Parts Storage

Over the years I have collected literally boxes and boxes of aviation hardware. Its not useful to me because I don't know the majority of what I have. Last month I noticed a hanging bin cabinet for sale on Craigslist for $100.00 minus the bins. I didn't know that I wanted to take the plunge on a large bin cabinet so I blew it off until last weekend. Id looked up some options for just hanging bins but I didn't find anything that I liked or that was really even cost effective. So I texted the guy with the cabinet and Matty went with me to Greenwood to look at it.

Other than being really dirty the cabinet was in really good shape. Since the guy had the ad up for it for over three months and he had no bins for it I offered him $60.00 which he took and we loaded up.

When we had loaded it I notices something was up with the feet on the bottom of the cabinet. After we got it home and I could lay it down and look closer I realized they were extended nearly all the way out and had bent over from people sliding the cabinet around. I took them out of the cabinet and dollied the floor back to flat. The feet themselves were relatively undamaged so I added large area washers to the openings and put the feet back in.

I gave the cabinet a good bath and after drying it I hit it with the power buffer and a good coat of wax. Generally cabinets like this spend their lives in an industrial environment and look pretty rough. This one is in really good shape with really only a couple paint scratches.

 All the boxes on the floor around the cabinet have the hardware I want to load in it.

The cabinet is 36"W x 24"D x 72"H, 16 Gauge welded steel. I am not sure who makes it, it looks exactly like the cabinets sold by Global Industries. Their cabinets have a logo on the upper left corner of the left door which I believe is just a decal, this cabinet has no decals or stampings.

Last week I ordered 96ea 4-1/8 x 5-3/8 x 3 bins to fill the doors and 24ea 5-1/2 x 10-7/8 x 5 bins for the back wall. The bins set me back $150.00 and there is room for 40ea more of the large ones.

Today I cleared a spot on the wall next to the compressor and started loading it up, I basically have the bins 90% full and still have half the hardware to go through. I may look at purchasing bin dividers before I buy the last 40 bins.

I have $210.00 invested at this point and I have no fear that I cant get that back for it easily. A Global cabinet with the same bin loading sells for just over $1,000.00.

It may take a while but every time I'm able to use something from the cabinet versus buying hardware it starts paying for itself.

New Hooptie

After another long week in beautiful Rockford IL, I was looking forward to going home and spending a night in my own bed. The drive between Brownsburg and Rockford has to be one of the most boring drives a person could make. Most notably the stretch between Normal IL and Rockford IL. The trees along the highway are bent at their tops permanently, indicating not only the prevalent wind direction, but also a place I would never want to live. Apparently I am not the only one that thinks that way because there is nothing out there except some wind generators.

After making the 270 mile drive back home my son was waiting in the GMC at Hertz when I pulled in to drop off my car.I have made the drive enough times now that when I leave Rockford I can call him and give him a five minute window in which I will be arriving home.

After turning in the keys I climbed into the truck and Matty said, "Is it ok if we go look at a car"?

Not really my first idea of relaxation after driving through the snow for 270 miles.

I know he has been looking for a while, so I said "sure where is it"? to which he replied "a little north of South Bend".

The only thing north of South Bend besides Canada is Michigan. To make matters worse it was 5:30 and we would need to drive through some of the heaviest traffic in Indy during rush hour to get there.

Immediately I started formalizing reasons for why this would be a better trip to make on Saturday. Which he clearly expected because he had logical answers for everything. You can sleep and Ill drive. Its a Friday night he might sell it tonight. If we go tonight it wont ruin your day tomorrow.

Most of that was true except for the sleep on they way up part.

Once we got there and he looked at the car I knew right away I would be driving the 150 miles home so he could drive the car back.

He managed to find a two owner 2004 Jetta GLI with 27k original miles for $6500.00. I was skeptical as he was telling me about it on the drive up. But once we looked at the car it was apparent it was the original mileage. There are simple things you can look at such as the leather on the steering wheel and shift knob, the wear on the Recaro seats and the condition of carpet and sill plate, all of which looked new.

We both drove the car a few miles, it ran well and had no squeaks or rattles with very little wind noise.Apparently the seller was related to the original owner who purchased the car as more of toy / project / weekend car. He had done a lot of modifications to it, a Stage III turbo kit (you can see the massive intercooler and ducting though the front bumper), Euro headlights, lowering struts, stainless exhaust and a massive stereo with a overhead drop down screen. The modifications were the only thing that concerned me about the car, the wiring for the fog lights was very poorly done and some of it actually looked damaged. The had acquired the car intending to keep it but apparently his wife didn't like it or something so he had only had it a few months.

Other than a small paint blemish on the front bumper and the passenger mirror cover missing, the car looked like it was 1-2 years old. The paint on it is in really good shape for being 14 years old. The underside was clean, the brakes looked good and the tires looked to be fairly new. It was obvious it was well taken care of.

The previous owner also de-badged the car and put in an aftermarket front grille, which at a glance makes it look as much like a old BMW as a Volkswagen.

The day ended with me traveling almost 600 miles, but it was worth it for Matty. This should be a good car for him and last him quite a few years.

Old Trucks Alive

A few weeks ago we decided to park Matty's Cavalier. When the throwout bearing slave cylinder went out, we pulled the engine, changed the clutch and slave cylinder. A few weeks later the transmission started leaking out the input shaft. With the mileage the car has on it, its most likely the input shaft has a grove worn in it. I cannot find a new input shaft and they don't make sleeve kits for it. A used transmission for the car is over $500.00, so he is currently looking for a new car.

In the meantime we brought the Silverado out of retirement. He has been driving it for a few weeks now and this morning when I went to run some errands I realized I had never take a picture of it with my new truck. It looks so small next to the GMC.

Some day I hope to get in a situation where I have a shop, I would like to do a mild restoration on it.

Deer + GMC = Bad

Friday nights Tania, Matty, Savannah and I generally go out to eat together. This Friday our supper was delayed because I didn't see a deer standing in the road until it was too late.

I caught the deer with the front passenger side bumper at 50 mph and ended up in the ditch on the other side of the road narrowly missing a tree and a telephone pole.

When we hit the deer it activated the seat belt tension devices filling the cab with smoke to the point I couldn't see out the windows. This set off the emergency flashers that were impossible to turn off and OnStar calling me while I'm trying to figure out what happened and why the truck was full of smoke.

We were only a couple of miles from the house, so after I got the truck out of the ditch and the police did their thing I limped the truck home and we took the ATS to supper.

I was not really in the mood to take pictures of the damage to the truck, even though it was relatively minor, its still a 55k vehicle with less than 5k miles on it that got smashed. All of that is material and can be replaced, thankfully no one was hurt in the slightest or well no one except the deer...

Hoopty Bike

Matty bought a 2006 Honda 600RR last year, it has over 30k miles on it and he got it cheap. He had it just a couple days when he layed it down in a slow speed turn and busted up the already busted up fairings. For the last year he had been working on them on and off, there really is no good way to fix them. I helped him with some fiberglass repairs and he painted the majority of them. A few months past and he lost interest in it then he stepped on one he had just finished and broke it. Two months ago he decided to order some Chinese fairings on ebay which came in last week. He put them on yesterday and they actually look pretty good.

 

 

He recently tore down the top end and adjusted the valves, replaced the automatic chain adjuster with a manual one and replaced the throttle cable with a gear drive unit. He also replaced both tires and has new rotors and pads he needs to install.

When he bought the new fairings he also bought a new headlight housing, the old one was sun damaged and yellowed. He also bought a HID light kit which makes the bike much more visible. Hopefully his fairings will last a while, the cost of the entire set was the same as just one factory fairing. They are a much harder plastic than the factory ones and I'm afraid with the quality of them they will end up cracking.

Tornado

Yesterday a tornado passed a quarter mile north of our house. It took down a lot of trees, some mini sheds and did some roof damage in a small neighborhood.

Matt had just made it home on his motorcycle and the two of us stood on the back porch and watched it pass through. While we were watching it the news stated their radar had it located three miles east and a quarter mile north of where it actually was.

4th of July Festivities

My buddy contacted me last week about coming over for the 4th, to do some shooting, eat some food and blow some stuff up.

We arrived about 11am and started hauling everything from the truck down to his range. He had a 10x20 tent set up over his shooting bench at 50 yards and I set up my tent at 12 yards for us to shoot pistols from.

This arrangement works very good, we just leave the tent at 12 yards in place and shoot through it when we are shooting rifles.

Around 2pm we fired up his charcoal Webber and threw on some teriyaki chicken, garlic chicken and steaks. His neighbors had brought some deserts and the lady clear down the street that was just bored brought by some good salad and spent the entire day there just chatting.

Normally when he contacts me about shooting, its the day of, in this case he contacted me days before so I had some time to plan. I decided my contribution would be 30 1/4lb jars of Tannerite, after all its the 4th!

 These sounded like cannons going off, I think we ended up shooting about 10 of them total, letting everyone there take turns shooting them. They would definitely make you jump at 50 yards.

As the afternoon progressed some more people showed up and at dusk we fired up the grille again and finished off the meat we had not cooked earlier. My buddy had bought a bunch of mortars and we finished off the night with a fireworks display next to his range.

It was one of the best fourth of Julys I have had in years, I hope we can repeat it next year I still have about 20 1/4lb targets to shoot.

Concerts

June 2nd I was in my Boss's office, he was at his computer and asked me "Do you like Keith Urban"? I said hes ok, I'm not a big country music fan, he then asked me "Does your wife like Keith Urban"? I responded "I think so" to which his response was a mouse click and "Good were going to his concert Saturday night".

I didn't care much for the opening acts, I had never heard any of the songs before. Keith Urban though put on a good concert, while I'm not necessarily a fan of his its hard to ignore his talent. It was a bit strange though that two weeks before he had backed out of riding around the Indy 500 with Mario Andretti and was replaced by Lady Gaga /boggle. Now here he was jumping and gyrating like he was in perfect health.

The Klipsch music center is a great venue, other than the drinking rules. You are allowed to bring in one bottled water with a sealed cap. If you buy one inside its $5.00 and you cant keep the cap, they don't want people throwing sealed bottles of water. I bought a can of beer to drink, it was $15.00. I did have an enjoyable evening though and on the drive home Tania and I discussed how long it had been since we had gone to a concert. Before this the last time we went was in 2010, it was a Trans Siberian Orchestra concert in Phoenix that was pretty awesome.

By the time I got home I made up my mind that I didn't want to go another five years with the last concert I went to being a Keith Urban concert. I got online and bought four tickets to Def Leppard with REO Speedwagon and Tesla opening.

Last night we went with Matty and his girlfriend and other than some annoyingly drunk people in front of us had a great time. We arrived a little later than I wanted too and the line to get in was horrible so we completely missed Tesla. About 10 minutes after getting to our seats REO came on. I like REO's hit songs but they really don't do much for me beyond that, they are garage / bar band that are good for background noise. It was more entertaining to watch the drunk people in the VIP box directly in front of us try and sing along to songs they obviously didn't know the words to.

My like for REO must have been shared because once they finished it seemed like the crowd doubled in size just before Def Leppard came on stage, at that point you could really start to smell the weed too.

Def Leppard was very enjoyable, they sounded great and had an impressive stage/light show. The technology today allows for such impressive displays on stage.

We ended up staying right to the last song, and were able to get out quickly while the crowd was calling them back for an encore.

Overall it was a great evening, although not something I would regularly do at $500.00 for tickets. I made up for it though by avoiding the $15.00 beers!

More Target Practice

It was another day with near perfect weather and my buddy contacted me about shooting at his range. Matty and I headed over and shot mostly rifles, he has a friend that lets him borrow his SKS and I shot about 200 rounds through the 10/22.

Later in the afternoon my buddy got out his Windham AR-10 and let me shoot 25 rounds through it. Its a very fun gun to shoot with enough kick that I would loose site of the target at fifty yards after almost every shot. I still managed a nice grouping with a gun I was unfamiliar with.

To top the day off my buddy got out his MRAD .338 Lapua Magnum. Shooting it at 50 yards is and not getting a bulls-eye would almost be hard to do. At around $5.00 a shot we all took just one, below is a short video of Matty taking his turn.

Indy 500 100th Running

I've lived in the Indianapolis area on and off for over 20 years, I've been to numerous local events such as the US Nationals, IROC, Rolex, Brickyard 400, Bush Grand National, SCCA, Silver Crown, Craftsman Super Truck, Super Chevy etc. but never the Indy 500. I never wanted to deal with the crowd to see a race that is better viewed on television.

This year was different, the 100th running, it wasn't the first time I had been offered tickets but this time we went.

The tickets were commemorative made from some clear plastic with the ticket printed on it. The day before the race I was able to get a fourth so Matty's girlfriend could go along with us.

Its just under 13 miles from my house to the track yet we left at 5:45am for a 12:30pm start time, with over 350k people attending traffic and parking would be fun. Having the home field advantage we parked about 2 miles north of the track and hung out in the car for a few hours before walking to the track. Once at the track it was blistering hot, with just a slight breeze from the west. As luck would have it we were sitting just outside of turn 4 which made the stands back up to the west blocking the breeze.

Prior to the race to pass the time the normal group wave and beach balls went around.

Just prior to the race they did a parade lap with former winning Indy Cars. The 100+ year old Marmon Wasp winner of the first Indy 500 was out there running around the track with them.

Promptly at 12:30pm a ZL1 Camaro pace car raced by and the field passed for the start of the race.

The race itself was fairly exciting with multiple passes and the whole fuel thing going on. The icing on the cake was Juan crashing out early on. I'm not sure I would have had the same opinion if we weren't directly across from a large live TV screen.

Afterwards we headed back to the car with our coolers and backpacks, we still had half a cooler of drinks left. The drive home was quite simple, that was the home field advantage I mentioned before. Once we reached the car it only took us 40 minutes to get home, it was very painless. We ended up waiting at one traffic light for two cycles, the rest was like a normal drive in Indy.

Overall I enjoyed the day and was glad I went, I don't know that I will go again, it would probably take turn one suite or pagoda seating to entice me back. Its a great place to enjoy the moment and the crowd its a horrible place to see an oval race.

Gun Show

A friend of mine from work invited me to go with him to the Indy Gun Show. I have never been to one before but based on the fun Matty and I had on Christmas eve I decided I wanted to get a rifle.

The Gun Show itself was a bit overwhelming in shear volume of both guns and people. Initially I had set a budget of $500.00 and was looking for an AR platform. At that price I wasn't going to get much new or used and after going through about half the displays I came across a nicely modified Ruger 10/22 bull barrel. The price was fair and from what I could see without taking it apart it would be difficult to duplicate for what I paid for it.

Now I just have to wait for the weather to warm up to go shooting.

Christmas Eve

Yesterday reached a record high for this area of 64 degrees. Because it has been so warm here the last few days a good friend of mine contacted me to let me know he was going to do some shooting today. He has a nice 100 yard range in his back yard and lives just a couple miles from me, I haven't shot my pistol in a while so I grabbed Matty and we headed over this afternoon.

After we shot pistols for a while some other people stopped by with rifles and we set up a shooting bench at 50 yards. My friend had purchased some rimfire sensitive Tannerite that came with containers that look like the ones you would keep ear plugs in. These containers are just over one inch in diameter and put out a good boom. The video below is Matty shooting a Mossberg AR 22 at one of the reactive targets, its the yellow dot just to the right of center on the backstop.

Garage Floor Replacement Pt.4

Now that we can park in the garage again, I get to move everything back where it goes. Before the Lista cabinets go back in place I need to do some wiring. The plug behind the cabinets was the first in the GFI circuit, where it is located there is no way to reset it if it should trip. Since I also needed to place a new outlet near the new sprinkler control we had installed this summer I decided to tie into this one and make the new one the first in the circuit.

Here is the outlet behind the cabinets, I was able to take the box out, pull the Romex loose from the wall, tie onto it and pull a new line up. I put a new box back in and reconnected the outlet to the new line.

Taking the line from the box behind the cabinets Matty drilled a drop and sent it down to the sprinkler control. There were already two holes cut in this wall for, phone and cable service, since we never had phones installed I used that spot for the outlet and installed the GFI here. While I had it all apart, I also took down all the wiring to the sprinkler valves that was on the outside of the wall and ran it internally.

Last weekend we finished up a project I have been wanting to do for quite a while. I purchased some FRP to put around the sink in the laundry room and when I started the project Tania decided to paint the laundry room. This then turned into installing a floating shelf and light above the sink. In the end it turned out good and should make keeping the walls around the sink much easier, plus I can see what I'm washing in the sink now.

Engine Mods

 I have been trying to purchase a VMax throttle body for my car most of the winter. Early in June I was finally able to get one. They are sold on an exchange basis and basically you end up paying $150.00 for a CNC ported throttle body. I would recommend this to anyone with a DBW throttle body just for the improved throttle response alone. If it added any horsepower as claimed I wont ever know as I never had my car baselined.

The installation was stupid simple and literally only took 15 minutes.

During "Black Friday" of 2013 I purchased some PFADT headers for the corvette, apparently just before they went out of business. They sat boxed in the garage until the beginning of June when Matty and I finally installed them.  I did not take any pictures of us installing them but I found a good shot of them on the internet. They are works of art, the guys that assembled these are real craftsmen.

The "tri-y" design of the headers promotes more torque than standard 4 into 1 headers with a small compromise in top end horsepower.

Here is a shot of the old manifolds and cats we removed, I am not sure of the weight savings I would guess it to be in the 20lb range.

After both the throttle body and headers were installed I drove the car for a few weeks. The car was much louder, there were no CELs but it seemed to me to be running very rich. This didn't make any sense to me as all the modifications should have made it run more lean. I was able to make an appointment on July 7th to have it tuned at Mike Norris Motorsports.

On its first dyno pull I was expecting to see around 390hp, so I was less than happy to see it register 330hp. Mike got out of the car, stared at the screen for a few seconds and said "I am going to be a hero today". I did not understand right away what he meant because I was so focused on the HP figure I did not see the air/fuel ratio.

If you look at the dyno sheet the air/fuel spikes at 2200 and goes off the chart at 3200rpm.

After 20 minutes on the laptop Mike made the second pull which netted 413hp 410tq. He said he wanted to lean it just a bit more and on the third pull it made 415hp 414tq.

Here is a video Matty took of the third dyno pull:

Two days after the session I took it back to ORP, my previous best run was a 12.7@113 with a 1.9 60 foot, this improved to 12.2@117 with a 2.1 60 foot. I don't know if it was the extra power, my driving or track temp that slowed the 60 foot but with the current tires on the car launching it quickly is very difficult. I did not lower the pressures as I have in the past and that may have been the difference.

The car has a noticeable increase in power and sound. It currently has me satisfied but like any other mods it wont be long before the power level is comfortable and I will be looking for more.

Garage Fans

Late last summer I bought some fans from HD. At the time I purchased them it was too hot to mess with running wires in the attic for them. As summer turned into fall I got very busy with work and I even at one point forgot I had purchased the fans. I ran across the box a few weeks ago and decided to get them installed.

Originally I had not planned on installing ceiling fans but the price on these was so good, around $57.00 if I remember right, I decided on them versus using box fans. They have a nice industrial look, no lighting and are fairly quiet.

I initially was going to do a quick and easy jumper from the garage door outlets and just use the pull strings on the fans to control them. That plan quickly went away when I found out the fans had no pull string controls. Instead they came with these huge controllers apparently left over from 1974, that allow them to be set to five different speeds.

This of course required a new circuit, drops through insulated walls and multiple trips in and out of the attic. At least the temperatures this weekend were mild and I got some help from Matty. I am happy with how they turned out, I was also pleasantly surprised by the quality of the fans and the total lack of plastic. Hopefully they will be useful this summer when it gets hot and humid.

 

Metal Shelves

I finally finished up a project I started a while back.  Initially it was going to be a father - son type thing but that ended up being father - son - father - father - father - father - son.  Matty wanted some shelves in his room to display some of his "stuff" and after looking at the cost of some I decided to build some.

Steel being what it is they still weren't cheap but I am happy with how they turned out.

The original plan was to leave them bare and clear coat them.

Matty decided later to paint them black.  I also ordered a wall mount for his 32" monitor, which will allow him to use it as a second monitor on his desk or spin it 90 degrees to watch TV on his bed.

Plasti Dip

When we bought Matty's car one of the quick fix things was going to be the stripes. I thought they would be an easy fix that would really make it look a lot better. The problem was getting them off, nothing we tried would remove them short of sanding them down and harming the paint underneath.

A few weeks ago I talked Matty into trying Plasti Dip on them, the process is documented all over the net. For around $20.00 in materials and one evening of work Matty did 95% of the work and they came out much better than I would have expected. The cracking in the vinyl is still visible but its really a five foot thing.

Here is what they looked like when we bought it, damaged from sitting in the sun.

Here they are after Matty painted them.

Vacation

Last weekend was my 30th class reunion in Mitchell NE. We decided earlier in the year it might make a nice road trip. Leaving mid week we loaded up the corvette, made sure Matty was set up and headed out. The first leg of the trip we stopped off and spent some time with Andy and Kim, it was a surprise drop in and we had a nice evening with them, I hope they enjoyed it as much as Tania and I did. We left their house late in the evening and stopped for the night in Des Moines IA at 3am. A few hours sleep, a quick shower and something to eat, we were back on the road by 9am. Nothing much beyond stopping to see an old friend in Ogallala we arrived at my dads in Gering NE around 7pm that night.

Friday was the mixer at the Mitchell golf course, Mitchell hasn't changed much in size and pretty much looks the same. I did have a very good time, both with people I hadn't seen in years and the time I got to spend with my dad. The second we spent the morning at the Oregon Trail Days Parade in Gering and that evening for class reunion part 2, we had food catered to the sand pits just outside of town along the Platte River. It was a great place to spend the evening.

 On the chance that anyone involved in organizing the weekend reads this I would like to thank them for doing a very thankless task.

Sunday I was able to spend most of the day with my dad and some friends. The corvette had a small issue with the right front tire leaking air and even in the big city of Scottsbluff I was unable to find a tire repair place open on a Sunday. We decided to wait until Monday to drive on to Rapid City so we could have the tire looked at. Monday morning I found a place that took it off and told me it had "sand" in the bead that was causing it to leak. They put it back together and we headed off to Rapid City just before 11am.

The drive to Rapid City had one moment of excitement 40 miles in when a Highway Patrolman wanted to talk to me about how fast my car was. This was the first time I had ever gotten pulled over and didn't care one way or another if I got a ticket, I wasn't going to let it ruin may vacation. I was more upset of it ruining my spotless record of 2.5 years 25k miles without being pulled over in the corvette. After thinking about it more it had been 14-15 years since my last ticket. I got a warning for going 71 in a 65 and the world became a safer place for everyone.

We arrived in Rapid City around 7pm, made our fourth trip of the week to Taco Johns and set out to find Tania's parents house. The following morning Tania's dad played tour guide and we headed into the Black Hills. I was looking forward to this, I had not been in this area since I was a child.

Our first stop was at the Chapel in the Hills, an exact replica of the Borgund stave church in Norway. The Borgund stavkirke was built around the year 1150 and is considered the most completely preserved stave church still standing in Norway. The Norwegian Department of Antiquities provided a set of blueprints of the Borgund church to be used in the construction of the Chapel in the Hills which was built in 1969.

We were told the trees were selected the bark stripped and left for two years before they were cut down. The Chapel is quite small, maybe room for 20 inside and is used regularly for weddings.

Our next stop was Crazy Horse, the last time I was in the Black Hills there was basically nothing to see so we didn't even go.

Now almost 40 years later there is a face!

The problem is, aside from any special tours that they probably have this is as close as you can get. Because Tania has a fairly decent camera I was able to get some close in shots.

This shows some good detail to the amount of drilling for charge placement.

Here you can see the faint outline of the horses head.

Even though there isn't much of the mountain to see, it was worth the trip there is a lot of other things to see in the museum. I won't go into detail about the place its easy enough to look up on the internet and I wouldn't do the story behind it justice. It is worth looking up though its an interesting story.

After eating lunch at the restaurant at Crazy Horse we drove further up into the hills and into Custer State Park. Dale took us past some of the camp sites he helps set up for Sturgis Bike Week and along the way we passed by Sylvan Lake.

We then drove up through the Needles on our way to Mount Rushmore.

Because we didn't take the highway there we had miles of great views.

Last stop of the day was Mt Rushmore. It is much smaller in scale than Crazy Horse but you are literally a couple hundred yards away versus a mile or more.

The following day we went on through Sturgis, Lead and Deadwood, the only pictures I took with the camera were of a gold mine in Lead.

My understanding is this closed in the late 80's early 90's after 100 years of operation. It is sad that there is no requirement to return the land to some usefulness. Even a quarry lake would look better than this.

We spent some time gambling in Deadwood and the old folks started getting tired so we headed back.

Tania and I left the following day my only regret being that I spent two days on some of the most incredible roads I had seen in a long time.... in a minivan.... while my car sat in their driveway. To add insult to injury as we left Rapid City on I-90 we got to watch a convoy of 200+ corvettes headed to the Black Hills Classic. This group stretched out for over 150 miles.

Thanks to Tania driving a lot of the route home we left Rapid City at around 10:30am and were home by 5am the following morning. Aside from the small problem with the leaky tire the corvette performed flawlessly. All fuel burns were at 30+ mpg except for one. I had to make a conference call so I had Tania drive, after it was over 1.5 hours later I started to relax on the passenger side but something didn't seem right. After looking around the car I noticed she had it in fifth gear and it had been there since she had started driving, that tank was 28.7mpg.

It really was a great trip we had a lot of time and no real time table which made it much more relaxing. We are both looking forward to doing something similar again.