.
The new NSX,
when it touches E,
I've heard of people run out of gas.
I've got this box on top of the car.
It's no longer pitch for downforce,
which was the original setup.
Now it's a little bit up.
So now it's producing a little drag
and it's killing my gas mileage.
So, you know, I call John Rivers,
was coming up on the next episode.
I texted John Akeda.
He didn't respond.
Another person from the Acura brand, HRC.
Both have plenty of experience
in the seat of an NSX,
the new NSX.
I'm getting a little nervous,
but I don't feel that bad
because I have JC behind me.
As long as one of us doesn't run out of gas,
then they can keep going
and get bring back
the other person some gas.
It would have been like a really expensive two gallons
because you have to buy the canister,
which they're going to have for sale,
hopefully at a truck stop, right?
And then you have to backtrack.
You have to buy the gas and backtrack.
It's a real time sink.
So we're driving down 93
and I'm just watching this thing go from 10 miles,
six miles, five miles.
By this time, I've slowed all the way down
to like 37 miles an hour.
Cars are coming up behind us and passing us
because what I'm trying to do
is I'm trying to trick the car
to go into EV mode.
So you can coast in EV mode for a little bit,
but as soon as it starts to drain,
then the engine turns back on
and starts charging it.
I don't know how much gas that uses.
So I'm kind of pacing it.
And then it drops to zero.
Now I'm starting to get nervous.
And I told JC,
hey, man, just go up ahead of me.
And if you see me up there, great.
If not, I'll call you if you need to bring me gas.
But he stayed behind me because he's a patient.
He's a G. JC is a G.
So he stays behind me in the yellow NSX.
And I am coasting.
I have to drive about five miles
on zero estimated miles ago.
We get to this tiny little town
called McGill, Nevada.
We go through McGill
and you can't really see it from a distance.
All you see is trees.
So I'm thinking, okay, McGill,
hopefully has a gas station
because there's no way I'm going
an extra 12 miles to the loves,
which is at the next stop.
That's the one where I'm going to
when I've been coasting on E for four miles.
So we pull into McGill
and we're talking and say,
okay, they have a church.
That's a good sign.
Okay, that's a good sign.
So if they have a church, great.
They might have a gas station.
So roll a little bit further
and we see what looks like a gas station
on the right side,
but the sign's busted.
Like it's old.
It's shut down.
I'm like, oh, that ain't it.
At this point, I've been rolling on zero.
But here's the thing.
When you're pulling into the town,
God bless McGill.
God bless these small towns.
The speed limit goes from 65 to 55
to 45 to 35.
And eventually 25.
I'm like, hell yes,
because 25 and NC1 NSX,
you can coast on EV mode.
You see the RPMs go, boop, zero.
Motor completely shuts off
and you can see your electric thing slowly draining,
but it's good for like a mile or two,
maybe even more at 25 mile an hour on cruise control.
So I'm cruising the town on EV mode.
Thank God.
And then they finally,
we finally see this one gas station with two pumps.
You have diesel and you have 87.
I said,
this NSX is going to eat some 87 octane.
So thank God,
I put two gallons of 87 in there
and that was just enough to get me to the loves,
12 miles down the rope.
So I ran out of gas almost
and I was nervous as hell because here's the deal.
By this time I'd already asked Siri, hey,
hey Siri, how many gallons of,
you know, blah, blah, blah, blah,
does NC1, I just showed up on my phone,
how many gallons is the NC1 NSX hold?
And it's like, well, the NC1 NSX holds like,
I think she said 15.3 or 15.5 or whatever.
So I put the two gallons in and this little in McGill.
When I get to loves,
I put in 12.3 gallons,
which means I only had like a half a gallon left.
There's no way, no way I would have made it.
Holy shit.
But, you know, once we filled up there,
the rest of the trip home was event free.
The road sucked.
We went to Vegas.
We were going to Boulder City, Nevada to get lunch.
We decided to pick some random barbecue place called Fox Barbecue.
My guess is going into this little town
would have been a total tourist trap.
The definition of a tourist trap restaurant means
that they don't care if their food's good or not
because it's a constant flow of customers.
It could be the worst food I was prepared to eat
some shitty ass barbecue.
I didn't care.
We go to Fox Barbecue.
It ends up being one of the top barbecue spots,
according to the employees in the entire United States.
Guy Fieri did a diner's drive-ins and dives there.
J.C. recognized it from TV.
I didn't recognize it, but the food was great.
And that was it.
From that point, your five hours from home
and the road trip no longer seemed that,
no longer seemed like it was going to take forever.
We went our separate ways just outside
or just north of the Phoenix area.
And he got home safely.
I got home safely.
I was tired as hell.
I had really only got about three and a half hours
of sleep the night before a poor three and a half hours
of sleep, because between working on the car,
doing that box, and then, of course,
when I got back in the room, of course,
I finished my celebratory drink while J.C. was knocked out.
And then I was awake, so I was kind of
fiddled around for half an hour or so.
But awesome road trip.
I logged 4,200 and about seven miles on the Type S,
which is pretty crazy.
Even with that, I don't think I'm in the top five
of Type S mileage, but I'm probably in the top 10.
I know people that have like 100 miles on their Type S.
And that's a 2022 model.
So, you know, what I do it again, I don't know.
I don't know if I'd do the roof box again.
You know, that's not mine.
It's Will's.
So I took it to his house.
I gave him the bars and everything.
Those were his cups.
That was his box on top.
Of course, I cleaned it.
But yeah, the next day, I took it over there
and gave it to him.
And I'm waiting for the PPF.
My nose keeps itching.
I'm waiting for the PPF on top of the car
to completely heal because the suction cups
made like these little marks.
And I think it's going to self heal.
But I told JC, I go, this was really cool.
It made my car more unique at the event.
It broke a lot of necks on the highway.
It was very functional because I had that thing full of stuff.
I had my wife's duffle bag up there.
I had the podcast equipment.
I had the dirty clothes bag.
I had the cleaners.
At one point, I had my roller board up there
because I packed really well.
But I said, I don't know if I would ever do that again.
But then I immediately started thinking
of ways that I would re-engineer it and make it better.
And I've already got some ideas in my head.
So next year, the NSXPO is in Orlando.
Seriously, I'm going to drive there.
And then we already know the following year
it's going to be in Cleveland.
And I will probably fly there as well.
But it all depends on whatever else is doing.
It all depends.
Maybe Acre has a new car by then.
I don't know.
But yeah, that was my road trip to NSXPO
and some of the experiences at NSXPO.
I know I didn't really talk about what we did at NSXPO.
But we went to the LeMay Museum.
We had an awesome cruise up the coast,
up the countryside of Washington.
At one point, I hit a dead baby deer.
So it was already dead.
I bottomed out on the car trying to turn around
and make a U-turn on a sharp driveway.
Let's see.
I got the car almost sideways
because there was a gravel pit coming up
on a blind corner I didn't see.
And I was leading all the other cars.
I was designated as a drive leader,
which sucks when you're in a place you've never been.
And people are riding up your ass like Jay Tuck was,
the same Jay Tuck that we were talking about earlier.
But it was a great event.
It's always a great event.
And it's one of the things that I circle on my calendar
every year is the dates of NSXPO.
So yeah, that was it.
Well another month, another closing.
If you like what you heard today
or like what you watched today,
if you're watching this on YouTube or Spotify,
make sure you go ahead and hit that subscribe button
to make sure you go and tell a friend all about it.
One of they got sponsors,
Right Honda and Right Toyota,
Spark 4-H AI for Marcus Foundry,
one login, one platform,
all under your control,
AutoCannon officially licensed Honda in accurate gear.
Can't forget Patreon,
business supporter, Kori Automotive
out of Winter Garden, Florida.
Automotive specialty tool out of Owingsville, Maryland.
The lucky breaks out of Caledonia, Michigan,
Beacow Small Home Design out of Ashbury,
Virginia and Traverse City, Michigan,
and Shaping Success Treasure Valley out of Boise, Idaho.
If you're in a position to help the podcast upgrade,
you can join the Patreon at Patreon.com,
Hard Parking Podcast,
or you can become a member on YouTube.
There's a buy me a coffee option there.
You want to support the show if you get value,
if this is one of your favorite shows to watch,
why not support it?
Special thanks to Mark Stoneman,
Catherine Cox, Eddie Ramos,
Drifted Graysbyron,
Jones, Bo Jones,
Alistair Mina, Drew Bunkley,
Andrea Mullins.
Questions, comments, and concerns,
leave a comment below
or email the show info at hardparking.
Follow the show on Instagram at hardparkingpod.
Make sure you're subscribed to this YouTube channel
if you're watching on YouTube.
And I will see you guys next week.
Now it's stripping time.
Hey, nobody got time for that!
Shut up!
Request an explanation for:
1 cars
1 cars featured
Request an Explanation
Heard something you'd like explained? We'll add it to this episode.
Sign in to request explanations for terms you heard.
Want to learn more?
Browse our glossary for plain-English explanations of automotive terms, jargon, and concepts.
Help improve this episode
See something that's not quite right? Our annotations are AI-generated and can sometimes miss the mark. Click the flag icon on any annotation to suggest a correction.
Report incorrect info
Suggest better explanations
Flag missing cars