We lose a garage. ooops.

So then one day I come home from work and Sam and his brother are hanging out on top of the garage...


Or rather, hanging out on top of what was left of the garage...




A decent-size pile of debris was piling up in the yard, but Sioux took it all in stride...


And we had a big container delivered to put all the debris in...




After two days of Sam and Nathan working REALLY hard, all that was left was the part of the garage that held up the garage door...


So Sam relaxed and had a beer... (a la Steve Martin in "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels")



And burned his work clothes!


Michelle and I helped with clean-up... I vacuumed all the plaster chunks off our neighbor's lawn!


Amazingly, our stray cats (Bold Cat & Scaredy Cat) are unfazed- they are showing up morning and evening for their food!

The house story begins...

Well, these posts are long overdue, but life has been hectic, as you'll see! We are now well on our way with the house addition- although most of what we've done so far (well, most of what SAM has done so far) has been demolition and house removal! What I don't have any pictures of is all the prep-work Sam did, cleaning out EVERYTHING (and there were a lot of things!) from the garage. He built overhead storage for two of our neighbors, and moved a bunch of our stuff there. He moved a lot more stuff to a garage we're renting from a friend. He took apart his workbench, put some surf-board storage in the living-room, unhooked the washer and dryer (come to think of it I don't even know where those are!), took down the cabinets in the garage... in other words did a whole lot of work before the actual 'work' even began. You'll just have to take my word for that part!

Then, he started "small", taking out the part of the path to the back where the gas meter needed to be moved....

We donated all that concrete to help fill Michelle's 'pool':


Sam dug a huge trench so that the SDG&E guys could mosey on in and do their job (let's just say that it didn't seem like they did $800 dollars worth of work- and that they didn't make it easy to give them their $800 dollars... don't get us started on THAT story!).

But, the happy ending was that we have a new gas meter, located in the proper place! (Oh, yeah, Sam tore out that bush, too!)


Meanwhile, it all started very innocently with a delicate little hole in the drywall right above the door that leads from the garage to the kitchen...



Then things got more serious as Sam took a sledgehammer to the wall between the garage and the house.





Then, suddenly, walls were being torn out of the inside of the garage and workshop...

...as well as the outside...



The stucco walls were really remarkable- once Sam sledgehammered the stucco, they just swayed like very heavy fabric on the chicken-wire. I sledgehammered a teeny tiny bit, mostly so I could say that I had. Gallantly, Sam said I was "very helpful". Hah!

another type of milestone

how about the ass-kicking gold has taken since I wrote that last note, eh? i swear, i can't leave for a week without the world going to hell in a handbasket.

and leave I did, to scorpion bay with my friend cheryl for a week of 300-yard rides...

To get to the point, i got my first official inspector approval for moving the gas meter at the house. This was the next step on the road to demolition, and it's now complete. Just have to wait for SDGE to more the meter, and then let the smashing of stuff begin. Actually have alreayd begun that in parts, but there will be more shortly.

I thought it was a big deal. :)

Metals Milestones

Been awhile since anyone posted. Kim , are you out there? :) Much has happened, not that i'm going to go into everything right now. But I thought i would post a thought that i had, that deals with the recent run-up in metals like gold silver and palladium. Particularly gold, since for 4000 years it has been the money of last resort among failing fiats.

The neat thing is that people being what they are, they are emotional and subject to superstition and are susceptible to overemphasizing certain price point or milestones. For instance, $500 gold was a milestone, as will be $850 (the old high from the 80s) and $1000, the first four-digit price in dollars. $539.30 is not an emotional milestone, nor is $682.

Now that we are all living in a pure-fiat world, people in each of the 13 major currencies will hit each miletone particular to that nation at usually different times, and each will bring a new rush of buying to the metal at different times, thus propelling the value of the metal forward in all currencies, with some currencies being forced on to their own, next milestones.

Today, dollar gold is gaining, having passed $700. It's actually now at 708.50. We're just over 900 in Australian dollars, and just over 550 in Euros. That's three nice big groups of people all seeing milestones in their respective currencies. We're also over 850 swiss francs, at 863 actually. Another strong performer. The strength of buying post-milestone is pushing us towards 1500 Brazilian reals, 400 british pounds, and 800 Canadian dollars. We're closing on 20,000 russian rubles and 80,000 Japanese yen. About the only currencies not near a significant milestone are the Chinese renminbi, at 5667, the mexican peso at 7689 and the south african rand at 4299. But these currencies should be positioned to take their turn in pushing things higher, once the Russians and especially the Japanese (big savers, those Japs, with plenty of yen to spend on money that isn't someone elses' debt) hit their milestones.

That's the way i see it, anyway.

How About a Hamburger in El Centro?

Kim decided to take Friday off so we could go to the desert for a one day banzai trip. The wind had been howling at the desert and we wanted to be the first to make tracks over the new ripples. We got up at 5 am, jumped in our clothes, and took off. We had the trailer with quads hitched up by 5:40, and were fueled up at a gas station down the road by 6 sharp.

Perfect!

Then much ass-hauling up the grades, cruise set to 85, turbo boost coming on and off in a nice rhythm...then 80 miles later, down the grade back to sea level, and onward to El Centro. We were getting close. 14 miles to El Centro the cruise tried to take the truck into boost and the engine shuddered badly. I hit the brake to shut off the cruise and rolled onto the throttle a couple times to see where the problem occured...It was at anything approaching positive pressure. We pulled over, and left the engine running while I checked things out. No "check engine" lights helped us out. Oil pressure, exhaust gas temp, coolant temp, and fuel pressure were all within normal ranges. All I could figure was some kind of misfire from a fouled plug or bad wire.

We hit the road again, cautiously trying to make our way to a local toyota stealership where at least we'd be able to get parts, if we needed them. The "check engine" light finally popped on, and I was lucky to have my code scanner and book with me. It came up error 0136, which was misfire cylinder 6.

We bought a new spark plug and a set of wires and swapped everything out. Still the same problem- sluggish and misfiring at idle and under any amount of boost.

We were starving at this point (it was 10 AM) so we popped into the local Carl's Jr after fitting Sioux with her "don't mess with me i'm a service dog" vest. We ordered hamburgers and fries and considered our options. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what the trouble was, even with my friend Jerrod on the cell phone helping me troubleshoot. He raised the dark spectre of a blown head gasket or a cracked head, but the oil level was perfect and there was no oil in the coolant or vice versa.

After lunch, since we were so close, I was tempted to head for Glamis to at least get some riding in, but at the last minute, I pulled u-turn and headed back to San Diego. The possibility of my lovely wife and our dog being stranded with a trailer full of gear was too much to risk. So we high-tailed it home, if you can high-tail while drawing vacuum.

Kim slept a good part of the way, and when we got home I pulled the plugs and did compression checks. All cylinders came within spec. Then on a message board one guy suggested that it might be a bad coil pack. I tested the #3 pack, which wastes spark to the #6 cylinder and sure enough, it was shot. Those packs are a hundred bucks apiece but I happpened to have 3 of them on the spare 3.4 I have sitting in my shop. Ten minutes of wrenching and the Toy was running stronger than ever.

I apologized to Kim and thanked her for going with me to get hamburgers in El Centro.

Now I wonder how much more power the truck might make, now that it's not missing any longer. I may have to come out of retirement for One Last Drag Race.

:)

Racing and Retiring - 2001 Tacoma

So we went to the drags last Friday with my intercooled turbo 4WD V6. It was the first time I've been able to race since I swapped my supercharger for the turbo. This is on a 1/8 mile track at Racelegal in San Diego.

My truck is pretty much a desert/Baja rig. It's an 01 SR5 extracab and has a 3-inch SAW lift and doubled-up leaf packs in the rear. Usually I have a shell on it, and a tailgate and a spare tire, but I remove all that for racing. Last night was my last time racing before replacing the shell and loading it all up again.

As a baseline, my best supercharged run was two years ago. It was:

2.323 60 foot
10.010 at 71.43. That was with a 9lb pulley and water injection and a URD 190lph/305 cc kit and a stock clutch that I smoked later that evening.

Last night was a whole different story.

I'm currently running around 13 lbs of boost with water-meth injection and a new Spec Level 3+ clutch. The motor has 64000 miles on it, and I'm now running 440 cc injectors and a 255 lph pump. I had my old worn out 265/75/16 BFG TAs on, since the back ones are pretty much worn down smooth. Not real slicks, I know, but it was the best I had. Oh, I also carried a pressurized spray bottle of water with me, and when I was 3 cars back from the line I'd jump out and spray the intercooler down. The evaporating water really helps cool the intake charge, believe it or not, and it was a cheap way to get some extra ponies.

My first run, I launched in 4wd with an open diff. The way I do it is to engage the 4wd with the pushbutton, then hold the button in at the line. Then when I launch, the pressure on the gears keeps the 4wd from disengaging, until I shift to second and then it disengages at the instant of the shift. It works pretty well, except my truck is making so much more power that when I hit second and it went into 2wd, I just pretty much sat there and spun the tires. Same thing when I hit third...more wheelspin. I chalked that one up to experience and cruised to the finish line.

I had a similar experience my second run, but this time I locked the locker, thinking that it would give me the 2wd traction I needed. No dice.

I am not the most experienced dragstrip driver, so I just decided to leave the rear diff open and run 4wd the whole way. Now I started getting results.

I creamed some chick in a hopped-up accord, it wasn't even a race. Then I went hunting for some bigger prey. A guy pulled up in a late-model Corvette and agreed to race me. We pulled to the line and according to him, (when I talked to him after the race), I got 3 car lengths up on him right off the line. Thank God for 4WD! Anyway, I beat him though it was close, and that was my best race that evening. I pulled a 2.118 60 foot time and ran 9.221 seconds at 79.36 MPH. I could feel the force of the launch, and I knew it was going to be a good one.

Quite an improvement from my supercharged best listed above, and I think pretty good for a 4x4. The corvette ran 9.44 at 80.64.

The 'vette guy tracked me down after the race, and he couldn't stop laughing while he congratulated me. It was fun to be able to say "Yeah, the motor is stock with just a turbocharger and some fuel mods." He was a really nice guy.

My next race was against a brand-new Nissan 350Z. That guy had just put a twin-turbo kit on his car, and I thought I might be able to take him because I figured he wouldn't be able to put that power to the ground. I was right, I think when he saw me jump off the line he panicked and stuck his foot in it. I beat him 9.528 to 9.744.

My last real race was against a replica AC Cobra with I-don't-know-what under the hood. I got him good off the line as well, but I ended up losing to him, 9.444 to 9.082. Those cobras are really light.

All in all a really fun evening!

Desert Trip

We went to Glamis this weekend- the first time this year. We had both been looking forward to it, and it didn't disappoint!

Surf Photography

I've been surfing in between wind and rainstorms. Some of the sessions have been pretty fun, but only Scripps has been able to consistently clean up overnight. This past Saturday morning was the best, with several good steep lefts and rights. One big left I really did not think i was going to make. On steep drops, I'l often grab the rail and tuck in, but on this wave, i was so late that by the time I reached for the rail, the board was on its way down and I managed a grip that felt like I was holding on behind my rear foot.

I was amazed that I made it, so much so that I raised both arms in celebration and relief while everyone else was hooting at me. Then I cracked an off-the-lip right into the face of a guy who, it turned out, was a photographer. He said he'd gotten a photo of the wave and he handed me a laminated business card. It was quite incongrouous, getting a card in the middle of the ocean, but looking back I think it was the coolest thing I'd seen in a while. Kinda made me think about American ingenuity in the common man, and how rare that seems to be anymore.

Jeez, I sound old..."In my day..."

HA.

www.bluewatersurfpics.photoreflect.com .

Hopefully they'll be up soon, and I hope it turns out.

So I Had a Birthday Yesterday

and thus ended my full and complete 36th year.



I took the day off and went snowboarding with my friend Dave. I drove, and by the time we met at his parents house he was over an hour late. This is to be expected, though usually this kind of thing drives me crazy. However, I decided to try something different and view it philosophically instead of getting bent out of shape. I was sitting in my truck about to open a book when Dave's father came out of their house and invited me in. I had not seen him or his wife in several years. They gave me a warm welcome and took me on a tour of their backyard fruit orchard.

They live in Clairemont also and have a terraced yard going down into a canyon. They have apple, peach, pluot and lime trees that are all doing fabulously, but the highlight was the passion fruit vines growing along their back fence.

Kim and I have been searching for the ideal plant to cover our back fence, and we didn't want to just stick some ivy or kudzu in the ground. I happen to love passionfruit, and Ihad no idea that it would grow in this climate, or even that it grew on a vine (I had imagined trees). Dave's dad told me that he had gotten his vines from a nursery in Point Loma, and that the vines were a special hybrid developed specifically for the San Diego area. That sold me, and that's another project to be completed with the house addition.

Maybe I can do that after i demolish the hardpan in the back yard, and after the foundation is poured, while we're waiting for the concrete to fully cure...

From Low to High

After digging a few holes here and there, Sam spent a part of today walking around on top of the house, having had enough of slithering around on his belly, trying to tempt the woman like the biblical serpent. She's at school, anyway, so all the tempting would be for naught.

He found out several things. First, that the poor drainage problem was worse than he thought. One hole, dug 18 inches deep and just four feet from the side of the house, filled with 7 inches of water in less than a half-hour. He could expand the hole wider and deeper and have a genu-wine mud bog for the cost of a few blisters.

Second discovery, and this one a bit more uplifting, was that he could see the ocean in the distance when standing at a height of 11 feet above ground. At 13 feet above ground, at the next roof peak, the view got even better. From the plans at hand, Sam was able to determine that the master bedroom floor will be at a height of 13 feet. Now all Kim needs to do is figure out a way to get the neighbors to trim down their big ol' tree across the street.

Kim's aerie (Sam prefers that to "cupola", credit Joe for coming up with "aerie") will be a split level, between 20 and 22 feet so Sam expects that Kim will rarely deign to alight upon the lower floor. He'll have to go up and visit her instead, seeing as how the roof of the aerie will be at 31 feet above ground level and he might have a view of the entire coast from up there.

Our house

So.... Sam and I are planning on doing an addition to our already beautiful house. Some new foundation work will be necessary, and some plumbing updating will be in order. This weekend Sam decided to crawl under the house to see where everything was...

He disappeared into the hole...


Loyal Sioux considered following him, but decided against it.
When Sam came back out, he was very muddy!


still cute though, isn't he? There's something sexy and rugged about a muddy guy...

Plus, we got all the measurements we needed, and Sam figured out the perfect way to drain our yard so that in the future our house will be dry underneath!

Just to get a picture up here...

We've gone on many adventures so far, and many await us. Here we are, all ready to head to Baja Mexico last April. That was quite a trip! That was the one where we got into a bit of a tiff and then Sam drove the truck... well, I'll not get into that story just now. But after that trip, I started calling Sam McGyver!

The Beginning

"And we're off!" my father would say... "like a herd of turtles!" my mother would respond, once the Sweeney family was (finally!) settled in the car and headed towards our next great adventure. Something about that phrase always tickled my funny bone, and Sam and I now use it when we pile into the truck to go have an adventure, even if the adventure is just grocery shopping!

This blog is a place for us to keep track of our adventures, and a place for you, dear readers, to find out what we're up to. I suppose this blog itself is an adventure, of sorts.

And we're off! Like a herd of turtles!