More about carzzzz

This must be the easiest thing I can talk about, or what I usually take pictures of. Anyways I had quite an eventful weekend spending all day Saturday at the Nurburgring. The MINI was a champion out there passing cars 10 times more exotic and expensive than the little wagon! here are a few action shots I stole from random websites.

entering the big carousel.

exiting the mini carasoul.


braking zone before the carousel.



getting light at Flugplatz

The curious blue BMW behind me in a few photo's is a co-workers of mine who used to race go-carts. He just re-finished the suspension on the BMW and he was very quick out there for a noobie. I rode a few laps in his car, but the corners come at you so fast, it's hard to talk about them, and with the sheer number of corners, hills, bumps, blind spots, and track grip, we found it easier for him to follow me. By the end of the day, and 6 laps under his belt, he dropped his BTG time from 10:53 to 9:36!

Today while Sarah was at a Spa getting rubbed and scrubbed, my friend Rich gave the blue BMW it's own spa treatment. Unlike the rest of Europe, our garage is big enough to walk around a car while parked inside, so it's the perfect place to spend a saturday morning washing and detailing a car. While Jakob was napping, I thought one of the sets of wheels I had might look nice on Crick's car... So I dug them out of the pile of wheels and put them on when he wasn't looking. I think with the proper tires (smaller) these wheels would look great on the blue sedan!




Last Thursday Roger Nielson from the Hangar and I took a last minute trip up to the ring to show him a few laps, grab a steak, and just have some Man time. To our surprise a lot of heavy machinery was there for testing/videotaping/showing off. Whatever the reason, It was nice to see these great looking cars!

Some new Ferrari I have no idea what it is called. Probably some jumble of numbers and letters that sound wicked cool.


DO YOU SEE THOSE BRAKES????? OMG!



Weissman something or other. Top Gear liked them.



New BBS wheels on the Weissman fit the car perfectly


The way to expensive Lexus LFA. Sounds as good as the commercial.


The new Gullwing Mercedes. Beautiful.

I'm a bit bummed that I don't have any recent photo's of our little man. He has become quite amusing with his opinions, and can tell us a lot with his sign language. Mr. Monkey in one arm and a jug of water in the other has become his norm. I took this picture below to see what the difference a completely stock clubman on the right looks compared to ours, but instead i captured a picture of Jakob just doing his thing.


That's all for the moment, tomorrow I head of on a plane for a bit of fun. Hopefully I can share some interesting moments while abroad.

-Eric

a start

With a bit nudging, I thought i'd give this blogging thing a try. I think it should serve as a good way to communicate with family, friends, and whoever else might read it about my deployment, our little family, and any other thing I might think about... Sarah might even post now and then too.


So the first thing I want to talk about is cars. who could have guessed?

We just bought a MINI Cooper Clubman S, and it has been a fantastic little car so far. The suicide door on the right side makes loading cargo (Jakob) an absolute breeze, and the car is a BLAST to drive!




To make room for the mini's arrival, I finally cleaned the garage that had slowly turned into a disaster. I kept it quite nice while sarah was in Iraq, but about 3/4 of the way through, things started to get shoved in the big open spaces, and soon the man cave had suffocated a slow death into becoming a storage shed :(

So here is Sarah helping me clean out the garage!


In all reality Sarah is incredible with tidiness. She moves like a ghost, a cleaning ghost. I wont even see it happen, but i'll feel a cool breeze and next thing i know is the sink full of dishes is rinsed and inside the humming dishwasher!




Finally, Jakob believes everything in the world is his personal jungle gym. If it looks like it's climbable, he is there! He recently figured out how to climb into the mini, so now, every day coming home from school, we take him out of the car seat, set him on the pavement and he climbs right back in! The drivers seat is his favorite because there are lots of switches, levers, wheels, and buttons to explore. He's getting a go-kart (bambinikart) when he is four.


That's all for now.
-Eric