My Helmet

Anybody that knows me understands that I'm a total racing gear whore. I love the baller stuff. Once you start doing enough track days you reason to yourself that its worth it to buy really good stuff, but part of the appeal is that you've got something cool, you can show it off.

I had been rocking an open faced helmet for a few years, and it had served me well. It was a great gift from my sister for Christmas about five years ago, and I wore it through most of my early years in road race and open track events. Even did 2 rounds of 24 Hours of LeMons in it! I was starting to want a closed face helmet to use at drift events since debris would always get in my eyes. I still use the open faced one for hot days, but decided to invest in something high quality and of a closed face design. Shortly there after, I purchased a Bell K1 Sport.

Ever since I became interested in world motor sports, I've been fascinated with driver's custom suits and helmets. I've always wanted something to help put me apart from the rest (how many G-Force white helmets do you see at the track?) and also something that was custom. I like to integrate styling from different car cultures, and often times look to things far from drifting and typical racing to get inspiration. I started looking around and ended up viewing some hot rod photos with pinstriping. The only helmets I saw were for bikers, and were essentially small, skull cap type helmets. This is when I decided that I wanted a pinstripe job as well as some sort of hot-rod influence on my motor sport helmet.

After lots of internet research, I found a sample photo of exactly what I wanted. That sample photo came from Sam Boeger's website, www.bogies.biz. She's an amazingly talented artist, and also in California. Check out her pinstriping photos to see what photo I'm talking about! Anyhow after a few emails back and fourth with a rough outline of what I was looking for, I had shipped the helmet to her and she began work. What you see is the finished product:

As you can see here, there's a fully detailed pinstriping job running over the top of the helmet with a pretty aggressive design.


After I saw it on her website, I knew I had to have this chick on my helmet. Part of its appeal to me is the hot-rod style, and also another influence came from drag racing. Drag-racing guys love to have chicks on their helmets. Its difficult to see, but the "tramp stamp" on her back says "The big Korean". Yeah, that's me.

You'll also notice the name near the front chin area. That's just straight up from racing. If you've got a custom helmet, its got to have your name on it somehow!

I also loved the color combination she used to achieve a sort of neon effect. It constrats nicely with a dark helmet. Now I've got to just get my iriduim visor and I'm done!

Anyhow come say "hi" sometime at a track event if you'd like to take a look at it. I highly recommend Sam's work to any of you out there looking for custom work on, well, just about anything! She does more than just pinstripe too, if you wanted something else done. Anyhow, I hope more of you start doing custom cool stuff too!

Reflection

So, 2009 is coming to a close. I wanted to take the time to reflect on a few things that happened through the year. For me, this year was pretty big in terms of my growth as an automotive enthusiast but more specifically, as a driver.

After spending the past 2-3 years concentrating solely on grip driving, I decided to embark on drifting a lot more about a year ago. I think I only did about 2 grip events this year, while all the rest were drifting events (easily 10 or more in total). I think I got a lot better throughout the year, thanks to help from people like Filipino Alex, Hawaiian Alex, Andy, Johnny Mac, Wes and of course Taka. With their confidence inspiring words (minus the Hawaiian, because he always tells me Corollas are "ghey" and I should buy a Z) I actually entered my first drifting competition. As you read in one of my older blogs I didn't do too well, but it certainly was a growing and learning experience for me. So much so that in my 2nd competition ever (at Primm) I placed 4th, which out of a field of about 10-12 driver's isn't too bad at all.

I also had a realization this year that I've never had before: I don't really need any more parts for my car right now. My car is pretty well built with the most tested and reliable parts in racing, and I have the best people in the industry to help me when I need it. My money hasn't been going towards specific parts, but only when things are in need of repair. With the money saved there, I can put it towards tires and events, which I did.

I finally got a tow vehicle, so I'm no longer so fatigued before and after events from driving a super loud, punishing, and super illegal vehicle. Towing is the bees knees for sure.

I also started realizing how lucky I am to have the above people to help me out. From reading Club4ag on a regular basis, I get frustrated with how the most unrespected, most unreliable people are giving the newbs information and opinions, and probably shaping their thoughts and beliefs. That's truly unfortunate, so I'm fortunate to have such well seasoned and educated friends help me on my journey. Not everybody has professional racing drivers, mechanics, fabricators and lunatics to shape their outlook and opinions on things (the lunatic is again, the Hawaiian).

So all in all, a pretty good 2009. I want a better showing in the next all AE86 drift comp that will hopefully happen next year, and I hope to break 1:30 at SOW too!

Hotties in NASCAR?

Ooohhhhweee its been a while since I updated this thing. The 4AG time attack was a few weeks ago, but beyond that, there hasn't really been anything automotive related going on with me. I've chosen to spend my time in another way, which has been quite awsome!

Anyhow, onto this week's big big story. Danica has finally signed with NASCAR. She'll be competing with Dale Earnhardt Jr's company, but will start in a lower league in order to earn her license to run with the big boys. There's a lot of controversy as to whether or not she'll be competative, and whether or not its a good career move. She's earing a pretty good salary and is relatively competative in INDY, but looking at other INDY driver's histories (whom have been better than her) you'll notice that none of them have done well. As a matter of fact, the only open wheel racer who has started to climb the ranks is Juan Pablo Montoya, but I consider him to be a different class of driver since he'd done Formula 1. Anyhow there's no doubt that Danica will continue to hog the limelight and plenty of redneck fanboys will think she's cute, but how well will it be recieved to have such a high profile female driver in NASCAR? I'm sure there's other women in NASCAR at the moment, but I don't and chanes are that you don't know who they are. Two things are certain, however. 1, Danica has some twangy redneck music now on her website (http://www.danicaracing.com0/ and 2, I will watch maybe 1 full lower league NASCAR race this year, just to see how she's doing.

Fantastic Video!

Club4AG Las Vegas drift event!!! from Robert Strohmeyer on Vimeo.

Live and Learn

I've had to put driving on the backburner. With Jesse's wedding and Jason's bachelor party, I didn't have much time to do any events, or any money to do them for that manner. Since those events passed (and were tons of fun!) I was able to concentrate on getting ready for the 4AG drift competition at Primm (stateline Nevada). I told Naoki I'd do it if he towed me, and he agreed.

The car was down for a bit because it simply wouldn't start. Eventually I traced it down to the starter, and luckily I had a spare I bought about 4 years ago. I knew I'd use it someday! Anyhow once I got it running, I changed the engine oil and filer and just loaded the car up.

The event was interesting for several reasons. First, its the second drift competition I'd ever done. Second, it was out of state. Third, I had some friends coming to visit me so it was certainly added pressure to do well.

As usual, we had 3 runs to get it right, and the best of those 3 runs would be our score. I hadn't quite gotten the course down consistently by then, but figured I had nothing to lose. My first two runs were crap, but the third run was okay. I didn't feel too good about any of my runs, but at least I connected the third one. Once the event ended, it turned out that Alex V and white boy Mark took first and second, with another guy I didn't know taking third. Then Taka and John told me I missed third place by a few fractions of a point. I wasn't upset at all, because its still only the 2nd competition I'd ever done.

Really though, how could I be upset? I had a fantastic time in Vegas on Saturday night, I got to hang out with my good friends, and had some amazing visitors as well.

After the comp, John rode with me and helped me work out the course. I ended up with this:


Can't bee too unhappy with the weekend :)

Another in car:

Auto Shows

I dug up this old video I took at the Tokyo Auto Salon a few years ago. They had shows every 30 minutes with cute dancing girls to kickoff the launch of 3 new Mitsubishi vehicles. Yet anothing that that is better in Japan: Auto Shows.

Motorcycle Heaven

So a few weeks ago, I decided to take a trip down to San Diego to visit my good friends, Sid and Desiree. After eating a wonderful Octoberfest lunch, Sid asked me if I'd like to tag along to visit a motorcycle junkyard. While I'm not as familiar with motorcycles as I am with cars, I'm always interested in anything mechanical, so I said I'd love to go! I had no idea what I was in for, but thought it would be an educational experience nevertheless. Here is a brief tour of Stockers!
To say they have exhausts is an understatement.

What's amazing is how well organized everything is. These bins have engine specific parts in them, and there are even some engines lying around, labled and all.

This bin had make and models specific parts in it, but I loved the carbs :)

Sid and his buddy were looking for a gas tank that they could use for a custom project. So, they looked....
....and looked. As you can see, they have a lot of gas tanks. As a matter of fact, they completely line the walls of the entire building.

They also have wheels. I can only imagine if there was an AE86 shop like this somewhere.

More neatly labeled parts bins.

Old school Harley. Maybe someday.

This is more like it!