Oops, I just bought another car

Those of you who read my previous post about the Mazda Miata I bought just this summer will certainly be a little baffled by the title of this post. But it is what it is. I bought a car, and it is amazing.

Badasses punch lemons into lemonade

Following on the last post, I wanted to talk about something that isn't go as well as I had anticipated, namely race car driving. So there have been a few pivots in the extreme transportation portion of badassery. First of all, 3 months ago, I was a hair's breadth away from purchasing a highly modified Lotus Elise (S2). What does that mean exactly? It means I offered a $22k check to the owner, and he refused because he thought he could do better. He texted me later that day offering $23k (after seeing 3 other potential buyers), but I stuck to my original offer. He ended up selling it 4 weeks later, probably for not much more than the $22k I offered him.

Diving helmet first into speedy Transportation

Remember the Badass Checklist? Well, this is me working on the fourth checkpoint (Transportation).

First track day ever. Did it at Thunderhill on June 10th, 2012. Thunderhill is a wonderful 15-turn track in Willows, CA (about 2.5 hours north of SF), with two really fun blind turns (5 and 9). The temperatures were hot, but the cars were even hotter (for example, a pristine Ford GT!). Had a really great time with two friends, Ryan Doherty (sporting a twin-turbo S4, chipped to all hell) and Nabil Shahid (with a monster C63 AMG, 6.2L V8).

Miatas are for badasses-in-training; Porsches are for mid-life crises

So I got a good-natured rib from a former colleague, Kevin Mullet, saying that a Miata driver cannot, by virtue of his car, be a badass. By the same token, ownership of a Dodge Viper, or a similarly high howerpower car, would confer automatic badassery.