As experienced by Mark “Hymee” Pickering
Wednesday 19th September 2007.
After a panic packing effort, following a marathon “make parts” effort, I got a cab to the airport and arrived in plenty of time for my 11:05 flight, 2 ½ hours early. Or so I thought. Went straight to Duty Free and bought some Bundy for a gift to a guy in the US who was going to help me out. Got in the queue (why oh why had I let my Qantas Club membership expire?!), and was nearly the last of the QF175 pax processed. Then there was lots of mucking around and panicking due to my excess baggage.
Got checked in just before the flight closed, then had to proceed straight to Customs. That was OK, then before I went through security check they called my name. “Passenger Mark Pickering please proceed immediately to gate 81.”
But just going through security wasn’t going to be easy. Firstly, my aerosol shaving cream that I had prudently removed and had in a separate plastic bag (as required) was more than the 100g allowed. I told the idiot that I had already used 96 grams of the 195g contents, but just to chuck it in the bin as I didn’t really care, and was running late for the flight. He didn’t care either, as he proceeded to read me the riot act. FFS – I told him I didn’t care – and it was already in the bin. I wasn’t even arguing about it.
Then they needed to put my laptop backpack back through the XRAY, as it looked like there was lots of electronics in there. Of course there was – it is a frigging laptop bag.
So I got through security, with sweat pouring from my head as I was in such a stressed panic state. Heading for the gate, I remembered I hadn’t got any US dollars like I was going to do, and I had also forgot to pick up my Bundy from the airside duty free counter. Shit happens. Keep walking to gate 81 at high speed. Of course, gate 81 is right at the end.
At the various checkpoints along the way, they knew my name before I got there, and was advised I would be the last aboard.
You have so much more time when you have Qantas Club…
Flight was uneventful to the US, with a record (for me) of only getting up out of my seat once to stretch my legs and a comfort stop. In flight entertainment was good, as now they have video on demand. Watched a nice documentary about Le-Mans, and the Mazda 26B powered 787B got a mention for its 1991 winning performance.
Got through immigration and customs OK, all baggage arrived OK except one of the cases (the one with the compressor) has a hole punched in the side. Arrg. Thankfully compressor was OK, and no parts damaged or missing.
By this time, it was sort of ground hog day, as the time was 7:00am, Wednesday. 4 hours before I had left, 13 hours prior. This makes for a long 1st day’s blog entry!
I picked up my rental. Somehow a $119 weekly rate quickly blows out to $450 pretty quick! Thank goodness I got the GPS option at $9.95 a day.
On the road, I called my new mate (who I’d never met) who organized me a Renesis block. He used to work in the Star Mazda open wheel series (RX-8 Powered), and had contacts who could get me junked parts. We organized a time to meet him at his work – a Hot Rod shop J later in the day. I gave Richard Paul a call, and went and met him at his ‘shop. Pretty awesome worksop, much larger than his previous.
Towards the end of the day, I met up with the engine buddy, and he had all the parts ready for me, and was very apologetic that he hadn’t had time to put it all together during his lunch break. No worries. I was in awe at some of the projects in the hot rod shop. His work mates were pretty impressed by my blower kit as well, although I only had pictures of it at the time since the kit was still in pieces in my luggage.
Went back to RAP’s place, and had a nap. Then had some Chinese take-out, and back to bed for a well earned sleep.
Thursday, 20th September 2007.
First job today was to bolt the engine together. That went pretty much OK, except I didn’t have any dowells, so the crank wouldn’t turn unless everthing was just right. I made some calls to Marzda (yep – they pronounce it different) dealers about getting them, but they had some problems working out what “engine dolls” where. Richard kept telling me they are dow-ells, not dolls. No luck with the Marzda dealers. Called hot rot mate, and explained my problem. He called his buddy who still worked with the series. I rang him, he had the parts – no problem, and arrange to meet me at some Chevron somewhere, with some other bits I asked for. Never met the guy before, but he turned up, parts and all. Well done buddy!
Friday, 21st September 2007.
On the way to RAP’s workshop I stopped at the Home Depot and got myself a 10’ x 10’ tent and a fold out table. Plus a chair to sit in. All for my display at seven stock. I felt a bit like an Apollo mission – all this stuff you need to get/take with you that won’t come home with you!
At RAP’s ‘shop I re-did the engine with Dowells and stuff. The guy that owned the building, another fine machinist, helped me out buy making me a bush to take up some slack in the crank due to the missing oil pump drive etc…
Got my kit all bolted together, and mounted on the motor. Nice.
Helped Richard Paul with some testing of his compressor to see how fast it could rev before the sparks came out. I guess that is a story for him to tell. Let me just say I did my job and hit the kill switch the moment I saw sparks/flame as per his instruction.
Got all my gear into my rental Chevy HHR. A bit like a PT Cruiser. Lots of room in the back, exactly what I needed. Was just about to leave on my drive to Irvine for SSX, and got an SOS call from Richard. His RX-8 running the e-manage and the AFSC wasn’t running at all well, and he need some help getting it going again, or else he wasn’t going to go to SSX at all. RAP was spitting the dummy big time.
So I made the small detour, and whipped out the sCANalyser to check why he had an engine light and all that. At one point I couldn’t get his car started, until I worked out the US makes you have your foot on he clutch before the starter will work. D’oh. Richard found and rectified a vacuum leak, and I reset the fault codes. Was running a lot better, so I took off – Irvine bound.
Got to the hotel just on dusk. Took my luggage to my room. Lots of rotors in the car park, and bunches of rotorheads in congregating as well. I didn’t want to leave the blower in the car, and I also wanted to spend some time going over a few bits with the cloth that night. So I got it out of the car, and was walking into the lobby, trying to be inconspicuous, as you do when you have a shy streak like me…
“Hymee!” went the shout. It was Rotarygod and a bunch of others. Well, they all wanted to fondle the blower, and get their picture taken with her. It was nice to meet them, and see such keen interest in what I had poured so many hours into throughout the preceding weeks.
We all went out to dinner at some place that seemed to want to make more rules about serving us than they did dollars profit. I met a bunch more guys including Ryan Scott – owner of rx8club.com forum. Mazda Maniac was there as well. Too many guys to mention. I ended up getting a lift back to base with MazdaManiac, but we detoured to some place where Richard Paul had ended up for dinner, all by himself. The four of us (RAP, MM, Rotorrocks and me) had a good chat, until it was time to get me back to my temporary home at around midnight, Friday.
Saturday, 22nd September 2007. SevenStock 10 – The big day.
My todo list before I left included a couple of important items. “Make Business Cards” was one of them. “Write and practice presentation” was the other. It was now midnight the night before SSX and I hadn’t even written my presentation, let alone practice it. And business cards – what business cards… L
So I spent about an hour or so writing my presentation. Luckily I had thought about lots of things on the flight over – but it is almost impossible to use a laptop in cattle class, especially one with a 17” screen. At 1:00am or thereabouts, I needed some sleep. But the presentation wasn’t finished yet. So I set the alarm for 4:00 am and got 3 hours solid sleep. I spend another hour and a half from 4:00 am finishing of the spoken part of the presentation, and then it was time to get my stuff in the car and drive the short distance to Mazda North American Headquarters for the big day.
The organizers did a great job, and set me up a nice spot in the vendors’ area. I set up my tent – all by myself, while I watched with a smile as other multi-man-teams struggled and argued amongst themselves. I’m glad they weren’t holding a chook raffle, else people may have starved.
It wasn’t long until I had my engine setup on the table, and the blower fitted. I used a specially cut piece of timber to prop the middle of the table up, as it only had $49 worth of Home Depot strength.
The first guy who had a look was worried about my setup, as he didn’t want to cut through his hood. Bugger, I had forgetten about that. I then told him how it all fitted under the engine cover. I also wanted to ask him to go find another setup on display that could claim that!
So while the crowds flocked to inspect my baby, I needed to spend time putting together the slide show that I wanted to go with my talk. After all, the good SSX organizers had especially set-up a projector per my requests. There were at least 2 heavy rain showers though the morning. It was pretty heavy, and I remember thinking all these people had come under my tent to check out the blower…
People loved the quality and layout of my kit, noting that much thought must have gone into it. They also like my newly unveiled large bore, drive-by-wire throttle body that I have been keeping secret for quite a long while.
My talk was scheduled for 2:30, and I was under the pump. Then they came and found me and told me I was going to be on 1 hour earlier! In the end, I got it all done, and sat through the previous talk, which was from Speed Source Racing who campaign RX-8 “touring cars” in the US. It was very interesting, and they are competitive against some more established marques, such as Porsche, as well as American V8’s.
My talk went OK. Well, I was a little nervous in front of 80 to 100 people in the cafeteria at MNAO’s headquarters. Who wouldn’t be? I had a 1 hour time slot, and my show went bang on 50 minutes, then there was a solid 10 minute Q&A session to close off. I was pleased with how things went, and got satisfaction from the comments I received from the others. The pesky 26B powered 792P had one of its famous warm up sessions during my talk, and that was the last for the day. I didn’t get to see it, but I will remember forever its unique revving noise while I was on stage!
The rest of the afternoon was fairly uneventful. I managed to look around the other vendors sites, and look at some the race cars there, including the 792P. I had a close look at the Petit S/C install, after Moon had come and had a good close look at my setup. I had someone tell me that the strut brace had to be bent in a tree to enable fitment on their customer car. Hmmm. Moon did introduce me to Cam from Pettit. We chatted briefly, and the encounter was quite cordial. I also found out what size blower he was using these days.
There were plenty of RX-8’s on display as expected.
I even managed to find an LS1 powered RX-7!
The Star Mazda Series car on display was pretty awesome. Renesis Powered open wheeler!
I didn’t really want to pack up my stand. After all, I had flown 7,000 miles to get there, so I wanted to make the most of it, and take it all in! I remember when I was packing up I heard this distinctly rotary sound go past on 2 wheels. I quickly glanced around to see one of the two rotary motorcycles that had been on display. A very rare site indeed.
After packing up, the evening’s entertainment was the SevenStock Banquet. Very well attended, with quite a few Mazda representatives. There was even a contingent from Japan, including the Cosmos Sport club.
I sat at a table with forum members such as Rotarygod, Ajax, Zoom44, Rootski, RotorRocks, Brillo, Shaunv74 – heck I can’t remember them all!
There were a number of passionate talks given, all were memorable. The first was by an RX-7 owner about what makes a great car. I wish I had a transcript. Speed Source Racing gave another talk, but of most interest was the video of their participation in the US circuit racing scene. They run a couple of RX-8’s that have been quite successful. It was very encouraging to see video of RX-8’s passing Porsches and other established race prepared touring cars. More than encouraging – it restored a lot of faith!
Then we were privy to a whole series of slides from a Japanese gentleman who was involved in Mazda’s rotary motorsport efforts right from the early days, culminating in the 1991 Le Mans victory. He ended up signing some folks’ body panels from the race cars that were auctioned or raffled of at the end of the night.
The night went pretty late, but I managed to catch up with some of the people who put together the whole Sevenstock thing. I thanked Berny from the SoCal RX Club – and he introduced me to the Mazdaspeed tech guy who organized the RX-8 engine that I ended up not needing. We promised to keep in touch.
Sunday, 23rd September 2007
Well I basically packed up my stuff after a good nights sleep, and headed north again towards Richard Paul’s. I stopped for some shopping on the way. I found a huge model shop where I picked up a couple of gifts, including a 787B replica for myself J. I also found an auto parts store that would be pretty much the Bunnings version of such a store back home. Too many things to purchase!
It was that afternoon I stopped in at a Starbucks right in the middle of LA, close to Beverley Hills High School. I asked the young waitress for a hot chocolate and some cake. “Where is that accent from??” she asked. “Can’t you tell?” I replied. Her workmate told her it was Australian. “Wow!” She said. “Say something in Australian!”. “I just did,” I replied, “I asked for a Hot Chocolate and some cake.” She didn’t have a clue what I said, nor got my humor.
That night I took my hosts to dinner at Chillies. We were only 1 hour late as the mad professor misunderstood the location… The boys from the hotrod shop and the Star Mazda series where very interested to talk with Richard Paul. He has so many stories to tell.
Monday, 24th September 2007
Spent all day packing my stuff and saying goodbye to my hosts. I got a bit more shopping done, but before I was finished I went through a Golden Arches drive through for some lunch. “I’ll have the X-Burger in a meal, please.” “What??” “I’ll have an X-Burger with a fries and coke, please”. “Do you want that as a meal?” “Yes please.” “What drink do you want with that?” “Coke please.” A little further up the road I took my first sip of Sprite… FFS.
It was also during that day I got my first S/C order. And it wasn’t someone who had been at SevenStock. It was a very keen customer from Germany. Hymee is Happy!
At the end of the day, I had 1 hour to pack all my stuff, and have a home cooked burger at Richard’s place. I was so rushed. I eventually got all my stuff packed, and then I couldn’t find my passport. 20 minutes later, I found it and was on my way to LAX. Checkin, security, and the flight home was uneventful
Tuesday, 25th September, 2007.
This day does not exist in my life. Well, it sort of does, as I left LAX at 11:40pm on the 23rd, and some number of hours later we crossed the International Date Line, where the rest of Tuesday was lost forever.
Wednesday, 26th September, 2007.
6:00am, landed back at BNE, and was greeted by my loving wife and kids. They have put up with so much over the last few months. I’m so grateful for their understanding and encouragement!
In some respects, after 3 years, it seems like the journey has only just begun!
Cheers,
Hymee.
