Well just because it is January does not mean I am ready for change. So while I am thinking of a normal novel-length entry to bore you with I shall rely on some quick hits in the interim.

- Why does my bottle of water have nutritional information on it? It isn’t flavoured, so there is obviously no sugar on it. Of course it has no nutritional value. And yes, it is NO part of my 2000 calorie daily diet. Also, I bought it at a gas station. The bottle has their logo on it. I really hope they covered a real brand and aren’t just bottling toilet water. Does it really earn them more money in the long run doing this? Can’t they just stock the El Cheapo brand like 7-11 does?

- I was stuck in traffic yesterday when I ended up next to a Prius. It had some obnoxious personalised license plate like “SIP GAS”. I had heard about places where the eco-friendly have really gone overboard and are arrogant about it, but this was truly my first run-in with it. I did my best to ensure that he couldn’t change lanes, but he wasn’t looking to anyway. Hybrids are just another one on the list of vehicles that I reserve the right to drive differently for. I generally try to give some more room to seniors. People with stupid bumper stickers, especially with heavy politicial affiliation? Good luck merging. Texting while driving? Not using a turn signal? Yes that is my fender blocking your progress. Hot girl using turn signal? Please, go ahead. Hot girl who thinks she can merge just because she is hot and got some schmoe to buy her that SUV? I think not. Driving a Camaro? You are always welcome to merge. Try to pass on the right
all the way until the lane ends even though everyone else has been stuck waiting in the proper (left) lane? There is no way in hell I am going to let you in. And if you think for a second that you will win at chicken and I will let you in at the last possible moment, please try again. Remember, I own two clunkers. I will gladly suffer some damage to the side of my beater just to prove a point to you. After all, I have AAA to tow me home, and another clunker in the garage to do it again tomorrow with.

- Speaking of driving, I really enjoy driving in wintry conditions with my big heavy ski gloves on. Even once my hands warm up (the original reason for wearing them), I like to wear them. I am not truly sure why. I would like to say it is because it makes me feel like I am wearing my racing gloves, especially useful when I am sliding around in the snow, but I like to think even I am not that neurotic.
Oh, who am I kidding.

Welcoming you into 2009,
-Michael

As I look down I notice that I am wearing what appears to be 5 separate shades of brown. It is not the first time I have faced this dilemma. It appears to occur every time a certain shirt comes up in the cycle to be worn. It is just above the “sunshine yellow” shirt from Express that is fancy but also see through and does not allow me to wear a racing t-shirt underneath like normal. Anyway, this brown shirt is a nice soft material. I tried to see what material it is, but I can’t crane my neck that far and I am not exactly about to take my shirt off to find out. It is brown, but not as brown as when it was brand new. Many washings have started to take its toll. I usually couple it with a pair of light khakis. No harm no foul, except the fact that the khakis really have seen better days. Besides fraying at the pockets and cuffs, it has shrunk and constantly pulls up exposing my ankles when my old socks that are sans elastic fall down. I have
vowed not to wear them again, at least not until I am out of clean clothes, especially now that it is cold and I despise the “ankle-breeze.” That leaves me with my two pair of “brown” pants (both between khaki and brown) and a pair of green. I hate the green. I can never figure out a shirt that matches. It seemed like a great idea when I got them, but then I never wear them. You think I would have learned from the last pair that I threw out, for the very reason that they never got worn. Thus, the light brown got the nod.

They are fine pants themselves, but are basically the same colour as the faded brown shirt. But they are not close enough, in my opinion. Throw in my belt (kind of a reddish brown), my socks (they are the dark brown my shirt used to be), and my shoes (used to be brown akin to my belt, but now are the colour “scuffed”) and I just look like a freakin’ fudgesicle. The Italian brown hair and eyes are not helping. All in all, I try to tell myself that I do not really care. It bugs me during the day, and then I still put on the same outfit weeks later. I think I am just dwelling on it today because fudgesicles were on sale at the store this week and I did not buy any. What the hell was I thinking?

Burnt sienna and proud,
-Michael

We arrived soon after the gates opened for CCFS, but there still wasn’t much room with sprint car haulers everywhere. Over 50 of the 360′s joined us on the card for this special event. Unfortunately, like last year, the track was a tad rough for our cars. We even saw it after hot laps resulted in a broken clevis. Thankfully DJ of Junior’s Performance Products had a spare (and a spare for the spare) that we could use. A not-so-great heat run meant a 19th place start for the feature. We had worked ourselves up to just outside the top 10 when the rear end gave up the ghost coming off the 2nd turn. The housing itself split in two, from which the resultant motion made some quick work of suspension components in the rear of the car. The season officially concluded with a ride back to the pits on the tow truck. Well, I suppose it truly ended with various hijinx of trying to get the car on and off the trailer.

After stowing the car in the garage, we used Saturday as an opportunity to actually take in some racing (unlike last year). We partook in the events at the Syracuse Fairgrounds for the day, and enjoyed some libations (and peanuts) at the Texas Roadhouse thereafter. It was a good opportunity to discuss plans for next season. Once those are finalised, they will be posted soon thereafter.

Until it is more frigid,
-Michael

We will have more details to follow in the days ahead, but for now we are off to prep the car to make another run at the leader board at the Cayuga County Fairgrounds.

You know you have seen their ads on various websites, especially if you follow any forums or blogs. They kind of hang out at the top, bottom, or side of the page and say “sponsored by Google” or something equivalent. Often times these are now “smart ads”, where the advertised content is derived from some reference on the page. I could be discussing the merits of the new Corvette, and an ad will appear for a Chevy dealer. Pretty slick, eh? That is until it screws up. I could be reading about cedar decks, and there will be an ad for Cedar Point. No harm, no foul. I just brush it off, as these missteps happen less and less frequently as the software evolves. Yeah, well, that was only until the other day.

I was perusing a racing forum when the banner ad came up advertising bbwromance.com. If you are familiar with dating parlance, a BBW is a big beautiful woman. I was dumbfounded as to why this was being advertised. I quickly re-read the entire text of the page. Nothing referred to anything large, big, or woman-like, so I chalked it up to an error by the software. But I got to thinking – maybe Google thinks race fans like larger women? Perhaps female race fans are larger? After brushing that off, I then started to sweat. I’ve dated a few chunkers in my day, what if Google is now so intuitive that it can figure out the tendencies of the computer operator?

I got over this Orwellian fear by taking another sip of my sambuca. So, I decided to migrate to Google itself. I typed “BBW Personals” into the box and hit enter (which in retrospect wasn’t a great idea, because now it will appear every time I try to search for something starting with B). Believe it or not, the first page of results yielded 9 separate BBW dating sites. 9? That was staggering to me. Isn’t 9 for larger women overkill and splitting the herd? My interest was piqued at this point so I went to one of the sites. I went looking for a “F” who is between 18 and 35 and lives in Michigan. It yielded 487 results! Let’s say that number is a tad high and use 400 as an average instead. Times 9 sites, that means that there are 3,600 women in this state alone that are looking for love on the Internet – and are using a size-specific dating site. I just cannot wrap my arms around this. I guess they do need lovin’ too, as the expression goes.

Some additional sambuca later I decided to look at a few profiles. There was actually a line in the profile for “size.” This actually made me laugh out loud, primarily because there is no reason for it in the first place (given the intent of the site) but especially because of the delineations that they evidently had to choose from such as “large and lovely”, “curvy”, and “offensive tackle.” Seriously though, I enjoy that the Internet can bring people of varying interests together. There are dating sites for farmers, for Hispanics, for Jews, etc. Heck, many of my honour roll were met via the Internet. And it brought back memories looking at some of the profiles, especially to discover that many elements of the “decoder key” that I developed to read between the lines of a profile were actually true (and still accurate).

The following day I was using a different computer on a different forum. An ad came up for a company that makes custom brasseries – for women sizes 36B to 58J. I suppose I can now delete that e-mail I was going to send to Google.

Off to get another sambuca,
-Michael

With little to do preparation wise (the car was essentially ready to go after the last missed event), we showed up staggeringly early to Brewerton Speedway on Friday night. Typically we get there with little to no parking in the pits. This time we had our pick of the place.

We picked a great spot that allowed us to take many glamour shots of the new wheels and tyres.

A nearly full field of cars showed up, but not enough to warrant a B-main. This was an important fact as we were able to ride around in the heat to try and find a solution to a minor issue. The new, I mean spare, rear end gear caused us to run out of gear halfway down the straight where the rev limiter was hit with fervor. Anyway, we started in the rear for the feature and kept our nose clean despite a handful of spins, incidents, and one track cloggage. We also learned the difficulty of trying to shift multiple times per lap. But, it worked out, the car rolled back on the trailer, and we walked out with 16th place money after starting 28th.

After a bath to make Stan presentable for Autograph Night, it was off to Fulton Speedway.

He stretched his legs during practise, showing that the spare gear was perfect for the larger expanse of dirt there. We were also able to pass 4 cars in 5 laps during the heat, allowing us to start much further up in the pack for the main. But before that everyone rolled onto the straightaway where kids and parents came by. Some little ones climbed in and out of the car, which was fun despite me learning that saying “no really, please stop doing that” really does not work. I also got my first interview over the live microphone, which only whetted my appetite for wanting to do it after a victory.

The feature was much different than the heat. The track continued to slick over, which found us heading backwards. We were finally able to find some bite and were making headway back to the front when a car lost it in front of us. A lack of racing room and locked brakes resulted in a impact with the stopped vehicle. The impact was square to a rear wheel, which surely meant the rear end was dead. But, after being separated and taking a cautious lap, nothing seemed amiss. The hammer was dropped and a few cars were passed in the last laps, leading to another 16th place finish (of 26).

Sunday morning was supposed to be for routing maintenance, but the dawn light showed a mangled rim. It, interestingly enough, looked exactly like a front bumper now! But, everything seemed square, nothing had shifted (that we knew of), so the car was gussied up for another Autograph Night and dragged to the closest track to home base, Utica-Rome Speedway.

For the third night in a row we arrived early. Practise showed that we had found another location where we would be inbetween gears. But U-R is too circular in nature and did not lend itself to shifting, so we spent some time getting acquainted with the rev limiter again. The feature was chaotic, with cars bounding all over the place, and driving way too deep into places. Despite this fact, things were relatively civil until the last lap, when one car broke, another spun right in front again (at least it was the other rear wheel this time), and the officials felt we could just race to the flag.
The finish ended up being a stout 12th of 20, as it could have been much higher given the incidents, dodging a muffler that was right in the racing groove, and getting passed by multiple cars under yellow.

Picture courtesy of Post-Time Photo

Picture courtesy of Post-Time Photo

The team returned home exhausted where it refueled at Applebees. Monday was just for another car wash. Hopefully we can get through the last two events on the schedule for 2008 – in front of the biggest audiences, during Super Dirt Week in October.

Earlier this year, knowing I was going to be spending days on the beach, I decided to really attack the battle of the bulge. Ok, the thought truly went into my head at the doctor when my weight nearly had a 7 in it, as neither the first nor the last digit. I began a regimen of “Michael-working out”, which entailed doing anything except going to the gym. This was doing things at home, on demand workouts, playing racquetball, etc. I also (barely) watched what I ate. But, results were hard to track as I possessed no weight measuring device. Ergo, I sucked it up and dropped some coin on a lovely scale from Target (that conveniently was on sale). I spent a week or so measuring myself multiple times per day until my Engineer instinct kicked in and propelled me to the computer to create a spreadsheet.

I have since then weighed myself every day, at the same time, wearing the same thing (or not wearing for statistical accuracy), with the scale on the same spot of the floor. I did a gauge repeatibility and reproducibility study to show that it was accurate enough. I did not know what this spreadsheet was going to prove, but I knew I was going to do it right and hit it hard. After receiving much flak early in the data collection phase, I modified the Michael work out. Yeah – I stopped doing it. I still stubbornly contend that despite my ever advancing age that I can control my weight simply by watching not what I eat, just simply how much and when. So I have been eating all the same crap – I just try to eat smaller meals and not right before bed. And my only workouts now come from my renewed vigor in the game of tennis which I have been playing 2x per week since the weather got nice.

Since the suspense probably has you wearing out the front edge of your computer chair, let’s get to the numbers. My starting weight was 160.2 pounds. Egad!!! But, be mindful of the fact that this was already five pounds under my true starting weight. Today marked my 153rd day of recording. My average over that time is only about 1.3 pounds under my starting weight. This does not sound like a lot, but I have not gotten to my starting weight in exactly 2 months. And, over those 2 months I have averaged another full 2.5 pounds lower. My lowest weight is actually today, where I started the day off 7.4 pounds under, with my worst day of the stretch being 3.4 pounds over. A standard daily fluctuation is a whopping 2.2 pounds. This is most strange, because I find that at least once a week I weigh the same exact thing for 2 or 3 straight days. Ideally, I would like to get a few pounds more and then maintain it there. What does this all show?
Nothing really, because despite being double digits lighter there is no tone to anything between my ribs and pelvis. I should probably get to work on some situps. Or not.

Aerobically yours,
-Michael

It was strange how quickly he was gone. He was healthy as a horse – hell we all thought he would live for many years to come. But, his illness came on and he was gone in 2 weeks. Really it was less than one week, as that is when he was on the ventilator. And anyone who knows my dad would understand that he was gone at that point. That just wasn’t him. He was too proud for that.

And that is the one adjective I always come back to – proud. He was such a proud man. He just held his head up high and did the best he could. He worked so hard to establish himself and run a successful business. Everyone knew Joe Occhipinti. He built a large family, and that is what he was the most proud of. Family meant the most to him. Speaking of that, he was so very proud of me.

He didn’t have to tell me he was. In fact, he rarely did. Much like the trait I inherited, he wasn’t exactly good at expressing his emotions. But I could easily tell. His beaming smile was always the true indicator.

Because of my parents splitting, I didn’t always get to see him that much. We talked a fair amount. And most of those conversations were just him listening. He loved to hear about what was going on. And I admittedly loved to “brag.” My favourite times were telling him something that he could be proud of. I knew that it made him happy. And that is what I miss the most. I dislike not having him to tell the stories to. I pick up the phone and go through my phone loop – and I sometimes find myself thinking that its time to call him. It takes a few seconds, but then I remind myself I can’t really do that.

As is natural, I wish I had told him more how I felt. Everyone of course says he knows how I felt, but it would be more comforting knowing that I told him. I wish I didn’t have to tell him those things when he was completely unresponsive with a tube down his throat. He certainly wouldn’t have wanted to see me in that state – as nothing made him more upset than seeing me upset.

Please don’t misinterpret this – we were lucky as it could have been much worse. He did not suffer, and it was not immediate and pointing either. But by the same token I don’t feel any less empty today. There is a lot left for him to hear about and be proud of – unfinished business if you will.

Now I am just sitting here praying it doesn’t rain because I want to honour dad the best way I know how – by going out and racing tonight. Love you dad,
-Michael

We actually arrived to the track early, which is something that rarely happens. I pulled a #2 out of the hat, which I knew meant I would get the pole in the heat. I am not sure that I was thrilled with that proposition having had no seat time yet in 2008. I slipped back a bit off the initial start and finished out the heat in 5th place of 10. This equated to a 9th place grid spot for the Main. There was a rough section in the centre of the track, and drivers split it. You either ran the very bottom or traversed the high side. I hugged the uke tyres lining the infield and managed to run in the top 10 for a good portion of the race. A flat tyre mid-way through the event sent us pitside and to an early exit. The only benefit to this was that the car was on the trailer before the heavens opened right after the feature. It also provides great incentive to dial up the ole Hoosier dealer!

The new bits have arrived and are awaiting the aforementioned new shoes to accompany them. These should make their way onto the car in anticipation of the next outing which is on the nation’s birthday (at Brewerton, NY). The team has some making up to do for last year when a suspension collapse off the final turn left us scrambling to get the car on the trailer in the dark as the fireworks went off. If that outing is successful we will race the following day at Canandaigua Speedway.

Until then, this is Michael signing off.

…and this is Michael “posing” for the press!

Stan itching to get out on the track.

Although, it did make me think of the bumper sticker I saw yesterday that said “I’m doing everything I can to piss off the religious right.” That is brilliant. I was laughing so hard I was practically in tears. But the more I laughed the more lightning bolts I had to dodge. Maybe I do need to pray at a gas station.

Always Your servant,
-Michael