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Tequila and Race Cars - Road America
Tequila and Race Cars - Road America
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About this episode
Rose J Fanning shares an entertaining recap of her recent trip to Road America in Wisconsin, where she enjoyed the thrill of vintage car racing and the camaraderie of friends. The episode features humorous anecdotes about travel mishaps, the unique experience of racing events, and heartfelt memories of her late dog. With a mix of tequila tasting and car culture, listeners get a glimpse into the vibrant atmosphere of the event, along with insights into the friendships and connections that make these experiences memorable.
Topics:
road america
vintage racing
tequila tasting
friendship
travel anecdotes
car culture
event recaps
personal stories
ep183
Jhae recaps his weekend attending the 2023 WeatherTech International Challenge in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin and Road America race course. In this episode is a chronological breakdown full of tequila, golf carts, and stories.
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Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Car
Buick Rendezvous
"...p stuff off and go check into our Airbnb and then rendezvous with and then rendezvous with Ed and Drew later. ..."
Car
Acura Integra
"...ack. We had swapped out the NSX for the four door Integra because there's not room in the NSX for his racin..."
Car
Mini Coopers
"... Real Time. So whether it's Mercedes or Real Time Mini Coopers, which they haven't had. But the point is we don'..."
Car
Nsx Type S
"...e the fact that he has excellent taste, he has an NSX type S as well. His is Casino White Pearl Mine's 130 R P..."
Car
Honda NSX
"...as soon as possible. So Ed packed up and took his NSX. And then we all jumped in the van, the little Ho..."
Car
Ferrari F40
"... And this is the specific event where you saw the F40. The day before we were at Mr. Stevenson's party,..."
Select text to request an explanation
This is our park being sponsored by Wright Honda and Wright Toyota out of Scottsdale, AZ. I'm Rose J Fanning.
Coming up on today's show, I will recap as I did with my trip to Puerto Rico, my recent trip to Wisconsin and went up to Elkhart Lake to spend the weekend with some really good friends of mine. Watch my friend Peter race for
the vintage car historic since the first time I've been up there. The weather, it's the weather
Tech challenge or something. First time I've been up there
since 2016 for this actual event.
A lot of fun, you know. Like I said, I'm going to try to
fill you guys in with the details without trying to bore you non car people as it's something I kind of pride myself in. It's just trying to explain
things and and tell stories that aren't too insider or too like you have to be. You have to be super
knowledgeable about the subject matter.
I try to make it to where you don't have to be that knowledgeable about it to enjoy a good story, to enjoy a good recap on experience. One thing I've been wanting to
say on episodes recently is if you listen to this all the way to the end because it's obvious when these episodes start to wind down. I go into my typical closing and
by the way, I say that closing every episode, it's not a prerecorded thing that I put out there, but you know, I do the send off and at the very end there's a dog barks.
I tell the dog to shut up. The dog barks again and I
snicker. I feel that every single time.
I put that in the end of every episode.
That was an exchange that I have with my dog.
Is he before he passed a few years ago.
He passed last year, coming up on his one year, and I was recording something, I think a demo for someone to try to explain how to do something with online editing, Izzy barks.
Tell him to shut up. Whatever.
And I love that clip so much that I just kept it.
And now at the end of every single episode, it's there.
And I may have missed an episode here or there without trying to miss an episode here or there, but every it's every time I hear his bark, I feel it like I feel it just a little bit.
Like it hurts. I don't tear up or anything, but
it hurts and it's crazy because I don't know about you people with cats. I'm not a cat person.
I've had, I grew up with cats. We always had a cat in the
house, but I've never been a cat person.
But if you're a dog person, it's like, you know, your dogs bark.
Just like, you know, if you're a parent, you know, your kids scream. You know their cry.
It's almost like you know someone's voice and it's strange. It's strange because there are
millions of dogs, there are millions of people in the United States that have multiple pets. But you know your dog's bark,
like I know Izzy's bark and it's it's crazy and it just taps me just a little bit in the heart every single time.
And I will continue to use it. But I think it's also one of the
things that makes this podcast unique is the beginning.
I is I produced, like I said before, the startup car noise, the, the acceleration. I did all of that.
I found the music. I laid it over the music exactly
how I wanted it in the ending. It's all organically generated
from this house, from this studio.
Damn right I'm proud of it. I got a package in the mail the
other day and I'd forgot that I was getting this package, but it was addressed to J Robotech Finning.
I was like, oh, is this from, is this from Mike?
From Jada Toys? And I go, well, no, that's not
it. He wouldn't, he wouldn't address
that to me, which I got a package from him right afterwards. But I opened it up and I and I
realized this from my, my friend Ryan.
And what had happened was Ryan was here last year for the end of the year. I got a call from him.
He's like, hey Jay, I'm coming into town.
I'm buying a new car. I'm going to buy Ferrari, used
Ferrari. Do you know anything about it?
So I asked my Ferrari people and the car checked out.
Thought he was going to need a ride to pick up the car, which I was more than willing to do. I was like, okay.
Well, I'm free between this time and this time I'll pick you up or I'll meet you whatnot. He ends up driving into town
with his wife, and so they go pick up the car.
I meet him for lunch and his wife for lunch and some of their friends, and then I come back home.
But before I leave, he goes, oh damn it, We drove in our car, our other car, and that's where the toll pass is.
I was like, well, I just happen to have a California toll pass in the back of my NSX. Years ago, when I worked in
California, I bought a toll pass.
You cannot survive where I worked without a toll pass.
You just you're taking, you're talking a 15 minute drive to work versus an hour drive to work, which sucks.
So I give him a toll pass, and I forget all about it.
Months later, I started getting emails.
I got notification from California tolls.
I'm like, huh, my, my, my toll pass was recently activated and I'm looking it up online. I'm like someone's fraudulent.
I don't have a toll pass. My toll pass is right here.
And I thought, I thought about it and I go, oh shit, that's right, Ryan has my toll pass. And so I called him up and said,
hey man, you have the toll pass. I just reloaded it without even
realizing it, updated the billing.
He goes, Oh yeah, it's on my car, it's on my Ferrari.
I'm like, well, can you mail it back to me, please?
And so this thought was, well, why don't you just transfer it to me and I go, well, I don't want to transfer it to you as old as it is. I may be in California one day,
and I usually try to travel with my toll pass just in case, because California highways are tricky.
It's not always obvious you're on a toll road.
I know that sounds silly to say, but for those of you who are in California, those of you in the LA area, you know exactly what I'm talking about. You're on a regular highway.
Next thing you know, you're on a toll road.
It's not obvious. Sometimes you're in middle of
nowhere on some back roads and you get on the next freeway.
It's not always obvious you're getting on a toll road.
I've got tickets before in the mail for not realizing that.
So now I always try to have it with me when I go to California.
He says I'll take care of it. I'll mail you this Nindroid.
Good smell company he's into. He has a bunch of warehouses and
that's what they do. They house all this anime stuff
for someone. I'm like, all right, cool.
I'll take a I love Transformers. You could send me an Optimus
Prime or Megatron or something. Cool.
We'll take care of it. Months go by, I hear nothing.
Get another toll e-mail and I go, dude, where's my toll pass?
Oh, I'm sorry, man. I forget.
I'll forgot. So a month after that, I get
this package in the mail, but inside of it is my toll pass.
But it's not a Transformer. It's a Skeletor.
Like Ninderoid. I don't know if you guys know
what that is. Ninderoid.
Ninderoid. Type it in.
It's like NENDRID or something like that.
They're they're these miniatures.
Usually you can pose them, exchange your arms out and exchange your heads out for different, you know, facial expressions, stuff like that. So I got a Skeletor one, which I
I don't even like you, man, but I'll keep this anyway because it's a gift from a buddy. And then I got this plushy
thing, and I don't even know what this thing is either, but I looked it up. It's this plushy anime chick,
and I'm looking all over it for a little label because I'm like, I don't know what this is. I'm going to probably give it to
my granddaughter when she's turns like one or two.
So right now she's still like seven months old, so it'd be a waste. My family loves giving gifts to
kids and it's just a waste of money.
Like, it doesn't make sense. Like Zeke dropped his Nintendo
Switch into the toilet somehow the other day and that thing's shot and that's like, what, a three, $400.00 item?
He's not even 5OK, he's used. He broke his iPad, which wasn't
originally his. It's kind of gifted to him from
his mother because it used to be her iPad, but it's still he's had this iPad since he was like 2 1/2.
And so when he breaks this stuff, even I don't get mad because my thought is he shouldn't have had it to begin with. So you give us small human
beings something that costs hundreds of dollars, that are made for more mature people that can actually take care.
Or you can expect for them to take care of something a little bit better and he breaks it somehow.
That's on you, not on him. So his mom's probably going to
be pissed that he dropped his switch in the toilet somehow.
He likes to sit on the toilet and take a dump and then just sit there for an hour with an iPad or something.
Anyway, so I got this figure that's and it's a hot soon Miku.
Some of you may know what that is, especially if you're an anime. This is a Hatsune Miko 01 I'm
looking at. I'm like, I guess it's kind of
Robotech colored, but I can't find anything on this specific one on the Internet, so I don't know if it's like a Macross exclusive, like a VF1S exclusive.
But the 01 means this figure. She's a vocaloid.
Hatsune Miku code named CVO One was the first Japanese vocaloid to be developed and distributed by Crypto.
Something something, something or other.
But the actual chick is I think I've seen this.
It's your typical super thin longhaired blue twin ponytails, super short skirt anime chick. Weird that she's supposed to be
16, dressed like that. Krypton Future media.
So I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this.
This is probably it's been months since Ryan remembered what it was what it was. He actually had committed to
giving me something that actually I wouldn't have bought, but I thought would be kind of cool and I would have more than happily take one and put it on my shelf in here, the Jay vengers. But now I have this completely
useless thing and it may be a value I have no idea.
But what am I going to do? Or the bigheaded stuffed anime
girl? So this is going to go to my
granddaughter at some point in the next year or two.
My grand Zeke would probably want it, but dude, I'm not giving you this stuffed chick. Sorry dude.
As I record this, we just got back last night from an entire day up north myself. You bet Zeke, Anna, Jeff, the
girls, Anna's sister, and another couple that we know and it was a great time. Came back and watched Mission
Impossible dead Reckoning. Part one.
Amazing. I don't know if you guys ever
watched the Mission Impossible movies.
They are all pretty much great. Some are better than others, but
they're all, I think they're all rated by the critics in the 90s and the people in the 90s. There might be some 80s and 80s.
I doubt there's any 70s in there.
But that Tom Cruise, regardless of what you think of his Scientology and off the court or off the field, is what we a sports people would say they do. Absolutely performs.
Anytime he's on, Maverick is evidenced.
Who would have thought you can do another Top Gun movie and be even infinitely better than the first one?
Because the first one was a little machismo.
The guys loved it. The girls are probably like, Oh
my God, that's how girl, how macho, how male bleeding.
What's the thing? What's the toxic thing?
Toxic masculinity. Is that what what we would be
accused of now had the original Top Gun come out now.
So check it out, especially if you're a movie buff and let's get to Rd. America.
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Again that's four wheel online, the number 4 wheel online, Wisconsin Travel notes. So I think what I'm going to do
is talk about this sort of like I did the Puerto Rico trip where I just kind of step through different aspects of this, all the travel, where did I stay? I don't have a lot of food stuff
but just some cool stuff from the track.
And again I'll try to make sure that you non car people don't get lost and you're more invested in the story instead of the details and some of you want the details.
I'm putting together a video that I will be posting to YouTube probably within the next day or sooner, maybe even today.
I'm recording this on a Sunday because just had a busy week.
So I went to the airport and I brought my roller bag.
I was going to get a bigger bag. I have a bigger bag.
I was going to bring a bigger bag and check it on just in case I needed more room for things like beer or tequila because the Spotter Cow again, you guys know I like that beer.
They have a lot of. From what I understand, there's
a lot of breweries in Wisconsin and there might be better beers because Spotter Cow is just kind of the staple that everybody knows because it's a beer that you can't get outside of Wisconsin. Like, you can buy it and take it
with you, but you can't go to the store in Michigan or Iowa or Illinois or South Dakota or Minnesota and buy this beer.
You have to get it from Wisconsin.
But I brought my normal size roller board anyway.
Maybe I'll have room for a six pack or something, I don't know.
So I'm sitting in the airplane and I'm watching the lady try to put her roller bag, her roller board, is it roller board, roller bag, roller calling it roller board, roller bag.
You guys know what I'm talking about basically, right?
The micro suitcase that you can actually take on the plane.
And so she tries to stuff it up in the bin and there's plenty of room, but what she's doing is she keeps hitting them back and I'm already sitting in my seat. Before you guys judge me, why
don't you get up and help her? I'm sitting in my seat.
The person's already sitting next to me, so she's probably a rower 2IN front as I'm watching her try to put her bag up there.
And what she's doing is she keeps hitting the back.
I call it the rib. There's like a the frame of the
cubbies, the overhead bin, you can see there's like a little frame piece that comes down and every one of these bins has it and it's like usually right in the middle.
And so you can't really put anything there unless it's a duffel bag. So you have to move your bag a
few inches to the left or a few inches to the right so she keeps hitting this thing and so she can't get to fit.
And I'm looking at it like, okay.
All you have to do, lady, is you have to move that bag right there over 4 inches and your bag will go right there.
So then she puts it down, she goes down to the next large bin and she starts doing the same thing.
And I'm just like, are you kidding me right now?
And then so some guy sitting there in the aisle goes here, he gets up and he puts it up there for he's done in like 2 seconds.
Come on people. Is this your first time
traveling? And it may have been your first
time traveling. I don't know.
But I'm going to judge her because I can.
The lady next to me, she takes her roller bag and she sticks it underneath the chair in front of her, which I thought was curious. I think I've seen that move
before, when the bins are full and it's a smaller one, like it's a like, mine's a smaller one too.
But I'm sitting, I always pick a window seat and then the window seat. There's not a lot of room
underneath the seat because there's that weird box there that's first and then you can barely get your backpack down there. But she puts it down there and
I'm looking up and there's plenty of room in the overhead storage bins. So the thought is, lady, why
wouldn't you put it up there instead of putting it down and ruining any space that you would have to put your feet?
Anyway, our flight was just under 3 hours.
There's a movie called Champions that looked interesting.
It's Woody Harrelson and I'm looking at it because he takes a a group of Down syndrome special needs.
But really, you could tell because a lot of the Down syndrome people have that kind of that same look, right?
But I started watching the movie and I'm asking myself, am I watching this because I want to feel good about something, like a feel good movie? Or am I watching this because I
feel bad that I've thought about skipping it?
And now it's like, dude, this isn't entertaining to you to watch these special needs people get taught how to play basketball by Woody Harrelson. And I got probably 20 minutes
into the movie and it just was not any good.
Because what happens is once he gets linked up with his team for the first time and they say they're little jokes and one liners and they act however they're going to act, you don't know if you want to laugh because it's funny or you don't want to laugh because this is how it is.
And now you're laughing at people for how they are, not how they're trying to make you feel right.
It's kind of a kind of a weird deal.
So I end up just bailing on that and I don't remember what I freaking watched, but it wasn't that I watched something else.
It came through when I was hungry so I decided to order the cheese tray which I haven't had the fruit and cheese tray.
I ordered it for Nostalgic because Once Upon a time I was platinum plus or whatever. The thing is that you can the
highest status you can earn because there was like one or two other statuses that are even higher that you have to be given. And so once you have those
status then you get things. You get an actual real food item
and you get usually one drink on the House.
When the drinks arrived, I ordered a Woodford and I had my card out. And to a flight attendant lady,
she kind of waved my card off like, no, you're good, you're good. I'm like, wow, thank you.
I would tip you, but we don't do that here.
Sometimes You see stuff like that on Southwest, actually, where you take out your drink coupon that you get because they do. You do earn drink coupons on
Southwest, which is kind of cool.
Their drinks are never any good, but you do learn earn drink coupons, and sometimes I'll wave those off.
So that was kind of neat. But inside my package of cheese
and fruit were crackers and they're called cream crackers.
My random thought was, where's the cream?
There's no cream even in the ingredients.
So I don't know why they're called cream crackers.
Maybe it's they have oyster crackers, those little hexagon shaped crackers that. I mean, they don't have oysters
in them, but maybe it's the same thing.
But it was a kind of a stupid thought.
But I thought I I wrote it down on my notepad anyway.
Like cream crackers. Where's the cream?
What are they called cream crackers?
It's not like they got served with a bowl of soup, either.
They got served with fruit and cheese and of course my pinky out Woodford, which is just absolutely fantastic.
So I got to Milwaukee, but as I suspected, everything was shut down. Like none of the bars or
anything were open. So I joined the live with Wes
and watched him and his guests kind of talk for a while.
And then I called my Uber. But riding in the Uber, I forgot
how cool the buildings are in Milwaukee.
It's almost romanlike, sort of, but not really.
Just I'm used to Phoenix, and Phoenix is cool too.
But when you're leaving Phoenix Airport, you know you don't go through downtown. You just know regardless of
which way you're going, you don't go through any big cool looking buildings. You can see them off in the
distance, especially if you're going to the West side.
But where I live on the East Valley, you just never seen.
The coolest thing you see is Tempe.
And Tempe is brand new. So you got brand new glass
buildings, big signs, light up the lake at night, beautiful.
But Milwaukee, it's different. The buildings are in some parts
right up on the highway. You'll see that in other big
cities too, especially older cities, Midwestern cities, the cities up in the eastern part of the United States, not so much in the Southwest United States, Upper Midwest is just it's different. Then we got to Peter's place.
He lives in a very nice area, about 40 minutes outside of Milwaukee, 30-40 minutes outside of Milwaukee.
There's a lot of construction, but I forgot how remote it is.
So we get out there and I think the Uber guy's kind of flipping out a little bit because he's driving slower than the speed limit. And then especially when a deer
runs across the road, you get really freaked out.
Get to Peter's place, beautiful place.
You know, wake up in the morning, he has his main house and then he's got his guest house, or as he jokes, his barn.
When his mother used to live with him, he said that she would joke with his friends that my son makes me sleep out in the barn. But his barn is, you know, three
car garage, two or three bedrooms, walk in, shower, got his own kitchen, little living room area for front porch.
You know, it's it's nice. In the morning I wake up and I
open up the blinds and there's deer, not statues.
There were deer walking through his yard and then I see him in the background kind of walking because he has a walking path around his place. And so he gets up really early
and walks like 2 miles. I get all my stuff together and
we end up going to the real time collection hall.
So I walk around this this place.
I took a little video I was going to upload and he goes, what are you doing in there? Just taking a short video.
No. No one's ever posted any
pictures or videos of that room. People want to see it.
They need to come to the collection hall.
It's like okay, fair enough, got rid of it.
But he's got a dedicated room with all the race cars past.
Well, they're all past, but he's curated a few over the last few years since the last time I was there.
So if you're ever in Milwaukee, you want to see the real time collection hall, reach out to them, schedule a tour.
And if he's around, which he always is, probably gave you a tour. Pretty cool place.
We go to lunch in the NSX. He has a NSX just like mine.
He has down pipes, unlike mine, so it's a little louder, a little faster. Still has the stock wheels.
So it's almost like I didn't have a rental car.
I didn't need a rental car because Peter drove, so he drove me in his NSX. So we took that up north.
It's about 45 minutes to an hour, I think, to get from his shop to the Elkhart Lake is where we're staying.
So on our way into town, we have to stop at Rd.
America because this is when we have to get our credentials.
So we meet up with Ed. Ed drives a beautiful Emola
Orange NSX that wins all sorts of awards.
More on that later. And his son Drew, which I
haven't seen in a while but Drew is Drew is a very fun, appreciative in the moment. Smart kid.
I call him a kid. He's in his 20s.
His job, he details very expensive cars like he's he's that guy who gets that job because he's that good and his personality helps as well. But his boss Rudy, was coming in
as well that night, so they were kind of, you know, waiting for Rudy at this time. Wasn't supposed to come until
super late. He eventually got there in time
for dinner at the throttle stop. More on that later.
So we met up with him at the main gate, got our credentials, got our golf carts. The cool thing about being at
Rd. America is anyone can rent a
golf cart. It's even better when you're
with somebody who already has one ready, like Peter.
So Peter drove his NSX with credentials into the track.
I drove one of the golf carts, Drew Edson drove the other golf cart, and then Ed drove his NSX in with credentials to the track. So you guys have to appreciate
this. You go into the main guard
entrance of the racetrack and then in front of you, you see the road goes down into a tunnel and then up on the other side.
You can't see the other side but right across from it.
But as the tunnel goes down, across the top, it says Rd.
America and it's the coolest thing on the planet.
This isn't the main gate, this is the, I think gate three.
I think it's what it's called Gate 3 and Gate six, I'm not sure, but this isn't where normal people would go through.
This is where the track people go through, whether you're delivering a race car with a giant semi or you're picking up your golf cart to go to your pits.
So this is the interest that we went through.
So we drive all the way down to where the real time paddock is set up and this is where the big rig is set up there already.
And our job at that point was just to drop stuff off and go check into our Airbnb and then rendezvous with and then rendezvous with Ed and Drew later.
And we had a dinner that night too.
So we didn't have a lot of time so that now it's Thursday.
So I had to get to dinner Thursday night for the Preservation Society dinner and I joked, I go, well, is it like, is it like the last time I was here?
Super boring presentation dinner, bunch of old people.
And we had a few other friends that were coming up there.
So I asked everyone, hey, did you register for the dinner?
Everyone says yes. And so I figured, fuck okay, I'm
going to go ahead and register for the dinner.
This is before I left, so I'm backtracking a little bit, But had I not registered for the dinner, I don't know what I would have done because it wasn't downtown exactly in the same location it was when I was there in 2016.
I've been really bored. So we checked into our Airbnb.
Peter found the place. I didn't look for anything
because I don't really know the area.
So I trusted him to pick out what he felt was best for us and anybody else who's eventually going to come stay with us.
Jake was supposed to come stay with us.
John Vassos was supposed to come stay with us and Leon Schmidt staying with us. So we it was us 2, potentially 5
at any given time of the weekend.
So we get to this place, it's way outside of Elkhart Lake.
And by the way everything is outside of Elkhart Lake because it's a small town, but it's all country.
And we see bison. This guy has a den of wolves as
one guy had told me those are actually wolf dogs or dog wolves. It's some classification
crossbreed of I think like a Husky and a real wolf.
And he had a whole den of them. And he had deer, including a
couple albino deer. And we felt bad because he
wanted us so badly to schedule a tour of his facility.
Although the cages were literally 25 to 40 feet outside of the door of this Airbnb, which by the way was downstairs from the main owner's house. So you can hear the owner
walking around upstairs while you're in the Airbnb would freak some people out. I'm sure had a situation like
that once years ago where vet and I went to California and we rented out a place and I remember from San Diego or Los Angeles but as close to the beach but the owner lived on the other side of the wall and be on your best behavior pretty much.
But in this case it was pretty cool.
This guy had a couple of huge dogs and their only job was to kind of roam around the perimeter super friendly giant dogs, probably keep the other animals in check.
And then the corner of the cages on our side, there was a fire pit and a bunch of chairs and he just wanted to whatever you guys need. You want me to make a fire for
you guys, Just let me know and I'll come out here and do it.
And it would have been nice to have the opportunity to just hang out, but we really didn't have any time because one thing is when you go up there for that weekend, especially if you're staying with Peter, then you're on his schedule because he has a tight schedule because he races. So we knew that okay Friday
morning he would had qualifying, then Saturday would be qualifying in races, then Sunday would be races.
And you don't mind, like, I don't mind if I would have brought, let's say, my son or my daughter or my wife.
The whole dynamic would be completely different, right?
So this is almost like a trip for just the guys, the fellas.
So it's Ed, Drew and Rudy and they were kind of doing their thing. But then you start to get to a
certain point where there's almost too many people in the party and it makes it difficult to plan things.
All of you who travel with groups know exactly what I'm talking about. And so for the first night, it
was just Peter in one room and me in the other room, and that was the situation. So we drop all our stuff off at
the house. At this point, we'd already gone
to the track. We had swapped out the NSX for
the four door Integra because there's not room in the NSX for his racing suit, his helmet, my luggage, his luggage.
So we put all that stuff in the Integra.
Well, we put our luggage in the Integra in the racing suit and everything like that was in the back of the NSX and so we had to go to the track when we first got into town, get our credentials. It's $123.00 for the weekend.
Best money you could ever spend. I have not spent it yet while I
was there, but I'm more than willing to.
In fact, I had whiffed and I hit him up the night before I go, hey I it's been 2016. I honestly whiffed on this.
Can I buy tickets there? I was more than willing to buy
tickets. I mean, worst case, just ride it
off to hard parking media. Listen to me, you can get a VIP
weekend pass for $123 in 2023. May go up in the future, I don't
know, but that's a lot of access.
You can pretty much, well go anywhere you want with that wristband on, pretty much. And if you can't, then as long
as you're with someone who can as their special guest, then you can go pretty much anywhere you want.
So we had to go to the track, swap all that stuff over, take the 4 door, JDM, Integra. There's a story on that too, by
the way, on the Patreon. You're not going to get it on
this. There was an incident.
So we take the Integra to the house, drop all our stuff off, get back in the Integra, go downtown, sort of to this really awesome place called the throttle stop.
They might have a couple locations, but look up.
Throttle stop, Wisconsin throttle stop, Elkhart Lake I think originally start off as just a motorcycle repair place, but now you can you can also rent it out for things like this historic dinner. So when you go inside, in front
of you is kind of like their bar.
If you go to the right, there's an engine display and there's a room with some really nice exotic sports cars being stored, I assume for other people. Kind of like we have Scottsdale
Vault here that we did for NS Expo.
It's a storage place, really fancy storage place that you can route for events as well. And then another room, There's a
bunch of Ducatis and motorcycles all up on the wall.
Racing suits, historical things with little plaques and explanations of what it is. Going back to the main entrance
again, looking in front, visualizes with me remembering.
If you go right, you see what I just discussed.
The motorcycle room in the cars. If you go left, it's another
giant room in the middle. We had all the tables set up for
this nice dinner. On the left wall and the right
wall, you have a whole wall full of motorcycles and they're all stacked up with perfect lighting and little plaques explaining what these bikes are. And it's kind of the history of
the motorcycles. So each one is so uniquely built
differently and pretty freaking awesome.
Like, I'm not a motorcycle guy. I don't own a motorcycle.
I think they're works of art. It's almost like guns in a weird
way. Where I love guns, I don't own
any guns. I have no desire to have a gun.
But a lot of guns visually are beautiful, and the way they're constructed and all the thought that goes into the design, they're just almost perfect little pieces of machinery.
And it's the same thing with the intricacies of a motorcycle.
There's so much more there than just a seat, a gas tank, a handle and a clutch when you get down and look at them.
There's just so much innovation into how motorcycles are built.
The Throttle Stop also has another warehouse next door that you couldn't get to unless you had your credentials for checking into this historic race circuits preservation society.
So once you go into the main building, you check in to get your badge, you go over to this other building and it's more of the same. More really cool cars, less
motorcycles. The motorcycles that are there
are kind of all on the floor parked right next to each other.
And there's some gyms in there as well.
And I don't know if this is a, I mean, I could look it up on the website. Honestly, I haven't.
But I don't know if it's a consignment shop, if it's a storage shop, if it's a little bit of both.
But the place was beautiful. That's throttle.
Stop. Look it up.
It's worth your time just to look it up.
You don't even have to be a car person.
You're gonna be like, oh, wow, this is really cool.
Have a nice historic dinner. There we go Downtown, walk
around. Not much going on.
We've been out all day. Oh, I forgot to mention hanging
out with Peter. So Peter, Leon.
Jake, those guys love their tequila.
I don't want to call them tequila snobs, but they really get into their tequila, They research it, and if there's a banger $40 bottle of tequila, they'll tell you so.
It doesn't have to be a $400.00 bottle of tequila.
They can find a $200.00 bottle of tequila and love it, then
work really hard on finding a 40 or $50 bottle of tequila that's just as good, if not better. That won't break the bank.
So before we left the track to go to the throttle, stop dinner, it was time. We've it's been a long day and
it's time to celebrate. I don't know what we're
celebrating, but it's just time to celebrate.
So we were walking around, we we get some cups of ice and then I'm walking around with like a solo cup sized.
It looks like I'm drinking ice water.
It is all tequila. The only water in that cup is
from the ice on, however long it took me to drink the rest of that cup of water. So by the time we get to a
throttle stop and it looks like I'm walking around with a cup of ice water. So that's when I started sipping
it. So we weren't like drinking and
drinking the stuff when we're driving, but that was my main drink and I ordered a bottle of beer.
I I went to the the bar and I'm like, okay, I need some water, like real water. So I bought a bottle of water
and then I saw the Spotted Cow beer.
And of course this is I'm in Wisconsin, like I have to have spotter cow now at least once. So I bought a bottle.
So then in front of me at the table was my fake ice water, which we call the ice water all weekend.
So from now on, when I mentioned ice water, I'm talking about my cup of tequila. And it was blanco's.
It was clear, right? So Blanco tequila and
crystallino, clear and crystallino tequila is clear.
But they don't mess with crystallino.
It's too impure for him. Too much things are in it.
Bad stuff. They don't.
They don't mess with that. I drink it.
I still like my Don Julio 70. I don't care what anybody says,
but this is Blanco. So I had my cup of Blanco.
I had my bottle of beer and then I had my bottle of water.
So then by the time we got done with this throttle stop place, this awesome presentation sort of awesome.
It's more about the dinner and the people met some cool people.
By the time we got done with that, it's like, okay, what do we want to do? Everyone, let's go downtown.
Let's go to Seepkins. So Seepkins is this spot.
It's a traditional spot in downtown Elkhart Lake.
They have other restaurants. They have a lot of other stuff
going on, but that's like the Racers bar.
That's the one inside where you go walk in and there's stickers of race teams and anything anyone's ever brought in there and stuck on the wall is still there.
They don't take anything off. And no one's stupid.
No one's going to put like this is a porn site sticker or this is a get free drugs here or buy your weed hair sticker.
Cause if it was, I would imagine at that point it would be pulled off like someone's probably tried at some point.
But on the wall, I mean up on the ceiling fan there's still A1 auto sticker that I put up there in 2016.
So then of course, obviously at some point this weekend I got to stick my hard parking sticker on the wall, which I eventually did later on in the trip. Took a photo of it, uploaded the
video of it, Maybe you guys saw it, maybe you didn't.
But we walked through Seepkin's not a lot going on.
So we decided to go back to the place.
Peter and I go back to the place because it's 10 miles outside of town, because we knew that we had to be up the next morning at like 6. And that concludes my first day
at Elkhart Lake case, our first real day at the track, which would been Friday. So we got to the track around
6:40. At that time it was just myself
and Peter. In fact, the real time tent was
still zipped up because the crew had not yet arrived.
This was pretty early and he wasn't doing his qualifying until later on in the morning. So he and I down in the golf
cart, we stopped and got some coffee at a coffee stand and then we decided to go get some breakfast.
The breakfast was actually really good for something you'd buy at a racetrack. So walk up stand.
It wasn't you don't go inside and sit down and eat.
You just walk up and order whatever you want to eat so I don't eat your food. By the time we got done eating
we're headed back. And the real time guys, it
showed up and that was this was some of his crew.
You know Mike, the guy who was I talked about before who would transfer the cars, Colin, Nathan, Nathan Son, Ian were all part of this crew this weekend because he, Peter, kind of rotates between his crew guys across from us and I failed to mention this. But across from us was Colin
Comer who was Colin's classic cars.
You guys may know about him. You may not know about him when
you listen to this, but he's pretty much America's authority on all things Shelby. He did the thing with Haggerty.
I think it was Haggerty. Was it Haggerty or Motor Trend?
He had kind of a gig on YouTube where you would bring your vehicle to him and he would value eight.
He would take a look at what he felt was the value of your vehicle, which was kind of cool. He doesn't do that anymore, but
he was right across the way. And it's cool because there's
the familiarity. Okay, because we were all there
for Peter, myself. Ed drew Rudy to root him on, but
it's cool that Colin is right across the way because I met him in 2016 and not somebody else For me to take pictures of when they're racing and en route for after a while, John Vassos arrived and you guys think back to just a year ago.
Vassos is the NSX tech who unfortunately, he does have mesothelioma, which is a cancer there's no cure for and he's still miraculously with us. His health is declining, which
is one of the main reasons. I mean, I've always wanted to go
back to this event since 2016, but one of the real main reasons why I was there in 2023, because I don't know how long John has.
I don't know if he can make it till next year.
He's down to 1 long. He looked a lot better this
weekend than I imagine. Talking to him on the phone a
couple weeks ago. I was really concerned, and I'm
still concerned, but we don't get forever in this world and just having the ability to kind of hang out with him in some capacity while in Wisconsin doing things that we all love is just a treat. Short of drinking.
He couldn't really drink this time around.
Most of the first day at the track I rode around with Ed and Drew and Rudy. Unfortunately, Rudy, who would
come in the night before, had some bad food on the flight and he wasn't really feeling too well.
So he was nauseous most of Friday, and I think toward the end of the day sort of feeling a little better.
But we drove all around and one thing that I'm going to tell you guys this, I haven't been to a lot of race tracks in the United States. I haven't been to a lot of race
tracks, period. So I don't know why I said
United States. I just haven't been to a lot of
tracks, but I know I've been to Rd.
America. I've driven on Road America in
NS Expo 2017 in a rental car, and that is a gorgeous long track. And one thing that makes this
track to me better than others, like I've been to the famous Mazda Raceway Slash Laguna Seca in California, which is on every video game that you play, as well as Rd.
America. One thing about this track that
makes it so damn good is the accessibility.
There are hundreds, maybe not hundreds, maybe there are hundreds. There are, I'm going to say
hundreds. There's about 100 or so golf
carts just spread around the whole track and.
That are loaded full of just normal people like myself, and there's trails all around the track.
So you can take the outer trail, the inner trail, and it depends on if you're inside the track or outside the track.
And you can drive these golf carts to most, if not all the corners of the racetrack. Or you can see the cars from
where you're at with the golf cart.
Instead of walking everywhere, you now you could walk everywhere. But take Laguna Seca, for
example, which is just outside of Monterey, which I go to when I go to Monterey Car Week, which I'm not going this year, it's hot there. And unless you have a golf cart,
which I've never had a golf cart there, you're walking everywhere. And there is little to no shade
famous place to watch when you're in California at Monterey. And Laguna Seca is a course
group. You can walk all the way up the
hill to the Corkscrew and it is a long, hot, treacherous walk.
Or you could probably take a golf cart if you have a golf cart. But I think the golf carts are
pretty expensive during Monterey Car Week, wrote America.
I don't know how much it cost because this was Peter's cart, but I know Ed bought a golf. He rented a golf cart.
But they're probably not that expensive because of the accessibility factor, because they want people to rent their golf carts and drive all around the track.
So that's what we did all day as we drove around each corner and took a lot of video, some photos, we ate some food, we hung out, had a great time. So the thing about Fridays
during this awesome weekend in Rd.
America is you need to get away from the track and go downtown to Elkhart Lake. Because what they do is people
line the streets and then a lot of the race cars come from the race track and they drive to downtown, I would assume with an escort because most of these vehicles uphill, all none of these vehicles are technically street legal, but the local authorities, everyone knows what's about to happen and everyone tolerates it because it's awesome.
So we hopped into Peter's car. Myself, Peter, Leon and John
Vasso's drove separately because Vasso's drove his awesome in a sex which you guys are going to see on the YouTube version.
Leon has the best generation accurate TL.
He has a TL type S Peter and I wrote in the Integra.
So we all went downtown paid for parking and walked walked pretty far. We had a clear cut full of
tequila Blanco tequila. Now the mission was find
somebody who can give us a cup of ice, a couple cups of ice so we can split our cups of tequila.
We found that. So now it looks like Peter and I
are walking around with these tall ice water just like the night before. I told you, I'm telling you
guys, I drink a lot of tequila this weekend.
And then on top of that, Ed brought 3 bottles of tequila from his road trip from Texas. For those of you who hate
tequila, I say this and I've said this for the last few years and I don't even get into it like these guys do.
You just haven't had the right tequila and there is many different right tequila's. So we're walking around and it's
starting to get really busy in downtown Elkhart Lake.
The cars aren't there yet. We got a couple hours of burn
and it's crazy. You have to get there early, a
couple hours early and it's still finding parking is is difficult. So then we kind of broke apart
because I think Ed and Drew went, I think they went to go meet Rudy somewhere or they went somewhere with Rudy.
So then it's just myself, Peter, I think Leon.
And then Leon broke apart. Was he walking with us?
I I don't even know. We had a small group and at some
point it's just myself and Peter.
So Peter Cunningham knows everyone and everyone knows Peter, which is great. He sits on the board at Rd.
America. He's got many records at Rd.
America from back in his racing days, Real Time Acura, RTR.
You guys can look up the whole history there, but he's very well known and this is Vintage Car Weekend.
So he's a retired guy, although he still owns and operates Real Time Racing, which this year they're doing some Mercedes cars, which still seems kind of. For those of us who've been
following Real Time for a long time, it's weird.
All we want is for him to have an opportunity to do something with Real Time. So whether it's Mercedes or Real
Time Mini Coopers, which they haven't had.
But the point is we don't care. It's different that it's not an
Acura Honda, but we don't care. We're always in his corner.
Peter knows everyone and so he says we're invited to that party over there and we're invited to this party over here and what do you want to do? And I go, I don't care if you're
I'm doing whatever you do. So let's let's do it.
So we walk into this wine and cheese party VIP special invited only. But no one stops and says, hey,
are you guys supposed to be here?
Because let me say it again, everyone knows who Peter is.
Even if someone standing there doesn't know at the door, somebody important who needs to know knows.
So we walked in there and got to meet all sorts of really nice people. Mr. Stevenson, his son Brad, I
think Mr. Stevens's grandson. I forgot his name.
He talked my ear off and it was awesome.
Stevenson, he has if the red F40L M that you guys saw me post on social media. If you saw that post.
But he also has, I mean that's excellent taste, but to stamp home the fact that he has excellent taste, he has an NSX type S as well. His is Casino White Pearl Mine's
130 R Peters is 130 R He's in the NSX crew.
Super nice guy. That's one thing about this
weekend is if you're friends with Peter, you're probably all right because Scum doesn't tolerate scum.
After that, we figured we'd get out of there.
My ice water was almost gone. I was feeling pretty good, so I
didn't want to have anything else for a while.
I wasn't messed up. And then again, that's the power
of good tequila. You have a buzz, but as long as
my legs are moving, I don't get drunk.
I wasn't even at no point this weekend that I feel like I was borderline out of control. I was either feeling really good
or I got tired but not too tired because I snapped out of it.
So those of you who know that when I drank, depending on what I drink, sometimes it could knock me out, and I have no idea. It doesn't have to be strong.
It just when it hits me, there's nothing I can do about it.
So we walked into some other party and this guy, these guys were cooking out. I'm telling you, between the
wine and cheese party, pulled pork, beer brats like people cooking out. Guys, welcome.
Good to meet you. Have some food, have some beer,
and I was tempted to grab a beer.
I was tempted to grab a drink. Didn't want to have anything to
do with it though, because I was feeling all right and I knew that we had dinner plans that night.
It's about time for the parade to start and it's.
I don't, I mean parade. I call it a parade.
It's not really a parade. It's the parade of Motorsports
cars, but no one's walking. There's no band, there's no
floats, none of that. So the cars come up and it is
that. It's very loud.
Like I would suggest, if you guys ever go to anything like this, you you buy or bring earplugs.
I didn't have any. I'm thinking about buying them
just to have them because the cars are so loud.
It is so it's deafening loud and it's like I think once you you can lose part of your hearing, like you can lose like certain little nodes in your ear that you'll never get back.
I think there's there's something about that.
So all the cars go by and it's super cool time.
People are talking. There was an incident.
So Cooper McNeil, he is the son of the founder of weather tech.
Like you know those floor mats that you have in your car, those really nice. He's also a professional race
car driver with Emza. During this parade, he decides
that he's going to light up the wheels of his Porsche, which is a huge no no. Like this is a huge no no.
But he decides that he's going to light up his tires and the people love it, but that's about it because he could have lost control. Anybody who has any shred of
responsibility, including the authorities, did not like it at all. He got pulled over by bicycle
cops. I know this sounds funny, but
something like that. If you're the sponsor, if you're
the racetrack, you get really nervous because you're one incident away from this whole thing going away.
So he got in a little bit of trouble.
The police arrested him, they took him in, but he got released. But from that point on Friday,
he was disqualified and not allowed to do anything else that weekend at the racetrack. And it's bad enough.
He's the son of the name that's on this weekend.
This is called the Weather Tech Challenge.
So if you go to YouTube, you Googling Cooper McNeil and that's MacNeil, Elkhart Lake. You'll see him going down the
parade and just lighten up his tires.
That became kind of the talk of the weekend.
That night we went to the the Paddock Club, myself, Peter, John Vassos and his brother Steve Vassos, which I feel like I met him before, but maybe not super nice guy, you know, It would have been nice to maybe eat with everyone, but we could only find reservations for four. Technically, if you count,
there's five of us. Peter was able to get the 5th
person added to our reservation. But that's the thing when you
travel with a lot of people and you don't really know what everyone's schedule is and you're in a super small town, that's this is their biggest weekend of the year without question. This is the tracks, moneymaker,
the town, everything is. So the Airbnb that we got,
that's 10 miles out, that's the best thing we can get without paying just a stupid amount of money.
That wouldn't make any sense, even for Peter Cunningham.
After dinner, we thought about maybe going down, back down to Seepkins Wasn't anything going on down there.
We had to get up again early the next morning.
Peter had to be at the track. And so myself, Peter and Leon
went back to the Airbnb. John wasn't feeling good at all,
so he decided he and his brother decided to drive back to Milwaukee, which again, it's over an hour drive, about an hour drive. Concerning, you know, going back
to what I was saying before, his life is degrading, where he has to have oxygen with him all the time.
He always has the oxygen sensor. You see him sticking it on his
finger, taking his oxygen level, you know, you get concerned.
So every time he'd put it on his finger out, kind of lean over and kind of watch the little meter.
And he knows he's surrounded by people who who care about him, who love him and want the best for his health.
Not a big deal. So the three of us again,
myself, Peter and and Leon, went back to the Airbnb.
But this time we took Leon's car and we left the Integra Park downtown. We left it parked downtown
because on Saturday night, parking was going to be a premium as well. And we didn't need to take two
cars back to the Airbnb, because there's just three of us.
We went back to the Airbnb and Leon made us drinks again.
Leon loves his tequila. He made us palomas.
In fact, we were drinking palomas at the track.
Then we had the cup of tequila. So I guess again, I had a lot to
drink this weekend, but at no time was I messed up, which was funny, especially, you know, you guys know me.
We had our palomas sitting down on the sofa and I realized I was like, man, one person. So if Vasos would have came back
with us, he would have got the third bed.
And I think Leon was supposed to sleep on the sofa.
And Jake was going to come down later on Saturday because he couldn't be there until Saturday and he was going to sleep somewhere, couldn't figure out where.
But when I was sitting on the sofa, I thought, man, this sofa is hard as hell. I feel like I'm sitting on
something so I got up because I thought it maybe it was a sofa bed, but when I lifted up the cushion, we were sitting on construction grade plywood. So the owner of the house must
have cut off. This plywood plank is big, you
know, for the just big enough to fit underneath the cushions.
Can you imagine that, That I mean, it's like sleeping on the floor right? With I guess cushions behind
you. But when you're sitting on a
sofa, you don't expect for it to give like 2 inches and all of a sudden it's hard. Especially this sofa because it
looked, you know, old. This wasn't like a a high
fashioned, super thin IKEA sofa that's serves no purpose other than visual candy for a room. It looked like it should have
been more comfortable than it was.
But of course nothing's ever comfortable if it's got plywood or anything because the sofa cushions were pretty blown out on top of that. And I know this is a lot of
detail about this, so I apologize.
Anyway, went to bed and got ready for day 2.
Day 2 at the track. Lots of tequila.
Leon and I drove around all day by ourselves for the most part because Peter had to get there and do his secret thing.
Things that happened that day at the track, Colin Comer's Mountain Dew car broke, which sucked.
Spent the rest of the day kind of rolling around with Leon in the golf cart. I didn't.
I hardly saw Ed and and Drew and and Rudy.
Maybe it was the tequila, but this day at the track went kind of as a blur. We rode around and I got some
more footage that I wanted to get from my video and then before you knew it, it was pretty much time to leave because we had to go. So Peter did his run at the
track and his TSXI didn't even told you guys when he drives.
So he has a real time collection hall and he has 2TSX race cars.
These are, I don't know, the years mid 2000s.
We brought the slower one and he got bumped to a different group which made him the fast, pretty much the fastest car in the slowest group. So he was kind of screwed,
though I understand it's kind of upsetting all weekend because he's kind of used to winning all the time.
And while he did extremely well this weekend, he had no shot at getting a podium. Because sometimes when you get
out there in race cars, they put a bunch of different classes in one group. So for example, there's a
GT1GT2GT3GT, Q, whatever else class.
I forgot which one he was in, but they may all be running at the same time, then they're all in the track at the same time.
So if you ever watch race car driving, not NASCAR, you may see cars flying past other cars, but the cars they're flying past may still be in first or second, second place in their class, even if they're whatever overall.
So Peter held his own this weekend.
I'm not just saying that because I'm a friend of his, but again, you just have to look up Peter Cunningham, race car driver, and his credentials will speak for themselves.
But that day at the track we had to pack up and leave as soon as possible. So Ed packed up and took his
NSX. And then we all jumped in the
van, the little Honda active van, myself, Leon and Peter.
And we packed the van full of party.
I forgot what we call our party goods or our groceries or whatever the term is they have for the mixers and the tequila.
So we grabbed all of it, the three bottles put in the back of the van, throw the van downtown Elk Park Lake set up shop for the concourse. So this is a big car show that's
judged by everyone. And this is the specific event
where you saw the F40. The day before we were at Mr.
Stevenson's party, his wine and cheese party, but that night was just for the race cars. The second night was for
collector cars, normal cars, anything you have that you want to enter into the concourse for judging.
I don't know if when you fill out the application, someone says, OK, you can be here or they take pretty much anybody who wants to enter if you want to pay the money.
That night was just as good. We're walking around with our
ice waters, getting drinks out of the ACTI.
I discovered Seepkins has a secret bar.
It's separate from the regular resort, so you have to kind of walk around the back because Leon was like, you want to go to Seepkin's secret bar now? This is my third time in this
town. I was like, Leon, you're full of
shit. There's no secret bar.
And he started laughing. He goes, I'm telling you, Jay,
there's a secret bar and he's not really a jokester.
He's a really fun guy. Actually, Peter and Leon, I
spent probably the same time, but when Peter's at the track and he's getting ready to do his race car driving, you kind of let him be in his own thing. And you know, Leon is Leon.
So we walked in, he he took me around, he grabbed my phone and recorded me walking in. That's in the video as well.
But it happened. It happened again, and this
hasn't happened for years since I don't travel as much.
Some lady says, anyone ever tell you look like Will Smith?
There it is. I don't think I do.
My wife certainly doesn't think I do.
My son, who used to adore Will Smith, Will Smith movies, certainly doesn't think I do. It's the first time I've heard
that in a long time, though, so I kind of sneakered.
I was like, no, I get that sometimes.
But anyway, back to the story. Yeah, there was a secret little
bar in the back of Seepkin, so separate like the Seepkins restaurant because they have the Seepkins bar.
And then they have the Seepkins Seepkins restaurant, which I had no idea was there. I probably knew it was there,
but I've never been inside of it.
So then Leon and I went in there and we had more tequila, More tequila. Hour or two later we grabbed the
troops and we go to eat at this Seepkins restaurant.
You don't have cornbread with rice balls, by the way.
The rice was undercooked. I hate undercooked rice.
Anyway, this was Saturday and this was the highlight without question. And this is also the first time
because we got on eating and I think we walked around through Seepkins, the bar side. So of the three times I've been
to Rd. America and this was probably be
the 8th or 9th time or 10th time, I've walked with the Receipkins because again, we were there for NS Expo and we stayed in Elkhart Lake and we stayed at the Ofstoff Resort which was 100 feet from Seepkin's bar.
We never stopped and had a drink in actual Seepkin's bar.
This is the first time this whole trip we walk through it, but we never really saw people we we knew or we didn't go through at the right time. It's kind of weird.
But again, we were getting up super early every day and going to the track and so by the time it got to be 10/30/11 at night we were whipped because that's a long day.
It's a long day riding around in a golf cart, long day being on your day, drinking pretty much, except for Peter, because you had to race. But for us we didn't.
We could just, you know, we weren't drinking at like 8:00 o'clock in the morning, But you know, by lunchtime maybe we had a drink. And then by the time it was
three or four we had to drink. But then it was time to leave
and go to Elkhart Lake. So then we had a drink and then
we're walking around with our ice water, aka drink.
So by the time you get to this ten thirty, 11:00, o'clock at night, you're pooped. So this time before we went back
to our Airbnb, we left the van at Nathan's house and Nathan lives in downtown Elkhart Lake. Nathan is real time crew.
He, I think he's their crew chief.
I'm going to say he's a crew chief, but he's been with with Peter for 30 years so he has a house there.
Leon's car, we left it at the track at the paddock.
So now we're taking the GDM right hand.
Dr. Integra, back to the Airbnb. I have a couple more drinks that
night and then all go to bed. Hopefully you guys are still
listening to this. This is the last day.
This is Sunday, Sunday. We had a lot of time to burn.
We get up, leave the house kind of little later than usual, probably around 8:30, because Peter has one race on Sunday and it's not until like 3:00 o'clock in the afternoon.
So the three of us, myself, Peter and Leon.
We go get some coffee at Off the Rails.
Peter goes over to Nathan's house to grab the van and he says when do you guys have to drive the Integra?
So I looked at Leon. I go, have you ever driven a
right hand drive vehicle before? And Leon says no, have you?
I go, well I I drove the last time I was here in 2016.
The little vamos, Little Honda vamos.
How difficult can it be? And so I drove the Integra of
the four door Integra back to the track and Peter was gone.
He went to get the van that's wasn't waiting around for us.
Thank God. I remember where the track was
because, you know, this is our 3rd, 4th day here.
I drive us back to the track. By the time we get there,
Peter's already there. He's already over talking to
Collin and his he's over at Collins Paddock talking to Collin. And then I figured we have low
golf carts, Head is gone all day with his golf cart again.
And so it's myself, Leon, Peter. So the question is, okay, what
are we going to do today? The good thing about and the
thing I remember from the last time I was there in 2016 at this specific event was he, Peter wasn't racing.
And so you get on the golf cart with him and he drives you everywhere. And he again, he knows everyone
and it is awesome to be with someone who knows everyone and has access to everything. And he is a great host, OK, He
is a great host. And I can't promise you guys
when you go or if you go out to watch this event and let him know you're going there, that he's going to be, he's going to have the time to necessarily give you what I call the Peter experience. But he will say hi to you.
He will talk to you, especially if you say, hey, I drove from or I flew in from out of state to come see you.
He will spend as much time with you as he can when you're his friend. I've known the guy for nine
years now and I would I I will have to say that I am, I would consider myself one of his actual friends.
And you know we all have these crews, right?
We all have these our group within the group, we all have these cliques. So Ed is considered one of his
friends. Obviously Jake and Leon, he's
got Peter, has a lot of friends, but he also, he has a lot of friends, but he has a smallish circle and I think he's like me in the sense where I have. When I was in high school, I had
a ton of friends, but I had different groups of friends.
So if you saw me on Friday, I'd be with one group.
On Saturday I'd be with the other group, Sunday I'd be with the third group, you know, different friends for different things. So somewhere in those groups of
friends, I fit in, I'm in the the Jake, Leon, Ed Summers group, John Vasil's group, which is great.
When you're in that group, you're having the tequila at the Real Time collection hall late night.
You know, you're getting the hotel, you're in the dinner plans and rolling around with him.
With Rd. America going, bringing it full
circle in 2016, you get that access.
Well, he got us the $123 wristband because as a board member he gets a certain amount of wristbands.
So he took us up and we had some breakfast at a pretty cool spot and they're on site. And then we went across the
bridge and looked at some other stuff and as lunch rolled around, we went and had some lunch as a group.
But then it was time to drop him off at the paddock.
And so Leon and I kind of rolled around all day until everyone else arrived and finally Jake arrived and we went and picked Jake up at the gate. Rainy arrived.
Peter's wife and I haven't seen Rainy since 2017.
We went and picked her up at the gate with Peter and we watched Peter's last race, took a few videos.
It was awesome. And before you know it, it was
time to close shop. Real time started closing their
their paddock and we're helping kind of pack stuff in, get stuff out of the way. More tequila, more time standing
around and then you just kind of take it all in as we packed up all the cars, you know, the Integra and the van were put in the big transport loaded off. The race car was put in the big
transport, different transport in the in the giant real time rig taking off. Well, you know what?
I'm sitting back in the NSX Type S riding shotgun.
One of my bags is in Leon's car, one of my bags is in Peter's car and we're all headed back to Milwaukee for dinner reservations. We went to Ginza, Jinsa, Jinsa,
we, we had dinner reservations at Jinsa Sushi.
Ed, Drew and Rudy were still in town because they had one more night. They were leaving Monday, so
they had one more night up in Elk Park Lake, and it's an hour because it was going to be all of us, finally, all of us going to go to Milwaukee and find some food, but the crew got cut down just because it wouldn't make. It wouldn't make much sense to
drive an hour for dinner just to drive an hour back.
Myself, Leon, Steve Vassos, John Vassos, Peter and Rainey at Jenza Sushi. And then afterwards we went to
baskin-robbins and had ice cream and finished the night at the collection hall with another nightcap.
You know, I said goodbye to pretty much everyone and and Jake and I hung out, went to another bar for some more tequila. Jay dropped me off at my hotel
that I had booked for that night so that I could take a shuttle in the morning, which by the way, I almost missed the shuttle. I walked in.
I don't even know what time it was and I told the front to ask.
Hey, there's a shuttle to the airport.
They go, yeah, I go, OK, I need to be on it on this time.
So I put my name down. I go, OK, thanks.
And I don't remember if they asked me if I wanted a wake up call, So I go to the hotel room, take a shower, get all my shit ready, my clothes for the morning like I was had everything packed except for the clothes I was going to wear.
And my phone rang in the morning and I figured it was the wrong number. So I picked it up and hung it
up. And then I lay there for a
second and then my eyes popped up and I go, oh, shit, that's that's probably the front desk. Call the front desk.
And yeah, they're like, I go, hey, front desk, is my is my shuttle here, You know? And they're like, yeah, yeah,
the shuttle's here. It's ready to go.
I'm like, all right, cool. I'll be right down, hurry up.
And got dressed, brushed my teeth grabbed all my shit.
Next thing I was in the shuttle and I was on my way to the airport. And of course, Jake, being the
friend that he is, he bought me a six pack of Spotted Cow.
He brought it to the tracks like, hey, I got this for you.
I'm like okay, great. But I'm thinking, shit, I don't
have my big bag to carry on. I'll find room for it.
So I had, I had this deconstructed 6 pack of bottles, just these 6 bottles just shoved in my carryon, making sure none of them are touching so they don't clank and and crack.
And then, you know, I get to the airport and I walk past the store and they have Spotted Cow there.
You can buy. How crazy is this?
I've never noticed that at an airport, and some of you probably have. But when I see stuff like that,
it's like duty free, right? So you can only buy it if you're
not, if you're from another country or you're passing through a country or if you're in another country on your way back to the United States. That's the only time you can buy
stuff, typically. So I'm like, this beer is so
popular, you can buy a 12 pack of beer at the airport and take it with you on the plane. And so that's what I did.
I bought a 12 pack of cans, flew home with that on the airplane.
I watched one more movie, Dungeons and Dragons.
I tried to watch it a couple times before.
I kept falling asleep. Didn't think it was a very good
movie. This time I watched the whole
thing and I would say it's not as bad.
It's just not. It's just not good.
I didn't laugh or chuckle. I don't think I even smiled the
entire movie. But I don't know if that makes
the movie terrible. It just wasn't.
It just wasn't any good. Special shout out to the Arizona
peeps. Arnie Lena, Matt O'Connor, Doug
Crofton. Those are all people that I've
known prior to this trip. Some of them live here.
Arnie and Lena live here half the year.
The other half of the year they live there.
So it wasn't it was I forgot they live there.
So when I ran into him in the gift shop, it was like, oh, you'll find anybody here. But Matt O'Connor was kind of a
surprise. He flew in to help somebody else
so he was kind of working but he still came by the real time tent and we kicked it for half an hour or so.
That was my that was my trip. But with that being said, one of
the right Honda and right Toyota through online 4 wheel online.com and social Wireless Services.
One of the Patreon business supporter Korea Automotive out of Winter Garden FL. Pell Construction of Caledonia
MI Bee House My home design out of Ashburn VA.
Traverse City MI Shaving success with W Tankersley out of Boise ID. If you're a position at the
podcast upgrade you can join the Patreon for as little $3 a month to get access to bonus audio as well as show swag.
Patreon says that they're going to open up I think a free tier or a trial period. Let me know if you're listening
to this if you want to be included into that and I'll make sure I get you set up with that whenever that is available.
Special shout out to Mark Stoneman, Catherine Cox, City Ramos, Richard Gray's Byron Jones, Bojong Oscar Media, Drew Bunkley, and David Garner for your support.
You guys want any swag? Go to hardparkingpod.com
Questions, comments or concerns? Hard parking [email protected]
Follow me on Instagram at J Finning and join the Hard Parking Violations Facebook group.
Just go to Facebook and type in Hard Parking violations and you should land there. Also, I can't grow that you're
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Let's do this. Let's grow the scene together
and I will talk to you all next week.
Shut up now. It's stripping time.
Ain't nobody got time for this.
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