In Fontana

Hello all,

We made it to Fontana village, the final stop and main destination of out trip. Because of a rock slide we were forced to get here via a road called the Cherohala Skyway, a scenic road in the smoky mountains. Sadly is was not so scenic due to low clouds we could barely see the road ahead, but we made it through safely.
I am enjoying reuniting with all my MINI friends, and today is cloud and rain free unlike yesterday, it is truly beautiful here. Once again I will be leaving you picture free, but I have been taking many. I will keep it short today but will try for a longer post tomorrow.

Meat day 2

Hello all,
Today we made it to Nashville, didn't realize there was a time change until the GPS lady informed us at 10:00 that our ETA for Nashville was 11:00, "curious" I thought "Seems much earlier that I remembered, Oh well", soon after she let us know that we still had 120 miles to go, I won't lie I would have been glad to cruise at 120MPH but I am sure the highway patrol would not have approved. This is why I like road trips, it's the little things.
We arrive at 11:00 without hitting triple digit speeds, and promptly headed to Chappy's for Champaign brunch, it was a great meal, (meat count 6.25 turtle, snapper, trout, crab, shrimp, pork and the .25 was a trace amount of alligator in the smoked alligator butter) After the meal we headed to Centennial park, for a nice walk, saw the Parthenon(replica) and enjoyed the terrific weather. We checked into a much nicer hotel this time, then off to the Opry Mills mall for a few needed supplies. We were all still pretty full but had wanted to try Jack's BBQ, and it was close to closing time, so we headed there, it was good but I am now still a few hours later very stuffed. My meat count was increased to eight for the day (turkey, beef)
We attempted a walk when we got back to out hotel but it started to rain a bit, and looked like it might get worse, so we came back, seems like we overreacted since it is still dry out, Colin and Graydyn went down to the gym for their nightly workout. Once they are done I think we will head out to a near by pub for a bit.
We should be leaving for Fontana village fairly early tomorrow so it won't be a very late night.
Took lots of pictures today, but did not upload them yet, maybe tomorrow.

Stage one complete.

Greetings all,
Well we made it to Louisville in one piece, well in four pieces but that's how we left. The trip was uneventful, overcast the whole way, but only significant rain for the last half hour of the trip, it stopped raining about five minutes after we got wet unloading the cars.

Here is a screen shot of the GPS unit containing all our driving stats of the day.

Well my text is now centered even though I tried all I can think of to get it to align left, blogger is being fussy I guess.

The Internet connection is rather slow here so no more pictures today.

Our hotel, a Days inn, is reasonably clean but not in a great area, I don't fear for my safety but I also would not venture out for a walk at night here.

We went to a restaurant that Graydyn found online Lilly's, it was quite good, and decently priced. As usual with this group of friends I got to try a little sample of everyone's dish, and finish any left overs. During the meal I realized that today I have eaten 7 different animals: pork, turkey, beef, trout, shrimp, duck, lamb. Some may find this gross, me I am quite proud.

Tomorrow morning we head to Nashville, we are really hoping to get some brunch, apparently Sunday brunch in the south is something special. I will let you know how it turns out.

Almost time to go.

Well it's Friday night 20:22. I am officially on vacation. All will be ready to go shortly, just waiting for my last load of laundry to dry. As stated in my Wednesday post I hope to be able to update regularly while on the road.
My last day of work, well last for the next week, was uneventful but seemed very long, I was happy to leave, and will be happier when out of cell range. That's all for now, I plan on logging every stop with pictures so be prepared for a big album when I get back.

Another week another post.

Hello all,
If you are unaware I got new glasses this week. The ones I had been wearing for the past few months had been pulled out of retirement due to the most recent ones being broken. The lenses were stained due to the coil cleaning chemical I use at work and obviously the prescription was way out of date. Needless to say I can now see quite well. I am still waiting on my sunglasses, the first lenses arrived with a flaw, the new ones are in town, and should be ready tomorrow, I am quite excited I never had a dedicated pair of prescription sunglasses.
I have a picture on Facebook if you wish to take a look. I will be posting pictures of my Dragon vacation, I will be sure to include some with each pair.

Now as for that Dragon vacation, there is no other way to put it I am really psyched for it.
We leave Saturday morning and frankly it seems very far away. There has been a slight change to the plans though, Colin decided not to bring his bike after all. It's a long ride from Toronto, and he says that it gets very uncomfortable after a 2 hours double that and the hassle of having to return to pick it up when it gets back, I am sure we will still have a great time though. I will try to update a few times while on holiday but that will depend on how much fun I am having, after all how much time do you want to spend online when in the smoky mountains?
I promise many picture on my return though.

Cool weekend

Greetings all,
Last Saturday I headed once again to Detroit Tuned, nothing wrong with the MINI, I was heading there for a tune party, hosted by Detroit Tuned and Mynes Tuning. What is a tune party you ask? Well all cars/engines of a certain brand/model/trim are built and programmed the same, the thing is they aren't all the same, many small variables affect the cars ideal air fuel mixture, once you start modding a car these small variables aren't so small any more. What the guys at Mynes tuning do is put the car on a chassis dyno to get the power numbers as well as many other measurements such as the air/fuel ratio. They do some number crunching taking into account your mods and "tune" the car, another dyno run to see how things went and then they fine tune it until they get all the power they can safely, they can even increase your redline if the mods allow it, on a MINI tach the redline is adjustable.

Now a chassis dyno(dynamometer) is a device used to measure a cars power output at the drive wheels. (HP and torque) Most power numbers quoted by auto manufactures are the power numbers of the engine because of many factors in drivetrain loss, this number can be from 15-20% higher, than the power at the wheels. Anyway standing next to a car under load in second gear all the way to reline is pretty intense. The turbo car were loud the supercharged ones were from another world. The exhaust being thrust out of the engine can be felt from 15+ feet behind the car.

See this thread on Michigan MINI Motoring about the tune party some people posted videos.
http://www.michiganmini.org/forum/index.php?topic=5833.60 (you can also see a link to the pics I took)
Sadly due to a lack of funds I only attended this event to hang out with my MINI friends and see some car get some horsepowers and torques. I always enjoy meeting up with my friends but around 19:00 it was getting a little boring, after all I had been there since 11:23.(why so specific? well just for fun I guessed my arrival time and I was spot on)

Earlier in the day I had chatted with some newer members, Ari and Derek here is a pic of them next to Ari's former RedBull MINI

We met up picked up a friend of theirs (sorry I forgot her name but her nickname for the night was tails)

We killed some time in a park for a bit then headed to Detroit proper to go to City Club this was an interesting place it's classified as an industrial nightclub. Well some of the following comments may sound negative but they are not, this place was a freak show, lots of leather (in a non fetish way) over the top make up, strange hats, even people wearing respirators, finally something you don't see in most clubs a few topless women with tape covering their nipples. I actually felt out of place wearing jeans and a t-shirt, yet everyone I talked to was very friendly. Although feeling somewhat out of place I did not feel unselfconscious like I normally do in a regular club, I even danced completely sober. The music was in the large dance/electronic family that I am sure has a name but I would say it was similar to house music but a little harder. 

I was enjoying myself but was getting a headache from what I can only assume was some sort of incense that I found overpowering, I imagine the cigarette smoke was not helping, we left around 1:30. 

On my way home, since it is only a couple minutes out of my way I stopped by Detroit Tuned again, curious if anyone was still there, not many were left but they were indeed still tuning some cars. I only stuck around for a few minutes though.

Well that was my week end, well Saturday but nothing exciting happened Sunday.

    

Not much to report.

Short post this week. Frankly I don't have much to say tonight.
I did get myself a new computer, it's not exactly what I wanted but what I wanted was way more money. I am happy with it though.I will try to do a proper post later this week.