What did Oppo do for the holidays?

"Wrong Wheel Drive (41%)" (rduncan5678)
01/02/2019 at 17:20 • Filed to: None

Seems like a lot of people take some time off from work or whatever they do around Christmas/New Years and go on vacations or just have some quality time home. Anyone do anything fun or exciting? Here is a rundown of my week and a half of adventuretime since I hadnt posted much while I was out and about:

I flew into Philadelphia Friday morning and took an adventure on SEPTA, NJ Transit, and Uber to get home. First weekend being back East, I checked out a sweet retro arcade in Redbank NJ called “Yestercades” on Saturday. Much fun was had playing Missile Command, Asteroids, Area 51, Air Hockey, and more for a few hours. Also that day, I had my mandatory Porkroll egg and cheese on an everything bagel as well as some pizza since neither of those things exist at home in Cali.

My rental for the week was a 2016 Honda Civic from Turo that was excellent in every way. Pretty spacious and infinitely different from all other Civics I’ve experienced including my old ‘99, my girlfriend’s current ‘05, and a friend’s ‘10 that I have driven. It was nothing to write home about really but it was much more engaging than the similar offerings from Nissan, Toyota, and GM. It was perfect for the trip with lots of highway slogs to see and do everything.

Then on Sunday I did go karting and had a family holiday gathering.

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Monday and Tuesday were Christmas Eve and Christmas for more family stuff. Then Wednesday, girlfriend and I flew home eventually getting home exhausted and glad to be home in our own bed with no further responsibilites. Thursday I eventually got around to skiing for the day at Big Bear.

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Friday was going to be my first surf lesson but that didn’t pan out due to the weather so Friday and Saturday turned out to just be rest days instead and we just hung around local and did lots of eating and watching Netflix and Miata shopping online. Sunday turned out to be an exciting day though since I finally got around to my surf lesson!

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Then on New Years Eve, I spent my morning going out to Palm Springs to check out a potential replacement for my Miata. This car is still up in the air due to the title issues. But the seller is currently working on getting everything required to register the car in CA problem free, so we shall see where that goes. It passed smog so it just needs a brake and lamp inspection, CHP VIN inspection, and then a PPI before I would want to buy it. It is definitely an excellent Miata and a great price considering the condition and mileage. The title makes it less of a value proposition but its something I dont mind dealing with for a disposable track car.

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New years day was then a recovery day from the long day before and then the start to real life again. Very excited for my REAL winter vacation to begin though on the 18th! That trip is finalized for the most part with everything booked and sorted out. That will be three weeks of being focused on just skiing so I will feel much more relaxed than running around doing 1000 different things. It will be a real road trip for the STi as well, hopefully making full use of the AWD and snow tires to make the adventure special.

DISCUSSION (28)

facw > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%)
01/02/2019 at 17:25

Just hanging out with the family at my parents’ house. Nothing exciting to report here.

lone_liberal > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%)
01/02/2019 at 17:30

Not nearly as much as you did. We hosted Christmas Eve and Christmas for my parents and my wife’s family respectively and we went to a college basketball game on New Year’s Eve but other than that just hanging around and getting house stuff done.

Oh, and I also replaced the fuel pressure sensor on the DD so the CEL and code P0193 are no more!

Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) > lone_liberal
01/02/2019 at 17:32

That sounds like a much more wonderful time! I certainly was feeling overextended during most of the time, especially while back East visiting family and friends. It was necessary but so stressful to coordinate it all. Being home and just chilling at least a few days was so so nice.

The Crazy Kanuck; RIP Oppositelock > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%)
01/02/2019 at 17:33

I worked. Where I work is by a big ski resort, so during chirstmas break (Dec 21 - Jan 6) it is very busy.

Highlander-Datsuns are Forever > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%)
01/02/2019 at 17:38

I went skiing as much as possible. I lost track of number of times I’ve been skiing. I finished installing mud flaps on my car and washed the car once.

I also bought two traps for a pack rat living in the attic of my house. Also took the dog for several walks.

Review of the 2018/2019 blizzard bona fid and updat ed review on Head Kore 105's coming.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%)
01/02/2019 at 17:53

I did a bunch of plumbing for my mom’s kitchen and bathroom, and did a front brake job on the Galaxie. And made some meat pies.

promoted by the color red > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%)
01/02/2019 at 17:56

Visited my family & friends and got my new phone sorted. Spent a lot of time doing nothing, which is nice after an action-packed week.split between training, swapping cars, and helping someone move.

I also found the source of the rattling in my Miata : one of the mechanics replacing the soft top left a screw driver bit in the sunvisor. Naturally it fell out and lodged itself between the passenger seat & the console.

Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) > Highlander-Datsuns are Forever
01/02/2019 at 18:14

I saw that the ski lift that got stuck and had to be evacuated was at Whitefish and thought you might have been stuck on there haha . You happen to be there that day?

Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) > promoted by the color red
01/02/2019 at 18:15

Probably easiest to remove the seat in order to get that bit out. Thankfully the interior of a Miata is easy enough to completely disassemble!

Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
01/02/2019 at 18:15

mmm meat pies!

SPAMBot - Horse Doctor > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%)
01/02/2019 at 18:21

I drove back from Denver yesterday with a 102 fever and no sleep the night before. That was not super awesome.

Rental car review: Infiniti Q60 AWD: Meh AF but was able to fit a mountain bike with one wheel removed and the seat folded down.

Other than that, had a great time in CO!

Highlander-Datsuns are Forever > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%)
01/02/2019 at 18:28

That was Saturday, I was not up there on Saturday, thank god. That lift is the only lift that I don’t like ridding because the one spot where it is 200' over the cliffs. It starts and stops a lot because it is a swift moving fixed grip triple and folks have trouble loading. Man that is my worst nightmare.

It took 3 hours to belay all the people off the lift. It’s worse too because once on the ground you are at the top of a gnarly cliff band!

Spamfeller Loves Nazi Clicks > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%)
01/02/2019 at 18:33

Stressed about dealing with the super-racist family-by-marriage, mostly.

And the usual end of year cleaning and prep work. I’m nowhere near done with cleaning because of what a shitshow this year has been, but, I at least made some progress.

Which I promptly reversed cleaning up other areas. But hey at least those were clean!

Until I started the next year prep stuff, setting progress back even further. Before adding in my WK stuff. BUT I MADE AN EFFORT AT LEAST.

Just posted on the website and let my customers know that after being closed for orders nearly half of last year, the doors are at least mostly open again. Of course, my critical suppliers are still leaving me looking like a moron. One of them has joined in the trade war and won’t ship to the US now, the other is either dicking me around or overbooked for 12 months, and choice three refuses to agree to the QA/QC checks required on the parts ( very expensive PCBs.) Then my front line suppliers notified me the week before Christmas that two absolutely critical components with no suitable alternate part are currently backordered up to 60 days and this isn’t expected to clear any time soon.

Add to this that I literally just found out my front line m achine shop abruptly closed up without warning. And didn’t call me. So now I have to find out who their attorney is, since obviously they aren’t answering the normal phones, and they currently have the only extant reference master for the SSJ’s pistons in prep for a master rebuild . (Yes. They’re machined from scratch out of solid billets of specialty alloy. What, you think it can go 250k miles on 2168 or 4130? HA!) Worse, they ALSO did a lot of the cooling components for the computer systems, because they were the only guys in town that had low volume sk iving in house.

But at least the job I’m hoping for is still in progress () and I might actually get to do Readers vs. Writers this year.

Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) > SPAMBot - Horse Doctor
01/02/2019 at 18:55

Staying awake had to have been trouble during that experience! I kind of want to pick up mountain biking again some day but I might as well wait for the Woolsey fire damage to heal first. Plenty of other places to go I guess but that area is definitely the closest to home.

I know the Q40 I drove was pretty alright, not a bad car at all. Definitely pretty nice for eating up highway miles. The Q60 has to be better but its probably a way more expensive vehicle in general. How many days did you end up skiing, just the one?

SPAMBot - Horse Doctor > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%)
01/02/2019 at 19:21

There is really great biking in the Pasadena area and an ok trail or two in PV. You can prob find a place to rent a demo bike and go every once in a while. It’s a lot of fun but I’m super rusty. Hopefully I can get out more now. We just skied the one day and went tubing the next. We planned to go ice skating but it was too cold so we said screw it haha

The Q60 was ultra base and didn’t even have heated seats (it had THREE screens that could all display what music you were playing, for some reason.) It was pretty quick but cost cutting was evident everywhere. Plus, the suspension was super stiff but generally gave no feedback. I was hoping it was tuned to be more of a GT car. The other issue is it tracked grooves/ruts in the road really bad. Like, I would be going straight and the car would just veer one way or the other super erratically. The steering was super heavy but incredibly numb, even in normal mode, which was tiring after a few hours. If you are looking for a 300 HP coupe, an EB mustang is better in literally every way.

I pulled off in southern Utah and took a 25 min power nap . That helped a lot. I was pretty much good to go until I hit the horrible Vegas-LA traffic. But I stopped for gas and moving around / chugging a Gatorade got me the rest of the way home.

Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) > SPAMBot - Horse Doctor
01/02/2019 at 19:37

Demo bike, pshhh its all about sub $100 cl finds when it comes to bikes. I loved my simple hard tail that I picked up from cl for $75. With proper tires on it, it was great fun on most trails. Only downhill rocky stuff sucked because of the lack of suspension. I ended up selling it for a profit at $120 though so I was pretty happy not trying to bring it out with me in the move. I can’t pick up another expensive hobby though right now so I’d rather avoid it entirely and just hike lol. It is fun to cover way more distance on a bike though.

That LA-Vegas traffic I have heard is the worst. Thankfully I’ve gotten lucky every time I have done it so far. It has taken right around 4 hours each time, just kind of boring and feels slow at 80mph.

SPAMBot - Horse Doctor > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%)
01/02/2019 at 19:43

Both of mine are hardtails. My old bike is probably at the end of it’s life, though. It’s been ridden really hard, for a long time and has been crashed a lot. Something usually breaks every time I ride it lol. But if you can get a CL bike that is pretty tough, that is a good way to go.

The vegas traffic can be really bad but I can usually time it ok. Last night though, it was 40-90 mph accordion traffic for like 200 miles. except for the 5 times traffic completed stopped for no recognizable reason -_-

Honeybunchesofgoats > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%)
01/02/2019 at 19:43

I spent most of Christmas with my girlfriend’s parents. He father had surgery, so she stayed behind. On both legs of my flights, the attendants gave me free gin, and I went through Dulles to Philadelphia and had the delightful discovery that Dulles is 90% smoking rooms. It was the best trip I’ve taken in a while.

Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) > SPAMBot - Horse Doctor
01/02/2019 at 20:03

I cant even remember the last time I mountain biked. Probably been more than 2 years. Arent most trails in Socal really steep? I have noticed that while hiking that there arent a whole lot of rolling hills around just punishing climbs. Lemme know when you get around to biking and I’ll try to join some day. I’d love to do lift served downhill biking since that seems like fun but that also seems super dangerous to my risk adverse self lol.

Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) > Honeybunchesofgoats
01/02/2019 at 20:08

That flight from DC to Philly is by far the shortest commercial flight I have ever been on a few years ago . It also sucked how turbulent it was because the plane never even got above 10,000 feet so it was perpetual takeoff and landing for a half hour of torture.

Honeybunchesofgoats > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%)
01/02/2019 at 20:12

I didn’t even expect drinks service, which made the attendant telling me “it doesn’t matter” when I went to pay for my gin all the more wonderful. I think it was about as short as the flight I took from Edinburgh to Dublin, but that plane almost crashed, so it was a lot better by comparison.

SPAMBot - Horse Doctor > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%)
01/02/2019 at 22:44

I’ll let you know! Maybe I’ll have my old bike fixed by then and you can borrow it. There are a lot of gnarly trails but surely there are a few rolling single tracks. DH always seems like fun but I do like technical uphill

ranwhenparked > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%)
01/02/2019 at 23:24

Was off for 11 days straight, went up to see family in Pennsylvania for much of it, then south to Virginia for a bluegrass concert.

pip bip - choose Corrour > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%)
01/03/2019 at 01:52

a few days in Melbourne over my summer break, otherwise nothing but getting up at 9.30/10am

Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) > SPAMBot - Horse Doctor
01/03/2019 at 11:44

What is wrong with that bike? I can help with fixing the bike in return for a borrowing session!

SPAMBot - Horse Doctor > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%)
01/03/2019 at 12:05

Right now, it needs a new front wheel (or complete re-spoke), the front derailleur is bent from a crash so you really can’t change the front gears on the fly, there is something bad going on with the headset (from another crash), and it just generally needs a full tune-up. Oh, and new tires wouldn’t hurt. It has been repurposed as my beach bike the past few years so none of those issues really mattered for riding 1 mile each way on residential streets. But to make it safe on a trail, some to all of those need to be addressed haha. Except the wheel. It is currently non operational due to a few spokes that decided they couldn’t handle riding 1 mile on the street :|

Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) > SPAMBot - Horse Doctor
01/03/2019 at 13:17

Haha so yeah it has a few issues. Must have been some gnarly crashes to bend the front derailleur. I think the only damage I have ever done to a bike has just popped tires and messed up wheels and brakes.

RAN WHEN PARKED I KNOW WHAT I HAVE would be the proper title for the ad selling that bike.

SPAMBot - Horse Doctor > Wrong Wheel Drive (41%)
01/03/2019 at 13:42

EXCLENT CONDITEN!!!

The front derailleur wasn’t that bad of a crash. There was just a poorly positioned rock when the bike hit the ground that struck it just right. I ripped the rear derailleur off at least twice and finally made a custom bracket that has been bulletproof. It’s old, has been ridden very hard, but I have a lot of good memories with that bike with no real injuries.