Road Tripped

Had a little trouble on the way to Thunderhill this morning. Hit some black ice near Dupont on I-5 and spun off the freeway into a gully. We rolled at least once. The truck is almost certainly totaled. The trailer looks like a refugee from trailer park attacked by a tornado. The race car looks like it's been beaten with baseball bats and crowbars, but it survived. It ripped free of all of it's straps and landed on its wheels on the wall of the trailer. It wasn't fun, but I limped it home under its own power after the wreckers towed the remnants of the truck and trailer away.


Crap.


Somewhere underneath this wreckage is a rather startled little French car. Notice the checker board "wall" that used to be the "floor".


Nice lift kit, huh? I'll be all but invisible in Kent now!


Broken and battered, Aunt Bea held onto her dignity, refused all assistance and drove out of the ditch under her own power. No kidding, that is one seriously tough truck.


Ignoring the law, Bea hitched a ride anyway.


The trailer was a little spartan, so we spruced it up with this festive mobile made of fuel jugs!


Red paint smears from Pujo! are on every interior surface of the trailer except the floor. Pujo! must have felt like a drumstick in a bag of Shake-n-Bake. (credit to Bret Dodson for the comparison)


"Open other end"


Don't worry about being gentle, guys. WE'VE ONLY WORKED ON THAT CAR EVERY WEEKEND FOR THE LAST 6 MONTHS!!!


"For sale, 0ne pace convertible car hauler. Minor cosmetic work required. A real bargain!"


No humans were harmed in the making of this film.

Ok, this isn't funny any more

We're going to be on the road to Thunderhill in less than 24 hours and there's currently 12" of snow on the ground. Getting to California shouldn't be too difficult, returning to a city that's under a mile of ice and overrun with marauding hordes of Cro-magnon cannibals and herds of mastodon is going to suck though.




There's a frozen raccoon under there somewhere. I know it.








Shannon was very nearly an avalanche casualty, fortunately there was a St. Bernard on hand to dig her out.

Did you know Old Man Winter was a Peugeot club member? I didn't.

It would seem that Winter is conspiring against us. Over the last week we have seen, as the weather forecasters put it, "snow event" after "snow event". Temperatures have been in the mid-twenties for 8 days. WTF? We haven't had snow like this in 10 or 15 years! In the Seattle area Summer = warm rain, Winter = cold rain. The forecast is for more of the same through this week.

I'd like to take a moment from my Winter ranting to thank some our sponsors. ACE (Autocross and convertible enthusiasts) have generously donated 3 tires to our cause. Full Throttle Bottles has donated $100 towards race car fuel and a generous discount for whatever be(er)verages we purchase for the trip. ChaseRace built a most excellent roll cage, provided most of the labor on the build and put up with this piece d'resistance taking up huge amounts of shop space for months at a time. Autosport Labs for the lovely racing seat. Sea West Products, Inc. for providing all of the fuel for the tow vehicle. Thanks guys, you've made this project a lot less painful on the pocket book!

A special thank you to the womenfolk for tolerating and abetting this time sucking monster known as Pujo!.

And thank you to all of the Monkeys that have worked their tails off for the past 6-ish months. I guess that makes us apes now. :-)




Brianne's Jetta is resplendent in a lovely thick blanket of snow. Notice the 18" wheels buried almost to the axles.





I thought I parked Sally around here somewhere? Where'd she go?