Today was our first full day here in France, and we had a bunch of activities to do. We started by heading down to an area about 15 minutes from here to do some jet skiing and parasailing. Here’s the beach which we launched from:
We rode the jet skis for about an hour, we rode them all the way down to the beach where our families house is at. You can see that area from the house here:
Next up was parasailing, here’s my cousin and brother waiting for the boat to come pick us up:
I’ll be leaving tomorrow for a week at the French Riviera. More specifically, I’ll be in the Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat area of Southern France:
Its tranquillity and warm climate make it a favourite holiday destination amongst European aristocracy and international millionaires. It is one of the loveliest places on the Mediterranean coast.
I will have internet access down there, so I should be posting some nice pictures and video. Overall, it will just be a time of relaxing, and trying to disconnect.
I’m going to try and do something a little different with this post, and do a sort of semi-live blogging post.
Ford is flying me out to Dearborn, MI (Home of their headquarters) for their 2009 upcoming model event. What’s in store is pretty much a surprise to me at this point, so I’ll be blogging about the trip as it goes on. What I do know is that the itinerary says this:
Please note that Wednesday will be spent at the track and no shorts or open toed shoes are allowed.
Track time? Sounds awesome to me! I’ll be arriving in Michigan around 6pm, at which point I’ll make my way over to the hotel. They’re keeping me at the Dearborn Inn, which was originally built by Henry Ford to house dignitaries. With 23 acres, 3 restaurants, and much more, it should be a pretty nice place to crash for a night. When I arrive to the hotel, I’ll receive a detailed itinerary of events, so I’ll update when I find out more about what’s going on. I’m definitely looking forward to playing with Ford’s Sync system (powered by Microsoft), as I haven’t really seen one in person before.
In the meantime, bookmark this post as I will update it throughout the trip when I can. Hopefully there will be some internet access at the hotel! I have to go pack!
Tuesday 1:56pm
I’m about to head off to the airport in an hour, I should be reporting back in when I arrive to the hotel.
Tuesday 6:33pm
Just arrived at the hotel, it’s pretty nice. I walked in, got my room key, and walked up to my room, so I haven’t had a chance to explore yet. The hotel is old, but newly renovated, here’s a shot of my room:
My window faces the back of the hotel, where you can see they’ve setup an outdoor dinner event which starts in an hour. Before dinner there will be 30 minutes of cocktails:
I’m thinking about maybe renting a car after dinner and heading down to MGM Grand in Detroit (Most people don’t know there are casinos in Detroit) so I can get some gambling in…but I need to be up pretty early for tomorrow’s events.
Speaking of tomorrow’s events, I just got an itinerary. In the morning we’ll be doing breakfast, followed by a little overview with Ford’s Vice President of Product Development, Derrick Kuzak. Afterwards we’ll be doing a few different events, including some track time with a variety of Ford, Lincoln, and Mercury’s 2009 model year lineup. There will be final remarks by Mark Fields, President of the Americas, and then it’s back to Virginia.
The flight over here was good, we got here really quickly. I shared a limo to the hotel with a fellow that writes for publications such as Motor Trend, Automotive Engineering, and Popular Science, so we had an interesting conversation. I definitely feel like the newb
Stay tuned for further updates.
Tuesday 9:43pm
Just got back from our dinner event, had a blast. Basically shot the shit with a bunch of guys I’d only imagine talking casually with. The food was pretty good, there was a good variety of things like chicken, fish, salad, sausage, pulled pork…and open bar. Basically just met a bunch of people in the automotive industry and talked shop. I also had a chance to walk around the hotel a bit…here’s a few more pictures:
My cab just arrived to take me over to the MGM Grand Casino in Detroit, so I have to run. It should be a fun day waking up tomorrow at 6am…we’ll see what time I actually get to sleep tonight!
Wednesday 1:51am
Just got back from MGM Grand. I really wanted to play Texas hold em, but they only had no limit tables…and I’m a limit kinda guy Ended up playing roulette the entire time, walked away up a little bit.
I also finally got a shot of the lobby of the hotel…very elegant looking:
It’s time for me to get some sleep since I have to wake up in 4 hours. Tomorrow should be a day of fun stuff, so stay tuned!
Wednesday 6:04am
Awake now, running on maybe 3.5 hours of sleep!
Wednesday 12:02pm/10:35pm
Finally getting a chance to get on the computer, but don’t have any internet access, so I’m writing this now and will update live when I get back to VA. We just finished the first half of events as well as lunch.
After waking up this morning, I headed down to the restaurant in the hotel for breakfast. Afterwards, we all took a shuttle down to Ford’s testing grounds, which was literally across the street. They do all sorts of things here from wind tunnel testing to driving an F150 on a watered down test area (which they were doing!) to camouflaged vehicles that haven’t been released yet being tested.
The grounds are impressive, with all sorts of test tracks and facilities setup. Let me go through the order of events we went through.
The first event that we did was under a tent where we got to see a bunch of presentations from a few departments at Ford that targeted quality & safety. There was a couple neat things here worth highlighting:
This was a neat virtualization software Ford was using to train people how to spray paint better. They literally had a real spray gun that you would use on the screen, you wanted to get an even green color for a good, even coat of paint. Blue was too little, and red was too much. They could even make it so it just shows you how the paint would look, but then they would turn on the pressure map. Even something that looked perfect, could actually have imperfections in the thickness. While 100% of the exterior paint work is done robotically, about 10% of interior paint is still done by hand. This was a great way to ensure good work.
Most of us have seen how they do movements in sports video games like Madden and Tiger Woods golf…they use those motion sensing suits. Ford has applied the same technology where they could see how workers would use body movements to complete tasks, and then make things more efficient:
We saw a chassis from Ford Racing that was updated to improve NHRA safety standards after analyzing an accident that their own driver was in. Here were the improvements made to the chassis you can see in the picture below:
The yellow area was widened and foam was added to the sides in order to better protect the head of the driver
The blue area was added to make the area where the driver is more protective
A sort of black box was added which records all of the information for the race. Ford Racing developed this box, and is now used by all teams in the NHRA.
The next event, we took out a ton of different vehicles, and just drove them around a cones course that was setup. Driving the Mustang Bullit was a blast, but I was really impressed by the Flex. The Flex is this unique vehicle that is an overall large crossover, but it handled much better than I could have ever imagined. I was also really impressed with the Lincoln MKS. First of all, it’s just a great looking vehicle. It has the luxury class, while also looking sporty and aggressive at the same time. I also got to drive the Escape hybrid, which was my first time experiencing a hybrid vehicle. On top of that, it was the first car I was in that used the Microsoft Sync system I mentioned earlier. I was impressed with two things. First of all, the Escape interior with the Sync system was just awesome. A buddy of mine used to have an Escape, and it was horrible, everything was in the wrong place, and it just looked cheap. What a change!? The other impressive thing was that the hybrid engine was capable of staying in electric mode up to 40mph (it used to be 25mph). That’s awesome for people like cabbies who are driving around in the city, I’m sure they could get some crazy mpg numbers.
Here’s a video of the course:
After the cone course we headed back in for lunch. While eating, Dan Kapp, Director of Advanced Research & Engineering came up to speak about Ford’s plans with something called EcoBoost. EcoBoost is a great movement for Ford, and I expect other manufacturers to do similar. EcoBoost is essentially the concept of using a smaller turbo’d engine that can put out more power, get better fuel economy, and have a smaller carbon footprint over a larger naturally aspirated engine. So the idea is that instead of buying a V8 F150, you would buy a turbocharged (EcoBoost) V6 F150 which has more power than the V8 and gets better fuel economy. That’s a win-win situation…and turbo cars are just simply fun to drive
The food was good too, they had a variety of salads, sandwiches, and awesome desserts…I’ll let you salivate with a snapshot of the desserts (different types of mousse and cheesecake lollipops):
Next it was on to the “Green & Smart” tent where Ford discussed how it was going more green, as well as highlighting some pretty neat new technologies they were embracing. The green aspect had a lot to do with EcoBoost, but also how they were using bio materials like soy beans and hemp to make things like the foam in your seats. One of the major benefits and things they are working towards is making a car last, but once it’s junked, it doesn’t just sit there and pollute, but rather it can completely decomposite within just 60-90 days. Neat stuff!
There were a few technologies that really stood out to me and I want to highlight:
Ford Sync
I mentioned before that I was excited to play around with this. I got a chance to really get into the system and see everything it can do. All I can say is that I want it in my car. It is an insanely awesome and intuitive system, that I can imagine once you have, it would be hard to not have in your next car. It’s an entire multimedia center, from being able to play DVD’s, to playing music from basically any option (cd, dvd, aux input aka iPod/mp3 player, built-in hard drive, thumb drive, etc), to much much more. This next generation of Sync utilizes Sirius Travel Link, which is essentially a data feed from Sirius that can do things like give you real-time traffic, weather, sports score, movie listings, and even a list of the closest gas stations to you…along with the gas price there. You can easily find the cheapest gas near you!? There is just so much this system can do, and I can only recommend you get to your Ford dealership and play with it yourself to get the full experience. I don’t know why all cars don’t have something like this. The other cool thing is that it’s an actually an option in an entry-level Focus, whereas normally technology like this starts in high-end cars and eventually works its way down.
Blind Spot Mirrors
This is such a simple concept, and I have no idea why it hasn’t been integrated into all cars…but here it finally is. Blind spot mirrors. Between the name and the following picture, it requires no other explanation:
Next Generation Keypads
I’m sure you know how a lot of Ford vehicles have that ugly keypad that lets you unlock the doors. While it’s very functional, it doesn’t look too good. Ford has a Lincoln MKS on display that showed the next generation of the keypad, which is built into the b-pillar and uses touch sensitivity instead of standard buttons. It works like an iPhone, and only lights up when you touch it. Now it looks awesome, and it’s just as functional. While you can see it in the below picture, it was only because of the flash, in reality it blends in to barely noticeable when not lit up:
The last even was on the actual track, and was by far the most fun of the events. We had the same slew of vehicles (including a couple new ones like the Lincoln MKX and the Edge Sport (which handled amazingly well)), but this time were on a real road racing course.? I was able to really push the cars to the limits. Some of the drives we even had people that were on the product development team for the vehicle we were driving in the car. It was interesting to talk to them about developing the car I was actually driving. On top of everything, they had a couple of the upcoming F150′s on display (not for driving) which looks great in person:
Afterwards we closed up with a little speech from Mark Fields, President of Ford North & South America.
I had a great time at the event, and I can honestly say that I have a new appreciation for some of the Ford vehicles, what they stand for, the passion of their employees, and the direction they are taking the company.
Any other manufacturers care to invite me to their similar press events?? Just say the word
I’ve been to some of the best steak joints in the Washington DC/Northern VA area, and always on the hunt for the next greatest one. I had heard of a place in Arlington by the name of Ray’s The Steaks…and that was next on my list.
Ray’s The Steaks is in this pretty crappy looking shopping center, in a place that just doesn’t look so special. They did have a line though!? The restaurant is so popular that they don’t even take reservations, the best you can do is come after 4:30pm and choose a time that they can try their best to get you in if you come back. Here’s the inside, nothing special:
Who cares what it looks like though, right?? We were there for good food and a good atmosphere. When you sit down, you’ll find a little place of spicy cashews…good start, these little guys are tasty!? We started off with a couple of shrimp and scallop appetizers:
Definitely a good start, the shrimp were big, and the flavoring was excellent. The real question though is how are the steaks?? I personally had the filet, and I can’t remember specifically what my friends got but I want to say one of them had the cajun ribeye. I tried a little bit, WOW. The flavoring was so good, and I’m told I can do a filet in a cajun style. I’m dying to go back and try this. The filet was up there as one of the best filets I’ve ever had (top 3).
Everybody I was with (3 others) were all extremely impressed with the food, and we can’t wait to go back. On top of the food being great, the prices were also pretty reasonable. The check for the four of us was about $250 before wine/tip.
When we were waiting for our table, there was a place next door with no visible sign (that I saw), but the place was packed. I later found out it was another Ray’s establishment by the name of Ray’s Hell Burger. Apparently the burgers there are ridiculously good, and start at about $6.50. This will definitely be next on the list.
If you’re in the Washington DC area, want a good steak in a lively/young atmosphere, without worrying about getting dressed up…make sure you head over to Ray’s The Steaks.
Ray’s the Steaks
1725 Wilson Blvd.
Arlington, VA 22209
(703) 841-7297
A couple weeks ago my blogging buddy Derek posted about the 100 push up challenge he was taking on. Derek is even giving away some cash and t-shirts to participators. The actual program itself is from HundredPushups.com, and it’s a 6-week challenge that can get your pushup #’s to 100.
Once I read about the program from Derek, I decided I’d give it a shot myself. The first thing they want you to do is take an initial test, which I didn’t do. The initial test has two reasons for being there. One is to have a benchmark and see how much you can improve, and two is to put you in the appropriate “level” in order to see how many pushups you’ll be doing in each set for the first two weeks.
I didn’t take the initial test because I knew I could enough that would put me into the top level, and I didn’t want to be sore for the start of the program haha. I wish I did it though, so I knew what my max was, but I’m guessing it would have been around 20-something.
So now I’m about to start the 2nd week of the program, and so far so good. The program wants you to do pushups three times a week, so I’m doing Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The first day was a bit rough, going from not doing pushups in a while, to doing a bunch…but it wasn’t too bad. The second day was probably the toughest, I was definitely the most sore, and it was fairly difficult to complete the sets. By Friday though, I seemed to fly through everything, even though I was doing more pushups than on Wednesday.
Week 2, which I start today, seems fairly comparable to week 1…so it shouldn’t be too bad. The line between week 2 and week 3 is pretty hardcore, so we’ll see how week 3 manages next week. By the end of 6 weeks, I should hopefully be able to do 100 pushups in one sitting.
If you have already taken the challenge, are doing the challenge, or want to do the challenge, post a comment and let me know what’s up. It’s a nice little workout, and who wouldn’t want to say they could do 100 pushups!
Back in November I wrote about how you can get 50% off of Texas De Brazil, a Brazilian steakhouse. Now 7 months later I finally got a chance to try it out for myself. If you remember, I had previously been to Chima, which is also a higher-end version of this style of restaurant. I’ve also been to another one by the name of Malibu Grill, which is the same style but much lower end.
Texas De Brazil is slightly more laid back than Chima, but offers a nice contemporary atmosphere. While it is more laid back, the prices are about the same, with a dinner coming in at about $50 a head.
To start off, you can grab a plate for the salads/sides area. I preferred the variety here over Chima, there was a better selection of food that I liked…in fact there are 40 items. I highly recommend the potatoes and lobster bisque.
Each dinner also comes with a fried banana which was interesting and delicious:
When you’re ready for the meats, simply flip your marker to green and gauchos are at your service providing a wide variety to your place. From bacon wrapped filet mignon to lamb, they have it all:
Overall I’d have to say that I prefered Texas De Brazil over Chima. While Chima was a much fancier restaurant, I prefer the more laid back (but still very nice) style that Texas De Brazil provides for this type of dining. The only other style of this restaurant in the same class that I know of is Fogo de Chao, which I haven’t tried yet.
As you may or may not know, I run a blog on carbon fiber by the name of Carbon Fiber Gear. I got a pretty cool package on Saturday from the guys over at RaceChairs.com that included a carbon fiber mousepad, carbon fiber coasters, and a carbon fiber paperweight that featured a gas cap from an actual Ferrari:
You’ll see a carbon fiber pen in the picture as well, that was a present for an ex girlfriend…but I thought I’d throw it into the mix. This stuff is all pretty neat, and very high quality. RaceChairs sent this stuff over so that we’d write about it on Carbon Fiber Gear…by actually having the products in hand, we can give a more in-depth and personable review with real pictures that we take. It allows for more original content, and a more effective post in terms of generating new business for RaceChairs. Very smart of them!
Look for actual posts on each of these products on Carbon Fiber Gear in the near future!
I checked the mailbox yesterday, and found a letter from Maryland addressed to me. I opened it up, and was surprised to see this:
A speed camera got me going 38 in a 25, which automatically sends me a citation. Luckily, it’s only a civil fine, so it was just $40 with no points and no affect on insurance rates. As you can probably guess, it’s just a revenue maker for the county.
Aside from the suckage factor of getting the ticket, the technology behind everything is actually pretty cool. They give you a website you can go to, along with your citation number and pin, you can access the high resolution version of the pictures the camera took. Here’s one scaled down slightly:
It’s actually a pretty nice picture, I was surprised they were using something so clear.
I posted this story on the Viper forums, and there are all sorts of responses about how this is unconstitutional, etc. I’m not really sure what the truth is, but it doesn’t seem right that they can give me a citation with a picture of the car and make me pay without proving I did anything of fault. Innocent until proven guilty right?? Some of the more interesting responses worth looking further into are below:
It doesn’t even matter if you weren’t behind the wheel, the car’s registered owner is the one who gets fined. Purely a revenue source for the county, under the guise of “safety.”
I don’t know how legislation like this even gets passed. How can you accuse/fine an individual when you have no proof they were operating the vehicle in question?
It’s actually unconstitutional since you can’t cross-examine a machine.
We have speed and red light cameras in metro Phoenix, with more on the way. I wouldn’t pay it. Throw it away if it wasn’t sent registered or certified mail. If no one signed for it, how do they know you received it in the mail? In AZ if you are not “served” within 90 days of the ticket…..your off the hook. Check your local laws, but if it was me, and you didn’t receive it by registered or certified mail……it’s in file 13!
The most interesting I think being the last quote. I wonder if that’s actually true. Any legal junkies know what the truth is?
Back in April I wrote about the Lexus Performance Driving Academy, which I just attended this past weekend. Now that I’ve gone through the academy, I wanted to post my thoughts…I’ll take you through my day.
As a reminder, there were two different programs that were available. One on Friday was $295, but allowed you to get hands on with the new 416hp Lexus IS-F. On the weekend (which I did not attend) was free, but didn’t give you IS-F goodness. Two of my friends attended the Friday program with me, so they stayed over my place on Thursday so we could all go together Friday morning.
To get into the driving spirit, I drove my Viper with Alex riding in the passenger seat, while Eric rode his modified Subaru STI. The driving academy was located at Summit Point in West Virginia, which is about an hour drive from where I live. The drive up to the track was fun, especially getting into WV, we got to experience some twisty roads that really got us prepped up for what was ahead.
We arrived at about 11:30am and saw the parking lot was full of all sorts of fun cars. There were a ton of Lexus’s (including some IS-F’s), as well as a bunch of Corvette’s. There was even a new Bentley Continental Flying Spur. A Mercedes Sprinter shuttle picked us up from the lot and drove us over to the event.
We had about an hour before anything started, so we were provided a lunch inside a tent with an IS-F to gawk at. Lunch was surprisingly good, with a variety of foods like chicken, maceroni & cheese, cheese biscuits, cookies, and more. They also had an IS-F simulator setup that was pretty neat, and very hard…it made me a little worried about what to expect later on.
After lunch, we had a little opening chat, and then it was off to our groups first event, the advanced techniques classrooms. This was a very helpful course that went over a variety of techniques and showing the lines of the track. They also had a simulator setup in the room with a 2nd screen that was linked to a camera that showed the pedal area. This was extremely helpful because they had a pro driver go up there and show us how to drive the course. Seeing what his feet were actually doing was very beneficial. The instructor then chose me to go on the simulator and try it out for myself. All I have to say is it’s much harder than it looks. I luckily had the pro driver next to me giving me pointers like when to apply brakes and give more gas. Even so, I ended up slamming into the wall!
The next event was called “lead/follow”. This is where groups of 3-4 IS-F’s would follow a pro driver on a road course. The idea behind this is to really get an idea of the lines on the track, by following the pro driver you could learn fairly easily. We had to go arounds of about 3 laps, the second go, the pro driver was much more agressive, which made it way more fun.
Here’s a video from lead/follow:
After lead/follow, we took a shuttle to another track where we would do something called the relay. This was an event where our group split up into two different teams. Each person drove around the track, and each individual time was added to the total. We amazingly ended up tieing at 7:12. The track here was incredibly slick as they covered it in peanut oil since it’s used for training for police, CIA, secret service, etc…and they use it to do stuff like drifting around the track.
The following event was the autocross where a cone track was setup with all sorts of turns, etc. This was a timed event, each person got two practice laps, and then two officially timed laps to try and get the lowest time possible. The benchmark time was set by a pro driver at something like 21.1 seconds. This was the same pro driver that set the lap time for Mazda’s Rev It Up national event. The reason this is so impressive is because the Rev It Up event was about 25,000 people that tried to beat his lap time, and only person did. Then he went right back out, and in one go, beat that persons time.
The lap time is set by the amount of time it takes to complete one lap, if you hit any cones, 2 seconds is added to the time. Also, at the end of the lap you are supposed to stop within a coned box…if you don’t, 5 seconds is added to your time. On my first two practice laps I ran a 24.xx and then a 23.8x. Afterwards, I ran my two official lap times and I got a 22.9x and then a 22.7x. These were actually very good times, in fact, I had the 4th fastest time out of the group of about 150 or so people!? The fastest time of the day was 22.1 seconds.
The last event was the hot lap, which one was one of the best experiences I’ve had. The hot lap was when you go out on the track with a professional driver and he goes as fast as he could. I posted a video of a lap, but it does no justice!? It literally feels like a roller coaster in real life, I kept banging my head against the car every time we’d hit a turn…either way, check it out for yourself:
Afterwords there was another meal, along with a closing speech sort of thing. Before we left, we all received gift bags that had the following items:
$750 certificate off of a new 2008/2009 Lexus
Kaboom drink
A watch on a carabiner
Wired magazine
Lexus “F” hat
Kaboom t-shirt
Lexus IS-F DVD
$30 gift card for XM Radio
Lexus pen
The Lexus Performance Driving Academy was well worth the $295, and I would easily do it again. It was no holds bar with the cars we drove, and I definitely learned a lot to improve myself with driving.
Carbon Fiber Gear originally started out as an experiment for myself in affiliate marketing. The idea was to highlight carbon fiber parts and products, some that utilized affiliate links, and others that did not. Through the time that I’ve had the site launched, I’ve taken it into a few different directions.
Originally it was just a blog, powered by WordPress, using a free template. I then later launched an eBay store on the blog utilizing the phpBay script. Afterwards I created a custom design, and converted the phpBans script into BANS. Now I’ve hired my first contributing writer, and the site is really starting to progress into its own real brand.
In the past I hadn’t really taken advertising too seriously on the site. I had run some AdSense, and it brought a few dollars here and there. I wanted to start selling some real advertising, so I had to setup a plan.
At first I created a 300×250 spot on the top left sidebar, and wanted to offer it up for $150/month. The spot was to be exclusive, so one advertiser would fill it, and would run on 100% of the impressions for the month. A couple of days ago, I decided to change that 300×250 spot to 2-4 125×125 spots that will cost $25/month each.
This will allow me to sell a variety of spots and not count on just one advertiser. I also will only be accepting month to month contracts as opposed to multi-month contracts at a discounted rate because the site is growing fairly quickly…and $25/month is more like an introductory price to get advertisers in the door.
Once I had everything setup, I wrote up an advertising page with information advertisers would need. All of the advertising is served using Google Ad Manager for tracking and trafficking purposes. Google Ad Manager is fairly complex, but once you understand the system it’s very nice. Shoemoney has praised it as well.
While I don’t expect advertisers to come knocking on the door, I suspect if I actually go out and try to sell the spots I wouldn’t have too much of a problem considering the low cost, amount of traffic, and very targeted carbon fiber niche. I’m still not very driven to work on the advertising at this point in time, but the opportunity is now out there. I suspect this will be a big part of Carbon Fiber Gear in the future, and I will continue to create new opportunities as the demand progresses.
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