Cowering Indoors :(

We had some storms Saturday night and some places got hammered pretty good.  I was going to go an autocross on Sunday but the weather report was ambivalent.  The rain was probably over, but there could be storms and they could be severe.  So I was scared to go.  And the weather was fine, there was no more rain or storms and I missed a fine day.  And I was very out of sorts about it.  I wouldn't talk on the phone to my girlfriend and it upset her greatly and needlessly.

At my car club meeting last Wednesday, the president announced that he had sent out an email about our track weekend but no one had signed up yet.  I didn't get that email, in fact, I am not getting much at all in the way of emails pertaining to the club.  Am I getting excluded on purpose or is his distribution list not as good as he thinks it is?  The attendance at the meeting was the lowest I have ever seen.  Are people bailing because of the presence of the butch dyke treasurer or because of the crappy economy and sky high gas prices?

Mr. Family Friendly is moving away and is no longer a part of the club.  How many allies of his are still in the club?  Why should I care, if I got elected twice, the second time with the current flattop haircut the probably tips everyone off to the fact that I am a butch dyke?   What if I started my own rival club- for adults only, where we are fucking on the hoods of our cars?  How cool would that be?  Where could we go the next time the gf is in town to do this and not get arrested?

I am going to the track weekend, not only because it will probably be my last.  I spent almost $1000 on tires and wheels just for this weekend. But I haven't signed up yet.  But I will.  And I want to go to the Corvette Club track days at our track.

The guy with the MR2 Spyder was in today, waving it in my face.  I told him about the autocross that will be at our local track.  Maybe he will run it and decide to keep it or he will find a buyer for it and then I can stop thinking about owning that car.  Or maybe he will bring it and run it and let me run it in a fun run and I will fall in love and have to have it.

This week someone is supposed to come and look at my daily driver and if she buys it, the Mustang will be my daily driver.  So now I am calculating, can I just get studded snow tires and drive it year round?  Or should I be sensible and trade it for a new Focus (the hatchback is back!) and just have one car?  Unless I buy the Spyder for a fun car.  Which would probably be a bad idea since I am heading towards a probably early retirement due to economic conditions or possible blindness?  Or just keep the Mustang as a daily driver and have the Spyder as the fun car?  Lots of time to think about this stuff.  Until time runs out this fall.  What am I going to drive to Little Rock?  How badly will I behave while I am there?

This car is so gorgeous and  would probably be a very decent autocrosser:

See?  It's like a baby Porsche!

You Never Know Which One is the Last

Someone is going to look at my daily driver and maybe buy it next week.

So I'd be down to one car, the Mustang.  If I decided to keep it through the winter, I'd have an excuse to buy more tires and wheels (studdable snow tires and cheap alloys) and have my first Muscle Car Winter.

I'll feel bad seeing her all muddy and salty in the winter, but I guess it can't be helped.  Some people do drive their Mustangs year round and it's not a big deal if you are careful.

And then I can finish wearing out my autocross and track tires next year.

What You Looking At, Frat Boy?

The night Chaz was on Letterman, the girlfriend was in the house and made sure we watched it.  So I've been reading some articles about it and one thing he said in one article I ran across stood out for me.

Since he's transitioned, he is treated better by everybody, especially men.  This made me remember something.

When I was in college in Iowa City, Iowa, I wasn't wearing men's clothes or wearing my hair especially short.  But I was wearing the butchest women's clothes I could find.  I did not look feminine.

Sometimes, when passing a young man on the street, he'd look me in the eye and spit on the sidewalk.  I wondered what it was with men that they seemed to need to spit so much.  I wondered if it was a sign of contempt for me, someone they didn't even know but probably assumed was gay.  This never happened anywhere else, only in this college town.  I never mentioned it to any one else, to see if men in Iowa City were spitting in front of everybody.

Maybe you mellow with age because I don't seem to struggle so much with depression anymore and I don't notice so much hostility or else don't take it so personally if I do notice.  I wear men's shirts and pants and even wear a man's tie at work now.  I wear my hair very short and get many compliments from people on it, both men and women.

So either I've gotten used to it or the world has or both.

How many people will look at Chaz and think, hm, I'd like to be treated better too?   I wonder how many butches will go for it because of Chaz?  Where are the butch celebrities for us to look up to?

Stop Eating My Posts

Saw a car with yellow headlights last night on I80.

It was a Porsche 911, the kind with a whale tail spoiler.

It passed me and I saw it again in Iowa City pulled over by a cop.  I wondered if he was going too fast or if it was because of his yellow headlights.

He passed me again later and I thought it would be amusing if I saw him pulled over again, but I didn't.

Really? Me?

I work for a government agency and I work with the public.  It's a hectic and action packed day.  Customers can amaze you with their stupidity or with their heroism.  You see people that are easy to judge harshly, or to pity and many who just simply humble you.

On my way to my car after work, a pretty young woman pushing a baby stroller and walking a little white dog came up to me and said she just wanted to say I was the best employee she ever saw.  She said she was often frustrated when she had to come to our office because of the long wait times in line but I was always friendly.  Me?  Always friendly?

How can you hate your job when people say things like that to you?

Brake Job

I replaced the rear rotors and brake pads on my Mustang today.  I even rented the brake caliper tool set from O'Reilly's Auto Parts, which is supposed to make this job a breeze.

I could have taken it in to have it done but the place that did my oil change and pointed out the need for new rear brakes suggested a Brembo kit.  Expensive and flashy, and I am not about the looks and I am sure Brembo brakes perfom just fine, so long as they aren't more prone to warping because of the slotting and drilling, but I'm very happy with my plain rotors.  And the ceramic pads.

When I look for brake parts for my 08 Bullitt on Tire Rack they suggest Brembo kits.  No pad repacements, no rotor replacements.  When I ask them for brake stuff for a 08 Mustang GT, they offer me plain rotors and ceramic pads.  So I ordered them.  I thought I could get the shop to put them in and then I decided, no, I am going to do it.  I watched some YouTube videos and read some forum posts.  It didn't seem that bad.

So I got the car out, expecting this all to take an hour, maybe two, tops.  I put it in first gear, put a brick behind one of the front wheels, and went to work.

The calipers aren't that bad to take off.  But the 15 mm bolts holding the caliper bracket on were a bitch to get off.  I ended up breaking them open by banging on the wrench with a rubber mallet.  Taking the old rotors off is a breeze and putting new ones on is no big deal.  The retaining clip had already been removed per the instructions that came with my Kazera wheels I use for autocross.

Now to depress the piston in the caliper.  This is necessary because new pads are much thicker than old ones, which is why they are worn out.  I didn't think they looks all than worn out, but what do I know?  They looked about 5 mm thick and the one YouTube guy said 3 mm is when they should be replaced.

That guy also made using the caliper tool look easy.  He just did it with his hands, twirling one part back and then cranking the screw down to push the piston in.

Well, I was a little baffled as to how to assemble the tool, since there is a plate with a hole in it that sits against one side of the calipers while a round thing with two pegs fits into the piston head and a screw pushed the piston in.  Everything is on YouTube and I did find a video which showed a guy flipping the T handle to one side and putting the plate on over that end.

It was hellishly hard to turn the piston.  The man in that video must have had super human strength, which I do not.  I did manage to find leverage against the hub as I rested the caliper on top of a jack stand and slowly get the piston to turn in.  If you don't turn it in far enough, you can't get it over the new brake pads.  It has to be lined up just so, to fit over a notch on the pad.  It really hurt my hand to push on that T handle.

I pumped the brakes back up after getting everything back together and put away.   I went for a ride.  The car moved, the brakes worked, first at slow speeds and then stopping from 30 and then 40 mph.  There was a high pitched noise that seemed to go away after pulling away from a stop sign, so I guess I'll have to watch for that.

So I did a very butch thing of working on my car.  It took five hours.  Mechanics earn every cent they get and they also have nice power tools to make taking bolts off a lot easier.  I am exhausted and my hands hurt.  I'm still a little worried about whether the job will hold up and should at least have the torque on the bolts checked.  I want to get the OEM rotors machined and get some OEM pads to put back on with them.

And I'll have a shop change them back.