While I’ve been instructing since 2006, anywhere from 2 to 6 days per month, almost every single month (I’ve missed a month here or there with work or family obligations), one organization that I instruct with wanted to have all their instructors take the HPDE Instructor Training Level 1 Course.

The course is composed of 17 lessons of various lengths and types (some are videos, some are slides), 13 quizzes, and a final assessment. Note that the final assessment isn’t just a repeat of the questions from the quizzes (like many lesser online exams), but instead, it’s almost all brand new questions (some of which are generally related to the quiz questions, but nothing that appeared to be a direct copy). This week I made my way through the various lessons and quizzes and then passed the final exam today.

Overall, the content is very good. Even though I’ve been instructing since 2006, there were a few things the content brought to my attention that I’ll probably do differently going forward. For example, I used to tell students at Circuit of the Americas to “Don’t brake” on the way into Turn 16, and going forward I’m going to refrain from saying “No braking/Don’t break” and instead use something else… maybe “Steady throttle” or “Slight lift” depending on how fast they are going into the turn.

I’d agree with the creators that the content would prepare someone thinking about instructing to be more prepared before they took whatever school/training program their local HPDE organization had for instructors. It certainly wouldn’t qualify anyone who had not done any instructing before to become an instructor.

One area that I really felt could have been better was the quizzes and the exam. Some of the quiz questions were along the lines of “What is your favorite color?” and the answers would be Red, Green, Yellow, and Blue. And then, amazingly, you could get the answer wrong because they were not really asking which was your favorite color, but instead, “What color do we think should be your favorite color?”. There was also a spelling mistake in the correct answer to a quiz question (“stop” was spelled “stp”). Also, I felt that the final assessment had questions that were not in any way discussed in the material. That’s fine (and I did pass on the first attempt), but it would have been nice if at the beginning of the course (or at least at the start of the final assessment) it was made clear that you’d be answering questions that you should know from your own track experience rather than from the content of the course. And some of the questions and answers were just a bit too subjective for my taste.

Overall, I’d give the course an A-. With a bit of editing on the exam questions and final exam, it could easily be brought up to an A.

Happy HPDEing!

After 120,000+ track miles on my Lotus Exige, I upgraded to a Radical SR3. (Reason: The Exige was too big and heavy. Reason for the Exige upgrade in 2006: The Miata I was driving was too big and heavy. It’s going to be tough going lighter than the Radical, but it is theoretically possible…) I still had the Exige sitting in the garage and, in theory, I’d be able to drive it when I needed to drive a car. In practice, I ended up driving my F350 back and forth two nights a week where I teach Oracle DBA courses as a way to give back to the community. (The rest of the time I work from my home office.)

Stacey and I decided that it would probably be better for the Exige to go to a new home since we were not really using it anymore. (Stacey daily drives and instructs in a 911). A fellow instructor purchased it, fixed it up a bit and turned it over to someone else. He already had an Exige that he tracked quite a bit and built a few times over, so he had the experience to fix my old car up. It’s nice to know that someone else is using the Exige as it is a truly great car.

However, this meant that I had no choice but to drive the F350 around. It’s an old truck (year 2000) with a lot of miles (190K+) which really isn’t that big of a deal to me. However it is a long bed/dually, so it is not that fun to park. I decided that I should get another car just to drive around in. The smart choice would have been to pick up an old Honda Civic or something for a few K. Who really wants to be smart though…

Enter another track friend, Mark. Mark had a bit of a car problem (too many cars, according to his wife at least) and he had a solution to my dilemma:

That’s a number’s matching, 6.6L 1979 Bluebird Trans Am with a four-speed.

After getting approval from Stacey that this would be OK, Mark and I traded my cash for his car.

It’s been a bit of an adventure driving around in a 40 year old car, but it’s been fun.

I just had the original(!) driver’s seat cushions replaced with new foam by Nikito’s Upholstery here in North West Austin, and I’m about to go put the seat back in and take her for a drive.

It all began with a trip to the incredibly dangerous BringATrailer.com…

I’d had a 2004 Radical SR3 for a number of years which I loved, but a 2008 Radical SR3 done up like a Mazda 787B came up for sale and on a lark, I threw in a very low bid. The 787B liveried Radical was four years newer and also had a very desirable (and expensive) paddle shifter upgrade and a spare set of wheels. Who knows, maybe nobody else would bid… Four days later the auction was coming to an end and the car still hadn’t hit market value. Maybe I could grab it? I put in a bid at way under market value and watched the timer go down. A new bid came in, so I put in a new slightly higher bid. This kept on going back and forth for the next (very stressful) 11 minutes (Bring A Trailer always leaves the auction open for two minutes after any bid, so there is no sniping…). At the end of that 11 minutes I saw this:

Wow!

I’d gone from this:

to this:

This led to a number of issues:

• I now had two Radicals.
• I had to explain to my wife why this was a good thing.
• The new Radical was in Los Angeles and I live in Austin.

A quick conversation with the seller solved issue 1. He’d sell my older Radical for me.

The 2nd issue was a bit harder to resolve, but having the first issue solved sort of helped me a bit. I also reminded my wife that I’d be very happy with the newer car and I’ve always appreciated how much she values my happiness. I also got her a dozen roses delivered to her office. I think I’ll be OK on this one.

Depending on what my first Radical goes for, I might come out of this pretty clean. I did get the 2nd car at the lower end of market value and it did have a very nice set of extra wheels with brand new tires. Add in the pneumatic paddle shifters and I don’t think I would have been able to add those upgrades to my current car without going over the purchase price of the new car minus the sales price of my old car (we’ll see what my old car goes for…).

The final issue began this past weekend’s great adventure. When I first purchased the white Radical that meant I’d have to get a truck and trailer. Since both my wife and I instruct for various organizations I ended up getting a two car covered trailer and an (older) F350 dually.

A friend of mine had a Radical Pro Sport that he had purchased from Bring A Trailer, but the organizations he was running with wanted him to only run it in the instructor run groups, so he was looking to let someone else have fun with it. His car was down in Houston. The seller of my new car said he’d also sell my friend’s Pro Sport. Thus a plan was born: Drive to Houston, pick up friend’s car, drive to LA, drop off both cars, load up new car and drive back to Austin. Planned travel time: Friday to (very, very early) Monday morning. I knew this was pushing it, but hey, why not?

Last Friday I took off from Austin and drove down to MSR Houston to pick up my friend’s Pro Sport. It took a bit to pack everything up (lots of spares) and then I headed out to Los Angeles. Unfortunately, the dually had a blowout in one of the inside rear tires as I was driving on I10, but luckily for me, this happened before I got past San Antonio.

I very carefully and slowly drove back to Austin (everywhere that could have fixed the tire was closed at this point), spent the night with Stacy and then took the truck over to Don Rucker Tire and Wheel first thing in the morning. We decided to replace all the tires on the rear of the truck and I headed back out to LA.

It was quite a trip.

• Times I ran out of gas: 1
  (GPS said there was a gas station just down the road, but when I got there they were out of diesel)
• Times I almost ran out of gas: 2
  (Again, iExit/Waze/Google said there was a gas station, but when I got there… nothing.)
• Times I got the truck and trailer stuck in mud: 1
  (The Wilcox AZ Holiday Inn and Suites had a big dirt lot that they made me park in. While I slept, rain happened. Then this happened:
  
  The tow truck barely had to help me get out, but help me out he did.)
• Miles driven: 2,890
• Miles driven on I10: @2,475
  (Goodness gracious this is a boring drive, but when you are towing a 44′ trailer behind an F350, boring isn’t all horrible.)
• Dollar Amount of Gas Purchased: $814.48
  (I kind of think there might be some pending charges as this doesn’t seem like all that much).
• Hotel stays: 2
• Truck Naps: 1 (about an hour or so)
• Hours spent over the whole trip: @88.5
  (Between the stop in Austin to get the blowout fixed and the stops along the way, I didn’t get back in Austin until 4:30 am on Tuesday morning).
• Daniel McFadden’s seen: 1
  (I was Daniel’s first ever instructor at an HPDE a long time ago. Daniel is now an instructor himself and lives out in LA. He came over to say hi when I picked up the new car in LA.)
• Number of Tuckers seen: 1
  
  This is Preston’s actual car that he drove away from the courthouse after he won the case that cleared his name. Unfortunately, it was too late at that point and Tucker Automobile never happened.

At this point I’m just looking forward to the next event at CotA (or somewhere else) so I can drive the car on track.

If you see me there, please feel free to ask for a ride.

Rich

The 24 Hours of Lemons is a race held over 2 days where contestants build a $500 car and race it against others on a road course. Safety equipment doesn’t count towards the $500, so it is (usually) very safe. I’d been driving on tracks for years before I gave wheel to wheel racing a try and I can honestly say that there is nothing like it. Going through a tight corner on a road course 3 wide with less than an inch between you and the cars on either side of you is thrilling in a way that almost nothing else is. I’ve been sky diving before and racing is more of a rush than sky diving.

Normally I’m not really into these, but this just hit too close to home. Yes, that is me in the last picture.

Here’s me driving the Blue Goose on track before that picture was taken: