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Are we all satisfied with the distribution of costs for all the poo poo we bought for each other? Talking hotels and meals and such.
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Jul 26, 2016 05:57
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Slung Blade posted:Are we all satisfied with the distribution of costs for all the poo poo we bought for each other? We should do the math. Should we put that in the chat?
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Jul 26, 2016 06:50
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I don't mind helping out some more where needed if we break it down.
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Jul 26, 2016 07:07
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DrakeriderCa posted:We should do the math. Should we put that in the chat? Please put it here. I want to see how much was spent at sex shops and drug stores.
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Jul 26, 2016 14:19
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slidebite posted:Please put it here. I want to see how much was spent at sex shops and drug stores. We didn't get receipts for all those truck stop glow in the dark condoms 
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Jul 26, 2016 15:13
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Prophylactics were budget exempt
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Jul 26, 2016 16:03
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Well, they are safety gear after all...
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Jul 26, 2016 19:11
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Ok, here's what shows up on my credit bill. 216.20 Merritt motel 51.45 yaki Joe's pizza 18.87 Kelowna liquor store 286.52 total. Plus I brought food and such from home but whatever, no bills for that.
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Jul 26, 2016 19:49
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I've got: Pemberton Religious Compound/Hostel: $150 Nelson Campground: $36.25 Total: $186.25
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Jul 26, 2016 21:09
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You paid more than that, there was the crown Royal and at least one six pack, plus some ginger ale.
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Jul 26, 2016 21:15
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Slung Blade posted:You paid more than that, there was the crown Royal and at least one six pack, plus some ginger ale. Consider the booze my contribution to the bachelor party angle of all this
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Jul 26, 2016 22:33
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DrakeriderCa posted:Pemberton Religious Compound/Hostel You guys have been moaning about Pemberton without ever saying WHY it's a shithole / burn it to the ground / never go there. What happened at the PRC/H?
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Jul 27, 2016 01:31
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The hostel was actually quite beautiful (excepting The Hand). They had friendly goats and chickens and a llama, SSSwitch made great friends with one of the roosters. Pemberton itself sucked because of all the people still there leftover from the music festival. They were just cleaning up and tearing down the stage tents when we rolled into town. Fuckin tent village full of hippies still in the field, offering drugs to impressionable youths like ourselves. Basically the town's setting is pretty nice, but they've got some serious social problems there. Also we were pretty bummed about what happened on the Duffy on the way into town, that probably soured our experience more than a little bit.
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Jul 27, 2016 03:52
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Don't forget the tow truck driver, our official guide to Pemberton's magic.
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Jul 27, 2016 03:58
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Seat Safety Switch posted:Don't forget the tow truck driver, our official guide to Pemberton's magic. Yeah that was an all-you-can-racism buffet. I feel like if McTinkerson and I showed the least bit of interest, the Grand Wizard would have been showing us his deaths head tattoo.
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Jul 27, 2016 05:45
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Just sped through this thread (didn't see it as the builds were happening in real time) and it was pretty cool. I'd love to do an AI rally like that. Guess I need to get married again. 
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Jul 27, 2016 19:56
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I think I've recovered enough that I can start to write about my trip recollections based on the notes I took while on the rally. Like a real journalist, except I don't have substance abuse problems unless that substance prevents detonation or carries its own air into the combustion chamber. I got a little off track there. Sunday We started the rally at almost exactly 240,000 km on the odometer of the Hellica. Sweet Chili Heat was fully stocked:   Cool Ranch was a pretty little princess:  After getting breakfast at Lord Slung Blade's Manor, we travelled to the nearby community hall to take pictures. While there, a large dog approached, presumably lured by the sensation of an impending earthquake via Sweet Chili Heat. The dog was friendly, and I believed this to be a good omen for the voyage. "Gifts" were exchanged, and the Hellica received an Asahi-branded ema, a pair of leopard-print panties, and a Hello Kitty fuzzy sticker. We traveled across the province of Alberta, passing the Okotoks Erratic down into Black Diamond and beyond, almost to the US border and then into the southernmost parts of BC. Before leaving Alberta, Tinkerbell decided he qualified as disabled.  One of our first obstacles on our way into BC was the winding mountain road leading into Salmo, a small BC town. Eleven to thirteen percent grades combined with the rain letting up conspired to give us our first sign of overheating issues, and Slung Blade expertly moose-tested a juvenile turkey who appeared on the highway.  Upon arriving in Salmo, we were the first in the convoy. This would become a frequent occurrence throughout the trip, as the Hellica just made a shitload more torque and power than the overloaded RX7s. We waited at the Salmo Esso for a half hour. Nobody appeared. There was no cell coverage on the mountain pass, and our CB aerials couldn't hit anything on our trip channel (which is no surprise - our CB aerial couldn't call across a parking lot, let alone a mountain range). Finally, we decided to turn back and go and look for our missing companions. We heard Sweet Chili Heat before we saw it, the blaring anal-trumpet of a 12A echoing through the valley. It turned out that on the long downhill sweeper, Cool Ranch's oversized battery had come loose from its moorings and grounded out the side-post on the flip-up headlights. They had to fix it on the side of the highway, between a truck overrun bay and a precipitous drop into a tailing pond. We decided to bed down in Nelson for the night, and found a campground in the core of the city. Our GPS navigation took us down the steepest city street I have ever seen outside of San Francisco, and it was a lucky chance that the rotaries hadn't taken the same path. Sweet Chili Heat in particular would have bottomed out, a stricken magic-Dorito machine trapped forever in a flyover town. Climbing out of the Celica at the campground, I noted two things:
Unpacking the camp site took awhile:  We slept pretty well that night, bolstered by free beer. Also there was a huge bird fight and a freight train rode past the campground blowing its horn for what felt like an hour. Did I say we slept pretty well? We didn't sleep very well.
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Jul 28, 2016 17:36
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Slung Blade posted:We consigned Sweet Chili Heat's broken fender mirror to the ocean. At least part of it made the journey. Don't throw yer jap crap into my AMERICAN OCEAN boy!
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Jul 28, 2016 18:43
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Monday We awoke in Nelson, braving the gross campsite shower to prepare ourselves for the day. The previous night's explorations had taught us that a shopping mall was nearby (yes, the campground was in the town centre - no, I don't know why) and it featured A&W and a drug store. With credits like that, I was set. There was just one problem: it was pretty early and we didn't want to anger everyone within three hundred miles of the campsite by firing up Sweet Chili Heat. I find it difficult to express with mere words how loud Sweet Chili Heat is when you're standing next to it. Let me try again, however: when you are standing five car lengths back your teeth vibrate at a different frequency than your gums and it is all too tangible. The group assembles and pushes Sweet Chili Heat out of the campsite so it can fire up on the street. Our neighbouring campsite's leader, a mom with her young children, comes out to see what all the commotion is. A silent shrug, a curious expression. I say: "it's very loud." A Honda Civic rips up the road with a fart can exhaust past me. Confusing the Civic for the Sweetest of Meat Heats, she begins to say "it's not that b" and the rest of it is drowned out by Sweet Chili Heat's massive streetport awakening on a cold start at the bottom of the hill, almost a block and a half away, through an apartment building. Birds flee the trees. A guy sleeping in a hammock falls onto the cold earth. An air raid siren temporarily fires, then is drowned out by someone applying the clutch in Sweet Chili Heat. We decide to hand out some gifts. Sweet Chili Heat gets a pretty bicycle tassel so that we can find it in our rear view mirror:  Sweet Chili Heat buys some stickers for Cool Ranch:  We get a Barbie to go with our dollar-store Pikachu wand:  A trip to the drug store secures some muscle relaxants for me, and we begin our voyage to Nakusp. Nakusp and I have a history. The last time I went there, it was in search of a clean Z31 300ZX shell. Long story short, it didn't end well and I believed the place to be somehow cursed. Maybe it was too many Stephen King stories as a kid, or the discovery of how comedic timing and karmic redemption often worked hand in hand, but I was never one for "mere coincidences." My heart palpitates as we head towards Nakusp, fearing cosmic retribution for my hubris. We arrive in Nakusp without incident. The Celica is awesome on these backroads, and my newly-relaxed back is letting me exploit its shitbox Chinese no-seasons to their utmost. Those very tires howl on every corner exit and chatter on every hard braking episode, and I am having a pretty good day. Welcome to Nakusp, the town's sign says. Maybe make sure you don't set anything on fire while you're here.  We end up at a gas station, where the store's talkative clerk oscillates between sales tax fraud and neighborhood gossip. After filling up, we head down the highway towards the ferry that will return us to a major highway.      The ferry isn't so bad. No bathroom on this one, but also no dripping melange of carnage from the mouth of The Hellica. It's at this moment that I first notice a white Mazda3 that has trouble with corners and the abstract concept of acceleration. Trapped on the ferry, I helplessly watch it crawl out of the last passing zone we'll see for almost an hour. On the way off of the ferry, there's an off-camber, decreasing-radius 20 kph corner. Cool Ranch does a skid. Reportedly, a little poop came out. It's hot. In the ensuing convoy, the Celica overheats multiple times, requiring a constant gauge sweep and fast hands on the cabin-temperature dial. We keep pushing. Almost two hours later, the road finally widens enough to put the hammer down and safely pass the Mazda3. At one point we counted nearly thirty cars (the contents of two ferries) riding behind this woman, unable to safely pass in time due to the near-gridlock of its procession. We stop at a Carls Jr in Vernon to try and rehydrate, get some food in us. None of us are in much of a mood for jovialty. Things get worse when we try to key-on the Celica and it won't chooch. We can drive it, but it wouldn't hold an idle and nothing resembling power is coming out. gently caress. Is it heat soaked? After a few more attempts the Celica approaches something functional. We kill everything unnecessary on the electrical system and plan to hit the highway, hoping the increased airflow over the no-doubt-clogged rad will cool down the car. A raincloud hangs over the horizon and I begin to pray to the shade of Soichiro Honda for rain. I am still surprised we made it over the mountain. Through Slung Blade's watchful operation and bravery, the car actually makes it to Kelowna. During rush hour. In thirty-degree boiling-pavement heat-soaked weather. It is here that our luck runs out.  Just as the first small drops of rain begin to fall on the hood of the Celica, it rumbles to a stop, dead, in stop-and-go downtown traffic. Quelling our panic, we manage to restart the car eventually and limp it to the closest parking lot. For whatever reason, the Celica is now dead. What's not getting there: air, fuel, spark? The Dorito teams arrive, and we discuss the necessaries. Eventually a consensus emerges: it is probably the fuel filter, since we never changed it. In fact, I have no idea where the fuel filter is, otherwise I would have noticed it by now. It's here.  While McTinkerson runs to get a fuel filter from a nearby Canadian Tire, Slung Blade and I begin to dismantle the car, producing an immense mass of Toyota parts in the spot next to us. I begin to notice there is a Smart Car constantly driving around us, the girl onboard eyeing us up in the way that underpaid and untrained loss compliance officers do. As we wrench, I consider the Sparks Corn Barn across the street. At one point a small box truck approaches it, loads something into the truck, and leaves. CSIS dead drop. It has to be.  With an hour's worth of cursing and wrench-turning the old fuel filter comes free. It is completely dry on the output end and clogged with mud on the input end. I think back to the rural bumfuck gas station in Nakusp. The Celica's first tentative fawn-like steps are successful. We are back on the road against all odds. It is dark, it is hot, and we are tired and thirsty. An executive decision is made: we will head over the Merritt Parkway into Merritt and secure a hotel.  Why a hotel? Sweet Chili Heat is so loud as to violate the "quiet hour" statute of almost all public and private campgrounds, and by the time we get to Merritt it will be well past the aforementioned hour. On the Parkway, Sweet Chili Heat treats us to a series of fireballs via its copious exhaust. I find myself cheering along, excited to be living the fantasy of this event. Brap brap brap brap brap brap. We pull into Merritt and end up in a nicely renovated motel. Let me tell you about what kind of town Merritt is.  I'll retire there. Seat Safety Switch fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Jul 29, 2016 |
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Jul 29, 2016 17:05
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Love the narrationSeat Safety Switch posted:Almost two hours later, the road finally widens enough to put the hammer down and safely pass the Mazda3. At one point we counted nearly thirty cars (the contents of two ferries) riding behind this woman, unable to safely pass in time due to the near-gridlock of its procession. bc_highways.txt
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Jul 29, 2016 17:24
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S3 you are a goddamn treasure for writing things up like this.
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Jul 29, 2016 17:28
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On the upside the mazda3 driver was super hot 
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Jul 29, 2016 18:10
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DrakeriderCa posted:On the upside the mazda3 driver was super hot She totally was too. Fuckin chatting to her passenger, totally oblivious to the kilometres of vehicles behind her.
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Jul 29, 2016 23:35
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Did you at least introduce her to the sweet whispered nothings of SCH's exhaust note on the way past?
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Jul 30, 2016 06:13
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Liquid Communism posted:Did you at least introduce her to the sweet whispered nothings of SCH's exhaust note on the way past? Driving behind her took at least a year off of McTinkerson's life, so I think he took a few decibels of resolution out Of her left ear
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Jul 30, 2016 07:09
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So... anyone want to buy the best car from the trip? I am ready to set Cool Ranch free.
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Jul 30, 2016 22:16
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I wonder what my wife would say
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Jul 31, 2016 06:30
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I want to be there when you tell her.
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Jul 31, 2016 06:41
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slidebite posted:I want to be there when you tell her. You can sit in the backseat of my new porch while I tell her I got a great deal from some sucker
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Jul 31, 2016 06:48
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Just keep sweetchilliheat or find a way to ship it to me
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Jul 31, 2016 06:52
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It's probably a god idea for me to poke my head back in here and post some official updates. Rally Debriefing As DoritoPower has said, our cars are up for sale. Since it is the last challenge of the rally. SCH will be once it's repaired and I imagine the Hellica will be as well. That being said, I think we're going to play it like Who's Line Is It Anyways and therefore, the points don't matter. (Even if they did matter, they still would win.) The winner of this rally is 100% Cool Ranch. They came in ahead of time, under budget, had the most reliable car (even with the Freestyle Arc welding - perfectly put DrakeriderCa) and they completed the rally. They had the perfect car for the type of roads traveled, which meant it was always intersting and exciting. Would I have liked to see them have put more effort in to the livery, sure but by not doing so they both were totally OK with leaving their car on the side of the road somewhere. Which is where I would like to make a recommendation for anyone planning anything similar. Decide early on if this is a builders challenge or a rally. If it's a builders challenge then bump up the budget and put in some penalties for breakdowns / non completion of the rally itself. If it's a rally, then for the love of god, put in an hour cap for vehicle prep. I went down a road with our car that ended up with me spending ~200 hours creating my loving Mona Lisa. I honestly believe that I will not be able to create a better car, ever. With that, I also am mentally exhausted from the effort and due to the behavior of certain persons and the Alberta rotary community as a whole when I needed them most, I'm also done with them for a long while. Once SCH is sold, I'm quitting the Edmonton / Alberta rotary clubs. For the amount of time and effort I have put in to them, I've gotten gently caress all out of them. There's some other things as well but in a nutshell, I've got it out of my system for a while and at the same time lost all steam. I'm going to be taking a break from cars for a while. My (even after all of this) fiance has a 1977 CB400F that needs building. So if any goons want to buy SCH - PM me. I'm still sourcing the three parts needed to fix it and it'll be $1000 cheaper in it's current state with the parts than with it repaired.
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Aug 1, 2016 01:04
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So wtf happened with the rotary clubs to cause this?
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Aug 1, 2016 01:21
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slidebite posted:So wtf happened with the rotary clubs to cause this? My money's on a whole bunch of 'purist' dickwads getting uppity and angry and refusing to help because he was "ruining it" or similar E: vvvv Oh yeah that. And the guy who bought a bunch of parts from him and never fuckin' paid, then turned out to be the guy they were buying parts to fix her from... literally a fish fucked around with this message at 06:58 on Aug 1, 2016 |
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Aug 1, 2016 06:18
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I got the impression from the posts during the rally that someone left him in the lurch regarding things that could have gotten SCH up and through the rest of the rally.
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Aug 1, 2016 06:47
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Liquid Communism posted:I got the impression from the posts during the rally that someone left him in the lurch regarding things that could have gotten SCH up and through the rest of the rally. What a bunch of douchebags.
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Aug 1, 2016 11:23
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McTinkerson posted:I went down a road with our car that ended up with me spending ~200 hours creating my loving Mona Lisa. I honestly believe that I will not be able to create a better car, ever. With that, I also am mentally exhausted from the effort and due to the behavior of certain persons and the Alberta rotary community as a whole when I needed them most, I'm also done with them for a long while. Once SCH is sold, I'm quitting the Edmonton / Alberta rotary clubs. For the amount of time and effort I have put in to them, I've gotten gently caress all out of them. There's some other things as well but in a nutshell, I've got it out of my system for a while and at the same time lost all steam. That really sucks man, sorry to hear about that. I definitely wouldn't have an RX7 without our help so its lovely to see the community give off a reaction like that. slidebite posted:So wtf happened with the rotary clubs to cause this? Judging by my own experience so far I'd make an educated guess that there probably was a lovely reaction because this thing wasn't being built into a "race car" and was fairly cool looking without setting fire to a pile of cash.
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Aug 1, 2016 15:26
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Liquid Communism posted:I got the impression from the posts during the rally that someone left him in the lurch regarding things that could have gotten SCH up and through the rest of the rally. This is basically it. People I barely knew in the Miata, Honda, Kraut, Suzuki and Subaru communities were tearing their shirts off and hair out trying to help me find these parts, and the RX7 guys were unhelpful to the point where it will probably take physical intervention.
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Aug 1, 2016 16:47
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So does that mean the rx7 community has become the official crusty old hot rod douchebag committee now that the boomers are finally starting to die out?
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Aug 1, 2016 17:22
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In my admittedly limited experience, three or four people being crap can ruin a community, while three or four people being awesome can make an entire community shine. Most of the community is just bystanders and such that you don't interact with much, or which talk a bit but don't do anything.
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Aug 1, 2016 18:13
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Tuesday We awaken in Merritt to a lake outside the motel and a large oil slick spreading across its surface, thanks to Cool Ranch.  The order of the day today is to drive up Highway 99 ("The Duffy") and ideally reach Whistler or similar before the end of the day. After a hearty breakfast care of the in-room kitchens, we gas up and hit the road. On the way, we stop at a cidery for some reason.   A dog bounds up from the lower fields, regards us, sniffs Sweet Chili Heat and then pisses on its rear wheel and runs away.  We stop in Lillooet before hitting Hwy 99.  Lillooet is famous for being one of the first places in BC to get hydro power, thanks to its hilly geography. Behind us is part of I assume a hydroelectric turbine, turned into a statue by the widow of a town councillor.  Once on Highway 99, we immediately ran into some construction. The thing with mountain driving in BC, especially in the less traveled urban parts, is that rockfalls are extremely common. Modern road design is helping to reduce it with the invention of things known as "fences" and "ditches," but you will still hear of a lot of people getting taken out by a boulder. These pictures were taken by Jason, which you can tell because they are good.   These people were here to help prematurely knock the loose rocks off the surface, so they could be picked up by a front end loader below and moved harmlessly out of our way.   Once the flag dropped, we were off to the races. We all got trapped behind this slow-in-corners, fast-on-straights rental Malibu for a long time, but then Sweet Chili Heat passed it and disappeared.  Highway 99 is extremely technical. We're talking dozens of switchbacks, very tight blind corners, decreasing-radius off-camber turns, the entire lot of what people commonly think of when they think of a challenging mountain drive. Luckily the weather was on our side, and wildlife stayed off the road with the exception of a near-oops with a brown bear on behalf of SCH. We passed Sweet Chili Heat on the side of the road, stopped in a pullout for an assumed piss break, and continued on Highway 99 towards Pemberton when Whatsapp lit up.  poo poo.  poo poo!  poo poo poo poo poo poo.  While Kyle was driving, the car started to feel weird. It began to manifest excessive body roll, and then eventually just understeered off a tight switchback, across the (thankfully empty) opposing lane of traffic and into a road sign. It was a good thing the sign was there, because what you can't see is the deep gulley and creek behind it. We summoned a tow truck driver, who lashed up Sweet Chili Heat and took Kyle and Kelly to Pemberton while we followed, somber.  After congratulating Kyle on "perpetuating the white race" (yes) and talking about his time in the military and the Datsuns of his youth, he dropped the car off at the Pemberton NAPA in a swampy part of the yard and sexually harassed the manager on the way out.  Later, thanks to the mega-soupy ground, these jackstands collapsed and the car fell over, thankfully with nobody under it. The diagnosis is pretty bad: both control arms, the drag link, and the idler and pitman arms were all bent or hosed in one way or another. What's more, the NAPA couldn't order in any of those parts, and we were likely to need more, especially with the toe this far out.  For those of you unfamiliar with recirculating-ball steering (as I was), everything in this diagram is hosed:  Pulling off the front right wheel made things worse. The SA and FB both have a super-rare 4x110 bolt pattern, and as of right now we had 7 wheels for two cars.  We decided to check the stance while hunting down everyone we knew in the RX7 community. Stance is perfect.  With the sun growing low in the sky and no hope of resurrecting Sweet Chili Heat that evening, we determined that we were going to be stuck in Pemberton. After finding accommodation at a Swiss-Christian Murder Hostel (more on this in a bit), we secured liquor. Slung Blade got offered drugs by some guy who was standing outside the grocery store and had presumably missed the music festival that had blown through the day before. Oh yeah, the music festival. In case you're unfamiliar with the Pemberton Music Festival, as I was, apparently there are some pretty major headliners. Apparently Jay-Z had been where we were just a few days previous, in bumfuck pseudorural BC. The McDonalds had a sign in the window claiming that it was out of both iced tea and Fruitopia. Morale was low at this point. It looked increasingly unlikely that we would secure parts for Sweet Chili Heat within BC, let alone within the next day, and our already-marginal chances of hitting Tofino were now out the window. That night, we drank. The next morning brought clarity, and opportunity. The Swiss-Christian Murder Hostel Working in shifts, we trucked manpower and gear to a nearby hostel that Kelly found on the internet. As a child, I watched a lot of horror movies. A lot of those horror movies started out in a place like this.  Trust me, it looked a lot worse in the dark.    Okay, gently caress you, we're chicken shits. It was actually super nice although the facility maintenance was a little rustic. Almost none of us were murdered overnight, and they even provided a rec room that we could get hammered on Crown Royal Apple in. Seat Safety Switch fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Aug 4, 2016 |
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Aug 4, 2016 17:46
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