Arroyo Seco

In August, 2008, I bought a new Mazda MX-5 ("Miata").  Since that day, I've been trying to drive the car in an autocross event.  It's never worked out.  I signed up for several events in Houston, but each one was cancelled, or I had something else come up.  After moving to Midland, I tried several times to join the Porsche Club at their autocross events in Big Spring, TX.  Every time, either I missed the event or it was cancelled, and now the club has lost its autocross venue (an old airport).  Too bad, because the Miata is best at going around corners.  Or so I'd heard.  It can also go pretty fast in a straight line... at least 120 mph... but that's not really fun for long.  Then out of the blue, Don Pool, friend from Tucson days, sent me a text asking if I wanted to join the Tucson Car Club (?) at a track day near Deming, NM.  Only five hours from Midland?  Sure thing!

So last Friday after work, I tossed some clothes into a bag along with my motorcycle helmet, my "all-purpose" mountain biking gloves (turns out they are equally useful for mt biking, dirt biking, and now car racing).  I didn't have the spare wheels and tires Don recommended I get (!), but I figured the stock Bstone Potenzas could use some additional shaving.  We set off for the 4.5 hour drive to lovely Las Cruces, New Mexico, where we would spend the night.  Track Day was slated to begin at 8:30 am on Saturday.  Debi and Mary drove separately in Debi's Outlander.

Driving in Texas got way better on September 1st, 2011, when the archaic (but probably wise) nighttime speed limit law was revoked.  Much of I-10 and I-20 out here in the unpopulated "wastelands" of Texas used to be 80 mph during daylight and-ugh!-65 mph at night.  Ouch!  And when exactly does "night" begin?   Many Texas drivers kept their headlights switched off long after dusk, trying to eek out some extra minutes at 80.  If you don't have your lights on, it must not be nighttime.  All that craziness went away on September 1st, and now Texans (and passersthrough) can buzz along at 80 (or 82, but don't risk much more than that -- the State Troopers are not lenient), careening forward into darkness and toward the gathering herds of deer with pokey antlers just beyond the reach of your headlights designed for driving 60 mph.

No deer interrupted our travels on this night, and we came to rest in the hilly town of Las Cruces on the Rio Grande.

Saturday morning, about an hour out to the track east of Deming, NM, which I guess has a pretty rocking wine industry.  Or so the billboards would have you believe:  "You'll have a Grape time in Deming, NM!".  Arroyo Seco Raceway.  I pulled in, with Debi somewhere well behind me.  A bunch of trailers hooked to pickups -- most people trailered their precious cars in, and were in the process of jacking up their cars, tinkering with suspensions, and bolting on super-sticky track tires!  Uh-oh, what did I get myself into?

I pulled onto the gravel with my bone-stock, bone-colored 2008 MX-5, with original Bridgestone Pontenzas with about 16,000 miles on them--and not much life left.  I felt a little out of place.  About this time, despairing that I didn't have my own pit crew and a $75,000 diesel-and-trailer rig, I spotted a Fiat 500, which is almost as unlikely at a track event as a 1995 Ford Windstar minivan.  And just slightly more likely than a 1960 Winnebago.  Also there were several stock Mazdas, including a Mazda2.  I felt a little better until they jacked up the Mazda2 and put on a $2000 set of track wheels and tires make of super glue.

The Bone Stock MX-5

Prepping my car... by removing the front license plate.  Ooooo!

I found Don hanging out in his trailer, his shiny blue Honda S2000 sitting at the end of the ramp, oozing horsepower.  This was his second track event, but he'd already decided to drop big cash on an enclosed trailer and at least two new sets of wheels and tires -- brand-new track tires.

The Arroyo Seco track is about 1.5 miles long with one long straightaway and one shorter one.  The rest of the track is all turns -- some high speed, some tight slow-speed ones.  After a very brief driver meeting ("don't hit other cars"), the first group to go out was "C", the beginners.  Like me. As the Nissan 230Z's and the Porsche 944s lined up, revving their engines to 15,000 rpm and spouting 10-foot pillars of flame from their exhaust pipes as big as highway culverts, I felt pretty intimidated, and asked Don if I could ride shotgun in his S2000 for the first few laps.  Once out on the track, it turned out almost everyone was fairly polite -- with one notable exception (light blue Nissan).  Passing was allowed only on the straights, and only if the lead car driver "pointed", or stuck his left hand up, indicating he would slow down and allow passing.  I was amazed at the lateral grip of the S2000.  Don could just turn that thing in and the tires never squealed, and we never fishtailed.  Later he would tell me that he actually felt sliding -- like the tires were losing and regaining grip through the corner.  I felt the same thing later in the day in my MX-5.

After a dozen or so laps, Don pulled off and group "C" was done.  Next came B and A, each for 20 minutes.  In theory...  In reality, it kind of fell apart and I saw the 75 bhp Fiat 500 go out in B, A, or whenever he wanted.  Still, the faster and more aggressive 230Z drivers seemed to go out only in A.

Don's S2000

Some cars push Don around the track

A different white Miata

Don races a freight train

Group C came around again and it was my turn.  Shiny black helmet on, I joined the line-up to get onto the track.  Once it was my turn to merge in, it was no big deal. First gear, 5500 rpm, second gear, 5500 rpm, third gear... turn at speed, straight-away... There was a slow car coming on behind me so I felt no pressure to go overly fast.

My first lap was pretty slow because I didn't know where I could go to full speed and where I could brake.  I was braking too early and not speeding up enough in the straights.  Cautious.  In the corners, though, I was at full grip from lap one.  I felt what Don was talking about -- at maximum cornering grip, you can feel the tires sliding ever so slightly, I guess in response to small bumps in the track or small steering inputs.  But the MX-5 (and the S2000, I assume), is so well-balanced, 50-50, you don't lose control.  With 50% front and 50% rear weight, the car just slides sideways a bit and the driver relaxes the turn ever so slightly to regain tire grip.  In the corners, I focused on "being smooth", and in particular making smooth turning transitions from one steering input to another.  I had studied up on drivingfast.net, and I found many of their tips to be very useful for a rank beginner like myself.

The grip of the MX-5 was disappointing.  It was remarkable how early I lost cornering ability.  Driving around town in Midland, I feel like it corners great.  But go into a 180-degree turn on the track, and you're only going maybe 20 or 25 mph, but just at the edge of adhesion.  Video from the car looks like you're going so slow!  One hairpin corner, the "Bus Stop" requires a downshift from 3rd to 2nd, and almost every time I had some power oversteer from releasing the clutch too quickly.  Drive power + cornering were just too much for my wimpy tires.  I had to stick to one traction demand at a time.

MX-5 and S2000

This Nissan passed me, then immediately lost it into the gravel. 

 

Bye-bye!

These guys played nice with the MX-5

Several times I lost control and "spun" off the track, although I didn't spin all the way around -- at least I don't think I did (tough to remember).  Unfortunately, I kicked a fair amount of gravel onto the track in some of these spins.  Also, I forgot to disconnect the Progressive Insurance "Snapshot" device than plugs into my car. Whoops.  How many "hard brakes"?  Surprisingly, it registered only TWO in the 30 or so laps I did before I unplugged it.  Does it turn off when it knows you're at a track... or did it simply not register because the braking was so hard?  The Snapshot speed graph very clearly shows each lap -- the speed profile looks nearly identical on each one.

Look at her lean!

As the day went on, I definitely learned to go faster. I tried to grab a driving coach to ride along with me, but they always seemed to be off somewhere else, riding in a different car.  So I taught myself as much as I could.  One key is late braking.  Keep on the throttle until the last possible moment, then brake almost as hard as you can (trying to avoid the antilocks coming on).  My weakness is in my lines -- choosing the right path through the corners.  But I did ok.  Watching some of the aftermath videos, I could see that I was almost hanging with much faster cars, and probably with drivers who had at least some track experience.  Toward the end of the afternoon, pulling off into the pit area, nearly all my dashboard lights came on, indicating I had overheated the brakes.  They quickly cooled off but I decided to call it quits.  My front tires were in rough shape, with the entire row of outside tread blocks detaching from the tire, and I still had a 350-mile drive back to Midland.

Sharing the track with a Lotus!

Debi and Mary spent much of the day hanging out in the car.  At least Mary did.  Debi rode along in Don's S2000 for a few laps and she also got some good pictures and videos.  There were some very cool cars to ogle.  Besides the old Nissans, there were two brand-new looking Lotuses, both kind of UT-orange.  Also there were several Porsche 944s, which I learned can be bought very cheap and gutted to make pretty decent little race cars.  Now of course I want to do that (but first, fix up my airplane, clean the garage, and finish building my Big Bend cabin...).

Mary dances at Arroyo Seco

Debi unpacking the chairs.

Trucks, trailers, a Lotus at rest

The shadows were getting long so we said goodbye and headed down the road to the nearby Rock Hound State Park, located in the rather substantial Florida Mountains, south of Deming, NM, and not far from Kilbourne Hole.  We went for a stroll there and then drove back to Las Cruces, where we had a wonderful Mexican meal at La Posta de Mesilla.  Six thumbs up.

Heading toward the Floridas

Walking in Spring Canyon, Florida Mts.

On Sunday, after a trip to Mesilla old town, we motored back toward El Paso, stopped at the outlet mall and hit the Gap.  I finally ponied up and got replacement shades for my 9+ year-old Maui Jims, which have served me so well.  Despite the delamination issue with my old pair, got another set... and I love 'em already.  The glass lenses seem so crystal-clear compared to plastic.  I'm going to send back my old ones with hopes that Maui Jim will replace the lenses.  It was nice to just walk around the outdoor mall, especially considering the views of the Franklin Mountains (to the east) and out over the Rio Grande valley to the west.  Track day had tired me out, and my shoulders and arms were a little stiff and sore.

Old Las Cruces de Mesilla

Crossing I-10 from the mall we drove over the Franklin Mts on the Transmountain Parkway, and down the east side of the Franklins to the Wyler Aerial Tramway.  We rode the little cable car to the top of Ranger Peak (~5600') and enjoyed the decent yet hazy views of El Paso and Juarez, Mexico.  To the north, we could clearly see the Saramento Mountains and the snow-capped Sierra Blanca near Ruidoso.

El Paso.  Mary shows off her new sunglasses.   As a condition of my buying them for her, she is required to sign a contract stating she will take care of them.

At the bottom

Aerial tramway machinery

Atop Ranger Peak, looking north

Debi & Mary

Old rocks.  Franklin Mts.

El Paso

Back down in the city we wound our way along Scenic Drive and then drove around a bit in downtown El Paso.  The town is pleasantly hilly in this area, with a number of interesting, crusty old buildings.  As we approached the Rio Grande in downtown El Paso, everything looked a lot more like Mexico.

Back on the highway, 80 mph legal again not far east out of El Paso, two hours then stay left onto I-20, two hours to Midland.  An action-packed weekend.

Am I going to drive the track again?  At the time, I wasn't sure I liked it.  But the next day I was still buzzing from the intensity of it.  Yes, I hope to be back on the track... but the Big Bend ranch, and my pilot's license come first.

Plus, I first need a Porsche 944 and strip it down to a track car.

Coming Home: Flight of the Cessna 150

Saturday morning dawns cool and overcast.

I stand at the Southwest gate at Midland International Airport.  I am tired.  My contact lenses smart and burn my eyes.  Finally my flight instructor appears out of the metal detector.

Everything has come together.  My instructor is available this weekend; I was able to line up an inspection of the plane; I was able to buy refundable tickets on Southwest for a palatable price.

Midland to Dallas to Houston to Panama City Beach on Southwest.

Going to look at a 1967 Cessna 150.  And probably buy it, otherwise we get to buy one-ways back home again!

Inspection, look at the plane.  It's a little more beat-up and hangar-rashed than I expected, but not by much.  Overall it's pretty good.  A few minor surprises.  Josh and I get in and run the engine, see how it sounds.  It misses a lot at first and that makes me nervous, Josh says it's normal.  

This plane has flown only 10-15 hours a year for the last three years, and that's not enough.  Planes like to be flown.  1940's technology push-rod engines like to be flown.  Continental O-200, 200 cubic inches, 4-cylinders, somewhere around 100 hp.  

Taxi out onto the single runway at Tri-County airport, 1J0, outside Bonifay, Florida.  Run-up.  All seems good.  Make a radio call on the CTAF.  Full power.  With the STOL tips on this thing, we are flying at less than 35 knots.  Keep the nose down!  Build up speed, nose down!  Nose down!  Nose down!  The nose pops up like a cork, it wants to point at the sky, it wants to be in the sky!

Ground falls away.  Pine trees everywhere.  It's dusk.  The sun is setting.  It's getting cold.  A big wide rectangle around the airport, flying the pattern more or less.  Climb, descend.  Lower flaps, raise flaps.  65 knots (whoa, push the nose down), 110 knots (diving).  85 knots? Level cruising.  One pinky on the yoke.  Trim it out and it flies with the rudders only, with nothing.  So smooth and easy.  The door seals look all time-eaten but they keep the wind out.  This 150 is quiet and not too drafty.  I start to like it.  The hangar rash and scratches in the paint don't seem so bad.

Dark, we come in for a landing.  Lights on, landing lights on, headlights up on the wing.  So much going through my head, new plane, Josh with a critical eye, I land better by myself, here we go, flare, whoa are we floating?  Plop.  Like nothing, the 150 lands and squats on the ground.  The engine idles at 900 rpm, with the throttle pulled all the way back.  I keep the back pressure on the yoke and the nose is still flying, so it feels.  The 150 feels so planted once it's on the ground.

Taxi back, paperwork, money changes hands.  Bill of sale.  Cold, dark, silence.  

Now I get scared.  Dark, in an unfamiliar place, just spent a lot of money, 900 miles from home, clouds, dark.  We're about to get into a 1967 plane with our little backpacks and set off into the night, cross the swamps and forests of Florida, Alabama, Lousiana, Texas, then diagonally cross all of Texas.  At 100 mph.

The first hour or so, I feel sick to my stomach, waiting for a cylinder to blow up or a wing to fall off.  It's my plane now, so any really expensive thing that breaks is now my expense.  Gradually I relax. It's dark but the 150 is so easy to fly.  The previous owner... caretaker... called her Juliet.  Juliet, you are so steady and so easy to fly, no hands, just feet on the rudder pedals, trimmed out to stay level at 4000', above the swamps and the rivers and the bayous.

The air is smooth unlike any road.  The plane vibrates with the little O-200 engine, but it's not an unpleasant vibration.  The cabin is dark and I fly by feel, every minute switching on my flashlight to check altimeter, heading indicator and vertical speed indicator.  But I know I'm not crashing into the swamp; I can feel we're level and I can see the lights of the cities and roads below.  

Humming along for a while then we make a fuel stop in Mobile, Alabama.  We're burning a little more than expected, about 7 gallons per hour when it should be 5 or 6.  Aviation fuel (leaded) runs about $6.00 a gallon. When you own an airplane, everything else seems cheap.  Filling up my truck now seems laughable inexpensive at $3.15 a gallon -- and only 15 gallons!  

Take the FBO car to get some food, I need a break.  Back in the 150, another two hours.  Crossing Louisiana now; just north of Biloxi, Gulfport.  Right across the north end of Lake Ponchatrain, the black, black waters looking so smooth below us.  The lights of cars on the causeway stretching away to the south.

I've never been here before!  But I'm here now, about all this dark wilderness.  Above it just like looking at a map.  We are here but we are not here -- we are floating by over it all!  And we can see it all!

In the darkness, without knowing, we cross the Mississippi River.  11:30 PM.  We touch down in Lafayette, Louisiana.  Clouds tonight; more clouds ahead.  Weather does not look good.  We are tired.  Taxi to hotel in Lafayette.

Lafayette seems a nice town; a college town and an oil town.  But we dropped in here out of the sky; I have no context.  We are just in Lafayette and then we are gone, over it, looking down at the college and all the neat houses and perfect streets and blue swimming pools.  At each place we drop in for fuel, the transition from the sky to the ground is abrupt, like popping a bubble, POP, you're near the ground.  When you're at 3,000' the ground isn't real.

Sunday morning.  Josh wants to sleep in, we get a late start.  FBO guy picks us up from the hotel and brings us to Lafayette Regional, a class D with commercial planes.  POP, we're in the air and heading west.  Low clouds; we start at 2500' then down to 2000' then 1000'.  Not a comfortable altitude; not much room for error.  Weather closes in.  Texas is just ahead.  Over Lake Charles, over Orange, now over Beaumont.  Houston Approach is telling us we're not IFR, we can't continue, there is a wall of clouds...

The 150 sits now in Beaumont, TX, on the ramp.  Just waiting.  We could not get out of Beaumont on Sunday in the little 150.  I had to be at work on Monday.  We tried to fly out of Beaumont on a commercial flight, but couldn't get seats from Houston to Midland.  Sundays are a popular time to fly that route.  Relunctantly, I walk over to the Avis car rental booth...  it's only an 11 hour drive back to Midland.

And we make it back by 2 am.  Plenty of time to get a few hours of sleep and get to work.

To Be Continued...

Just another (above-the) Valley Sunday

My iPhone alarm sounds at 6:00 am, just like a normal workday.  I get up and take a shower and get dressed.  Then I hop in the convertible and drive to Odessa in the chilly pre-dawn.  I pull into the gate at Schlemeyer Airport just as Josh walks across the tarmac toward the FBO.  I park on the grass, grab my flight bag and follow him into the building.  The Cessna 210 is waiting, cozy in its hangar, tanks full of fuel.  With very little delay we strap in and fire up the engine.  We get the weather info and I back-taxi down runway 2-0, turn around for a quick run-up, and off we go.  Full power, pull back, pick up speed, feel the controls get mushy, lift-off, push forward, keep the nose down, keep climbing but keep your speed up.

Daybreak in Odessa

Cessna 210 panel

In the sky, the wind is brutal, 40 knots out of the west, and we fly directly into it.  Up and out of Odessa, at 6500' over the edge of the Llano Estacado, dotted with little white windmills and over Kermit Dunes.  We follow the Texas-New Mexico line east, over Red Bluff Reservoir and the winding Pecos River, a shining silver band wriggling across the desert. The Delaware Basin, otherwise desolate, dotted with rigs, lights on in the morning, twinkling stars of industry, shining 24 hours a day.  This is Concho territory, and I spot several rigs but am not sure which ones are ours -- my area is typically farther to the north, just inside New Mexico.  Travelling due east at about 150 knots indicated, our groundspeed hovers around 100 knots.  The terrain rises up dramatically as we approach the foothills of Guadalupe Peak and El Capitan, at the south end of the Guadalupe Mountains.  GP is of course the highest point in Texas.  Up comes the terrain and it becomes quite interesting, with lots of good-sized hills, deep canyons, and sinkholes around the toe of the Guadalupes.

Guadalupe Peak and El Capitan, Texas

Wider shot showing the lenticular clouds developed over the Guads.

Past the Guads, eye-to-eye with them at 7000', with the early-morning sun from behind us.  Over the Broke-Off fault zone like it's the edge of the Earth, dropped away below us.  Now we are much higher above the ground, and over the Dell City bolson.

Passing over the escarpment

Dell City bolson / salt flats.  In the down-dropped block west of the Guads and Broke-off Mountains

Now past the Guads, we look back at them (northwest) and see the Broke-off Mountains and the west face of Guadalupe Peak.

Dell City is visible to the north, among the big green crop circles.  Just off Dell City are the very impressive Dell City volcanoes, which you can see from another angle in a recent blog about our visit to the Queen, NM area.  Same volcanoes.

Volcanoes near Dell City, TX

Lots of cool geology, rocks.  Eschewing the auto-pilot, I hand-fly the entire way so don't get as many snaps as usual, try to soak in the view.  Many things we look forward to are a little dissapointing.  This trip, not so.  This flight is everything I thought it would be times five.  There is more topography than I expected, and we can see everything from the air.  Places you can't go on the ground without trespassing...  Following is a series of shots taken just a few seconds apart.  Although we are fighting a 35-knot headwind, we still moving along quickly: 115 mph groundspeed.

Hueco Tanks -- State Park, but is it accessible?

We continue west over the Hueco Mountains and got a great view of Hueco Tanks.  Then over the empty plain NE of El Paso.  Hop over the Franklin Mountains, see the trails down there in Franklin Mountains State Park, skirt the Organ Mountains and swoop down over the Rio Grande... and we're in Las Cruces, NM.

Las Cruces airport, looking east at the Franklin Mountains

The flight back to Odessa is just as scenic.  As we crest the Franklin Mountains, we see a developing lenticular cloud just ahead, and surf over the top of it.  With a 40+ knot tailwind, we make 200+ knots groundspeed.  Everything passes by much more quickly.  In a flash, we're back in Midland... but the trip isn't over.  After a 10-minute break to wait for a few passengers, we climb aboard another plane.  This one is much, much faster, and sports two turboprop engines: it's a Piper Cheyenne.

Piper Cheyenne on the ground in Odessa




Piper Cheyenne cockpit view from the right (co-pilot) seat

This thing has some power.  Josh as the controls, we fly from Odessa to San Antonio in a flash, with that same tailwind pushing us eastward.  Only an hour to SA, then a 5-hour layover.  After landing and dropping our passengers at Million Air FBO, we pick up a courtesy car.  Josh tosses me the key fob and we get into the brand-new BMW 535i.  Now, I'm not really a big fan of the 5-series, but what a car.  To drive one around a bit, for free, with no salesman watching your every move -- priceless.  If only I could figure out the shift lever.  It is more complicated than anything I saw in the Cheyenne.

Piper Cheyenne, ready to depart the ramp in San Antonio

During the day the winds aloft kept up, and shifted slightly to the north.  On our way home we experience a 40-knot crosswind with only a 5-knot headwind component.  The ride home is smooth and uneventful.  On the ground, I feel tired.  How does Josh do this almost every day?

That's a lot of flying for one day.

Lessons learned:

1. I love flying slow and really close to the ground, so I can see things (rocks)
2. Commercial/corporate aviation is not for me.  They fly too high and too fast.  Where's the fun in that, unless you're doing loops and rolls?
3. I love flying even more than I thought I did.
4. There's a whole lot of world out there to see.

Oh wait... I know the last one already.