Monday was pretty leisurely… drove about 600 miles but stopped several times for pictures, ice cream, and a long lunch under the arch in St. Louis. Although I had seen the arch from a distance and from the air several times I had never been up close to it and it is HUGE! The weather was fantastic – 75°, perfectly sunny – so I checked out the warf area and then went up to Market Street and stopped at “St. Louis Bread Company” which has the same packaging as Atlanta Bread Company, but a different menu, oddly enough, and then sprawled out on the green for a while in the sunshine, arch overhead. A shame work always gets in the way of what’s important in life. So I eventually got back in the car and headed home. That’s about it for the Texas trip…
Archive for April, 2002
Headed home
Monday, April 29th, 2002
Everything’s bigger (and really dirty) in Texas
Sunday, April 28th, 2002Sunday morning was beautiful so I went for an early swim in the hotel’s outdoor pool. Jeff also came down, despite his claim that it was “desert hot” (75° and humid). After packing up and checking out we decided to tour downtown and have brunch. First we went up in “the sphere” where we took skyline pictures, but decided against brunch in the rotating restaurant as it was a bit spendy. The temperature was about 90 by then and we were hungry and still giddy from the Audi experience which led to all sorts of strange photos, but we eventually found a spaghetti factory (after traveling through more ghetto) and ate an astounding amount of very good food. After that we made an attempt to find some of the nicer homes in the Dallas area, JR’s for instance, but just found more ghetto, and luckily, the airport, where I dropped Jeff off for a 3 pm flight back to Denver.
Attempting to save time, I took Hwy 75 –> 69 out of Dallas, which looked like the hypotenuse to my previous route through Oklahoma City. I did shave off an hour or so but had to actually stop at about a dozen small towns in Texas and Oklahoma at their only stop light, annoyingly located right on the highway. It was scenic though, toll-free and I met a SUV-full of college boys taking the same route home to Missouri who livened up the pace a bit. Stopped for the night around 9:15, just north of Springfield, MO, at an awesome Super 8 hotel which was clean, quiet, contained no barking dogs and $13 cheaper than the dreadful Solar Inn.
Audi Quattro
Saturday, April 27th, 2002We arrived at the Texas Motor Speedway around 8 in the morning and were waived in through the tunnel, which in itself was almost worth the trip. Once inside, we were surrounded by Audis, about 250 of them. Coming from Madison where I have seen only 1 other 2002 S4, it was pretty amazing to see a hundred of them all together. First my car went through a safety inspection and then we went in to get our registration materials, have some breakfast and get a brief overview of the day.
Our first station was an accident avoidance and skid recovery drill which I would have aced, had I actually gone right instead of left when the instructor (in the passenger seat) yelled “Right!”. Consequently we “died”. Jeff did much better though, I calmed down a bit, and we went on to the next course, which was a timed autocross. Basically dodging cones going as fast as possible… tires squealing all the way. After his second run Jeff came out with the fastest time so far of the day, and I had the fasted time for the women for a while, but we were both beat out in the end. Definitely a highlight of the day though, really showing what the cars were capable of.
After that we all went in for a fantastic lunch – I can’t even imagine how much Audi invested in this little event… between renting out the TMS, providing meals and snacks for everybody, a whole team of instructors, demo cars, speed lap cars etc… all pretty impressive.
Anyway, after lunch we did a wet handling course which was designed to show us how far we could push the car before it spun out on wet pavement. Even with the ESP off, I could not make my car spin out (which I kinda wanted to do, but I guess I should be happy it didn’t). Lots of squealing tires and some great pictures. While we were waiting we also did some test driving of a TT (fun!), an A4 tiptronic wagon and their new multi-shifting car, which I didn’t really care for at all.
Lastly we went to the speed laps where Jeff and I, helmet clad, both took turns driving a factory A6 under the direction of a professional driver. This was probably my least favorite event but definitely the most thrilling. Kinda stressful though when you’re sitting in the back seat and your little brother is approaching a U turn at 100 mph. I recovered in time for them to switch positions so the professional driver could whip us around the track – I was hanging on to the O.S. handle for dear life and never actually saw the speedometer, but we were going fast. Really fast. Still amazed I survived it actually.
The day ended with prizes, give-aways and parting gifts and we were on our way back to Dallas, tired, burnt and dirty but elated. Back at the hotel we toasted the day with an elegant 2002 Boone’s (trying to blend into the ghetto) and then went to an Italian restaurant with a fantastic menu and atmosphere but mediocre food. Then as if the day couldn’t get any better we went to the hotel bar to play pool where I got carded and Jeff didn’t.
Still drivin’ to Texas
Friday, April 26th, 2002The first three hours of my day on the highway turned out to be far more dangerous than the following day at driving school. Storms came in overnight, so I was driving through pouring rain, high winds and thick fog. Anyone who has ever done this knows the sheer terror you experience when a semi passes you – it’s like driving through a car wash at 80 mph. So that was exciting.
I managed to get to Oklahoma City around noon though and then took a 2-hr break to spend some time at the memorial and visit the museum. I thought the artists did an excellent job creating the memorial; there’s a strong feeling of serenity there which seems an impressive answer to the terrorism that brought about it’s very existence. The museum is worth touring as well, although pretty depressing, as you can imagine. You really feel like you know some of the victims by the time you leave.
From there I continued down to Dallas and the DFW airport, where I picked up JeffO. We went to our hotel to freshen up and decided to head out to “restaurant row” for dinner around 9:00. Jeff suggested we take “Shady Trails” road as a short cut, which was just about the darkest, shadiest street ever and I was about to remark on that when we hit the mother of all potholes and blew the front right tire. This, 11 hours before the driving school started. We called a AAA guy who scratched up my rim but probably saved us from the pimped-out pick-up trucks which had begun to circle us. Luckily I had a full-sized spare. So that was pretty exciting too.
After a brief trip to a gas station in the ghetto, we decided to dine at Chilli’s, also in the ghetto, because it was late and we were tired. Luckily I found most of this to be hysterically funny, probably due to sleep deprivation (barking dog) and lack of food, so my birthday was actually pretty fun. On the way home we saw two people blow through red lights (which I have personal issues with) and another go up over a curb. Jeff and I both agreed never to move to Dallas.
Drivin’ to Texas
Thursday, April 25th, 2002Left around 8:30 a.m. after an early hair appointment. Temperature: 34. Weather: cold, windy, crappy. Perfect departure weather. I took Hwy 90 –> 39 –> 44, stopping outside of St. Louis for a quick lunch. The change at that point was remarkable. Suddenly the temperature went up, the sun came out, gas prices went down, the speed limit went up and the next few hours to Joplin flew by. I crashed (not literally) at a Solar Inn in Joplin – hotels there were cheap $25-$35, so to celebrate my birthday eve, I shelled out the big bucks ($40) for what looked to be a nice place. Big mistake. Do not stay at the Solar Inn in Joplin unless you are a fan of stained and/or dirty things and barking dogs. Dinner was equally lovely, consisting of a jar of peanuts and some yogurt from “Food 4 Less”. But aside from all that I was still pretty excited, looking forward to the Audi experience, more warmth, and seeing my brother JeffO.
Watch out Dick Trickle
Wednesday, April 24th, 2002Woohoo, I am officially now on vacation! In a mere 12 hours the Fiz and I are going to TX, home of the Texas Motor Speedway, where hopefully I’ll get to play stock car driver at the Audi Quattro Challenge, see JeffO and turn 31. Back on 4/30…
Can I have another tooth pulled?
Monday, April 22nd, 2002After 23 years of the same dentist, I have now switched, due to insurance. I was pretty annoyed with the whole thing until I had my appointment with my much younger, kinda cute, new dentist this morning. Way more technology than the other one, all very impressive. They spent over an hour with me and in the end declared I had pretty much perfect teeth. Good to know after having 5 years of braces and 24 teeth pulled. Can’t wait to go back in 6 months — it was definitely the most relaxing hour of my day.
What? You live next door to the Essenhaus?
Sunday, April 21st, 2002Full, tired and slightly hungover. Just returned home from the fam house where I ate a large brunch, in spite of having drank a very large smoothie only hours before at Fruit of the Earth. The smoothie was following a fun night out, which started at the apartment of my most excellent friend Stacy who put out the most amazing spread, in part to celebrate my birthday. After much food, wine, and cake =] we ventured over to the Come Back Inn and made poor attempts to play the drinking games we played in our youth, and then ended with foosball at Joe’s. Foosball skills, unfortunately, do not improve with age. Or beer intake.
Alive, but broke
Saturday, April 20th, 2002I am alive but significantly poorer than yesterday due to a sale at Kohls. Before 9:00 a.m. I managed to pick out and purchase a sweater set, a pair of shorts, purple-daisy-earrings (so me), a candle and candle holder, basic white shirt, floral drape skirt type thing, two pair of unmentionables, a bedspread AND patio furniture. Excellent. Can’t imagine how that place stays in business – everything was at least half off. Of course this is coming from a person who just spent a few hundred bucks there… hmmm.
Death Day
Friday, April 19th, 2002Went to go see Great Big Sea last night at Luther’s Blues. Great band, great venue. Made all the better by a raging thunderstorm outside.
So far, everything is going ok today, but I took the morning off to be on the safe side. In grade school and middle school I was told by a biorhythms chart, a fortune teller AND a ouija board (the last one’s weak, I know) that I was going to die on April 19th. Two of the three predicted it would be at an old age, but you can never be too careful. The Waco and Oklahoma City tragedies both happened on this day, and Columbine was supposed to, but was delayed a couple days. 1999 was a close call as I almost perished in the Ionian Sea, but the last few years have been without incident. More later… (?)