Sunday June 29, 2008

Sleep in. I almost forgot how to do this. But then again when you have stayed up to 3:30 shooting the breeze for the last two nights, you aren’t actually getting any extra sleep.

This weekend is the Porsche Club of Amreica’s annual Porsche Parade. The event took place in Charlotte this year. Sunday was the actual car show, and competition. There were people in the competition that were there at 6:30am wheels off their cars, actually cleaning their brakes with Q-tips. That’s some pretty serious stuff. So we walked down to the show, there were probably close to 500 Porsches lining the streets of Uptown Charlotte. It was a beautiful sight.
Most of these rides were immaculate. The only model of Porsche I did not see represented was the Porsche tractor. So they did a pretty good job of representing the entire gambit of Porsche history.

We then went down to the Lake rode the Jet skis and boats around, lounged around for the rest of the day.

After this weekend I don’t really want to go back to work. I just want to do things like this for the rest of my life. Although I guess I have to pay for it somehow.

Saturday June 28, 2008

So you have a Ferrari for a day what do you do? Well you must show it off, so you visit friends and let them gawk at it. Then you slap a Ferrari smile on their face by taking them for a quick, and I do mean quick, ride around the block.

This was a weekend that Bryan had planned for us to do for the last few weeks. The only thing was that I was not allowed to know what we were doing. All he did was tell me what kind of clothes to bring. After the obligatory showing off of the ride Bryan and I head up to the mecca of speed in Charlotte, Lowes Motor Speedway. We then spent 3 hours or so racing karts on the infield karting track. For those of you who don’t know karting is not your average go-kart. These things require racing suits and helmets and are capable of speeds in excess of 100mph and can travel from 0-100-0mph in 6 seconds.

During one of the brakes from karting Bryan says “stay right there I have to go get something.” He comes back giving me a piece of paper and says “I need you to fill this out.” I look down and it is my liability waiver for the Richard Petty Driving Experience. So we spend the next couple of hours and do the Rookie class for the RPDE. At the end you get 8 laps (far too few) in the car on the track. According to the instructors the fastest that they will allow the students to go is a 43 sec lap. Remember the cup cars are qualifying in the high 20s. Of course that is what I scored, with a top speed of 141.05mph. There was so much more speed in that car. I wish that they would have allowed me to actually push it. The only downside to this adventure was that just as Bryan got strapped into the car it started to pour rain. He didn’t get to run. He wasn’t too disappointed though because he did get to drive a Ferrari away from the track.

I love how that rolls off of the tongue, why don’t you try it right now, just say it out loud, F-e-r-r-a-r-i.

The day concluded by checking out Dale Jr’s new bar in Charlotte, Whiskey River. It was ok, but we ended up at the ole faithful new bar, Ri Ra.

In the wise words of Ricky Bobby, “I wanna go fast.”