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Quick Spin – Let’s Go Drifting Again

Sometimes, improvement begins with starting over.

It seems fitting that one of the first posts in my attempt to revive this blog is about a return to Drift 101. The first post in this blog was published in 2016. The last post before the unintentional hiatus, from my first visit to Drift 101, was in 2018.

Re-reading my first post on Drift 101 elicits a few winces, as a lot of things do when reviewing a previous version of yourself. I vaguely remember the state of mind I was in when I wrote it, six months after the class, trying to impart the elation from the experience into the post and also relive it enough to encourage the continuation of my writing. It’s hard to say if I intended to take such a long break from this project, but when I found myself with a little extra time last year I knew what I wanted to do, go back to Drift 101.

Life is Better Outside – Tour De Del 2025

Peace is just a disposable camera and a vintage car away.

You can’t pretend to live in the pre-digital world. There are too many reminders – your phone chiming with a text from your wife, the vague thought in the back of your head that your 10lb CD folder doesn’t have that album from your Spotify favorites, the sign at the deli in the middle of nowhere asking you to tag them in your Instagram post…

That said, you can choose to turn down the digital noise. For a few hours, maybe even a few days, you can go and “find yourself” without the self-medication that’s popular if not necessary between 5PM and 9AM on weekdays. And what better way to do it than with an old car you don’t quite trust.

One of these things is not like the others…

Drive Everything

One by one, cats eyes whiz past my left shoulder at such speed they’re nearly an unbroken yellow line. The universe shrinks down. All that exists is the heat, the wind, the noise, and my buddy just ahead of me in his first-gen NSX, a silver rocket amidst the rolling, golden expanse of Central California.

Transfixed, I admire the back of said Acura flowing over the slightly bumpy backroad, almost a mirage. Suddenly I touch the rev-limiter in a gear normally reserved for dyno runs. The noise abates and returns with purpose as I quickly find the next gear. My idiotic grin becomes a cackle as I briefly consider how many of these cars, both his NSX and the Integra Type R I’m piloting, are today normally relegated to garage spaces. Both seen and treated as retired athletes more suited to bask in former glories than ready-to-buck sport cars.

You really ought to drive your damn sport cars.

Quick Spin – Drift 101

Almost all of us have done it. There’s a moment when you’re carrying just enough speed through a turn. Maybe it’s a wide open intersection or maybe it’s a tight corner you know well. You’re feeling sly, suddenly aware of all your driving talent, and you punch the throttle enough to step the tail out. If it was the first time you’ve done it this afternoon you might immediately lift off and flail at the steering to settle the car back down. If it was midnight in a rainy nowhere you’d probably been doing it for the last half hour and you keep the throttle pinned until the telltale flare of wheel spinning revs levels out, your grin so large it threatens to shatter the side windows. For those few yards, you felt you were drifting.

You weren’t.

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A History of Vehicles – ’94 Mazda Miata R Package

Open road? Check.
Top of second gear? Check.
Weird ridge in the tarmac? Check.
Poorly matched shocks? Check, check, check.

We are cleared for take off.

Or at least that was the monologue as the Miata initiated a sideways twerk over the aforementioned irregularity in the road surface. In this car, on this part of the road, there are two choices. Hold off on throttle application until you’re well past to avoid the sickening pogo action of the R-Package Bilsteins on an undulating surface or….whoop over it and just deal. Miss Daisy isn’t riding passenger today, or ever, so whooping is the most often the choice.

Around the Corner – Radwood

There comes a point in a car’s lifetime when it is simply a used car. A pile of metal and rubber forgotten to all but the most dedicated owner or poorest college student. Cars that the California Air Resources Board offers you $1000 for every two years. That prompt a swipe left when included in your profile pic. That inform your co-workers that an older car to you is from twenty years ago, not five.

We’re in an odd spot, those of us who appreciate cars of this flavor. It’s even difficult to name this grouping of car so many of us are enthralled by. You can’t call them classic without fear of the homie with a ’70 Charger and matching torque wrench coming after you. Calling them vintage feels wrong, the very utterance of the word clouds your vision in sepia filters and sparks the uncontrollable urge to nonchalantly light a cigarette and exhale toward the ceiling.

I suppose we could call them…Rad.

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What do you look for in a car?

Stop light interlude.

Wiggle the steering wheel. Blip the throttle. Check the distance between it and the brake. Slot the lever from first gear to second to first. Observe the shift distance.

Light changes. Green means go.

Note the clutch take-up. Roll halfway into the throttle, then mat it. Slight giggle as the rear tires pay lip-service to the concept of traction. Slight giggle from the passenger as her seat tilts back with the force of acceleration, forward with the brakes.

Stop light interlude.

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So…what are you looking for when you drive a car?

Continue reading “What do you look for in a car?”

Let’s see what we’ve found this week!