Hiking in Cartersville

We did a 4.5 mile hike today at Pine Mountain in Cartersville. It was nice to get out with our friends and the dogs, and I also played with the new 40D. We never knew that this mountain existed and its a great spot to get some hiking in about 20 mins from the house. Elevation went from 800ft to about 2k over 2 miles. Whew!

I do dig the new camera. The picture quality isn't that much better then the 350d, but the whole package is greatly improved. The "feel" in my hand is a lot nicer, and the shutter on it rocks. It just sounds a lot more solid. I had to throttle back the drive setting, as leaving the shutter button pressed for a split second too long results in 3-4 more pictures because of the fast fps the camera is capable of. The 3" screen also rules. Reviewing shots is a good bit easier then the 1.5" screen I got used to on the 350D. I'm looking forward to getting out and shooting more with the new toy.

View the pictures using Picasa instead

V-Day Roses

So I got Cathy some roses for V day. Since I got the new camera, and the purple roses were unusual I snapped a couple of pictures. Don't think I'm going with simple red roses anymore, as the flower shop had a ton of other choices. We'll see what combo I come up with next time :)

View the pictures using Picasa instead

Car in the shop and PBR

So my race car is in the shop. Since I'm the DIY type, it doesn't happen that often, but after the ARRC wreck, I decided to have the car checked out by Trever, who is the one that built it. I looked it over at the house and it doesn't actually look too bad. The only thing out alignment wise was the right front camber and toe. Looks like the upright got bent. The other 3 wheels where right in sync with each other and not even more a smidgen. The bottom subframe, which was 1/16" away from the header looks to have maybe moved in the accident, hit the header slightly cracking it, and then moved back. Since thats a $$$ custom header, figured, lets have it fixed by folks that know more then I do.

Once Trever gives the car a thumbs up, I'll be taking it over to the body shop to have the rear quarter panel dents touched up and sprayed over with red paint. I might take it home inbetween and see how much of the body work I can touch up to save money. We'll see. Since I need new fenders and a new front bumper cover, I decided to go with a slightly different paint scheme for next season. I'm going to cover the hood and fenders with carbon fiber look vinyl, so I don't have to paint. And then extend that vinyl into the doors with some kind of design. The front bumper will stay "factory black" as its just easier that way.

Also yesterday was about the nicest day in the last month or so here, so we went out to the dog park with a couple of our friends and out for some beers and pizza. They had $5 PBR pitchers which I couldn't pass up :) I was actually pleasantly surprised at the taste of PBR being sober, as I usually reserve PBR for the end of the night once I don't care about what I'm drinking.

Cheap Digital Camber Gauge

A few years ago I used someone's "Smart Camber" digital camber gauge. It was awesome! You could zero it on the ground and measure your camber on uneven ground with 0.1 accuracy. I was going to get my own, but the $250 street price kind of discouraged me. Being the DIY type, I decided to make my own.

Take:

• (1) Digital Level from Sears with 0.1 accuracy which can be found on sale for $35
• (1) 20in long, 1" wide, 1/8" thick piece of steel from Home Depot Racing
• (2) 1" long 1/4" thick metal spacers from HDR
• (2) Allen head 1.5" bolts
• (2) Nuts and washers

Drill a hole on one end of the sheetmetal, then 3 holes for 15, 16 and 17" wheels on the other end. Put in the bolts into the spacers, through the sheetmetal and throw a washer/nut on the other end. The pictures at the end of the post show what I'm talking about. The level attaches to the sheetmetal and is very sturdy as it has a nice big magnet in it.

To do an alignment, just set the gauge on the ground in front of your tire and level out to 0 with the "zero" button. Then place against your wheel and do a tiny bit of math. 88 degrees on the gauge = -2 degrees camber. Easy, accurate to 0.1, and under $40 including all materials. It's been working great the last season and between this, and stringing up the car for toe, I can do pro alignments in the garage or the pits whenever I please. After the lift, the Jeep went to the shop for an alignment, so I got to verify the accuracy of the gauge and it matched their Hunter machine.

I've thought about making a better mount for the level, which would allow me to zero out the gauge vertically, but this has been working so well, I never bothered. If someone comes up with something better, send me a note.

View the pictures using Picasa instead

BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir

This past Saturday we went to the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir Temple in Lilburn GA. This is an amazing temple and a serious work of art. The entire structure is floor to ceiling marble and the carvings and detail work is incredible. This particular one in Atlanta is the largest such temple outside of India and is a place we're going to have to take our Atlanta visitors from now on. We also did a little "mini tour" and learned a bit about the Hinduism. I wish I could have gotten some pictures of the interior but there are no cameras allowed inside. I took a panorama of the structure from the outside and a shot of the fountains out front.

View the pictures using Picasa instead

House WIP

So we've got most of house completed. Took a couple of weekends working our butts off, but it was totally worth it. The appraisal came back right at the amount we needed, and the house looks awesome inside now. We decided to put the outside on hold until the spring, and at that time redo the shutters and tear ALL the bushes out to create a clean new look. As far as the inside, we finished everything except the crown molding in the upstairs hallway. We didn't need to do it for the appraisal and I haven't been inspired enough to take care of recently :) The bathroom came out being our favorite "after" room, as Cathy's paint work on the cabinets transformed them from old school oak to a nice looking cherry finish.

Here are a couple of pictures of the WIP and the "before" on the bathroom. Once we put our paintings/etc on the walls and finish cleaning up I'll take some after pictures.

View the pictures using Picasa instead

Its the end of the world...

...as I know it, and I feel fine. See if you can figure that out from the pictures below :)

Steamboat has continued to be awesome. The weather has been great and we got to catch the sunset on top of the mountain. We also went snowmobiling yesterday. It was a blast! A few pics below, and I'll post the whole set when we get home.

Here is a big panorama I took. Its a reaaaally wide and big picture so be ready.

Steamboat!

We started out our vacation by flying into Denver and heading up to Fort Collins. Our friend Chuck lives there, and we picked him up on our way to steamboat. While we were in Fort Collins we took advantage of the New Belgium brewery tour. New Belgium makes Cathy's favorite beer, skinny dip, as well as one of my faves, Fat Tire. With it being winter, they had a few awesome seasonals on tap, and it was the perfect start to our vacation. After a round of beers, it was time to head up to Steamboat.

Since we left Fort Collins late, we knew we would get a little of the snowstorm that was coming in, but we didn't quite expect it to be as bad as it was. We were driving 20mph and using our GPS to tell us where to road was headed as we couldn't see a damn thing out of the windshield. It was a helluva drive, but we made it no problem.

The skiing yesterday was sort of tough, as the 12 inches of snow didn't get groomed in time. The blues turned more difficult as ruts developed. It also snowed all day, and the fog made visibility a little short. It was still an incredibly fun time and we got our ski legs under us, as we haven't been out since Breckenridge last year.

Today was a totally different day, as the sun shone through, and the 13 degrees felt more like 50. The slopes were just awesome and we took quite a few runs down. Cathy turned in a bit early as her back was hurting, but the rest of us finished off the day on the slopes. We took quite a few runs on Tomahawk and the surrounding blues, did some jumps, and finished off the day with "3 oclock run" which was about the longest black diamond ever. Here is a pic from 3 oclock with the iPhone. I'll take the real camera tomorrow and have some awesome pics.

Uwharrie!

On the way home on Sunday, we stopped by Uwharrie National Forest with a few friends, Jeff, Mike, and Dante. Never having been "really" 4 wheeling, I had no idea what to expect. On the way in we stopped by the main outpost, got some maps, aired down the tires, disconnected the swaybars, and took off up the mountain. Dante, having been there numerous times, led the way to the hardest trail, Daniel. I was definitely skeptical of the Jeep making it over all the obstacles and rocks, but it took it like a champ! We finally found the secret of wheeling a Jeep without lockers, left foot braking. Dragging your left foot on the brake while trying to go up a slippery rock/hill slows down the tire trying to spin, and lets grab instead of it just spinning like crazy. Also, it really is about the driving and not your equipment. Dante with his mostly stock, lockerless, 4 door ran through all the obstacles like they were a cobblestone road.

We decided to keep Zoey in the back of the Jeep instead of tying her up at the campsite, and despite the constant bouncing in the back of the Jeep, I think she had fun. During one of the rock crawls at Kodak rock, she decided she wanted to sit in the front seat. Then exactly at the worst possible time, she slipped and popped the Jeep into neutral. It was a little scary at the time, as I thought I broke something :) I took plenty of pics as it was a beautiful day. Thats not a polarizer filter, the sky really was that blue. I realized afterwards I took mostly pics of our Jeep and Jeffs. Dante with his superior 4 wheeling skillz was always up over the rocks and then walking back to help the rest of us, so I only got 1 pic of his Jeep.

View the pictures using Picasa instead