Stijn!!

[GH85Carrera]

We had a water well drilled for watering the yard and most of the flower beds. It is down to 220 feet, with the 220 volt 1.5 HP pump at 200 feet. 18 gallons per minute flow. We use city water for the house and some of my wife's plants that don't like wet leaves. They get drip irrigation.

The former city and county leaders had some real forward vision, and they put in a lot of large lakes. All filled with runoff from rain. We have plenty of water, but the capacity to process the water at peak demand is the issue. We need to add more processing plants.

[ted]

18 gpm I would be selling water to my neighbors.

Do you even have to bother with drip irrigation or still just overhead water?
Also how large is your property, is a well necessary with less than .25 acre?

I had heard some northern states have a $35 monthly charge for unlimited water.

I wonder where is the best place for a Gardner to live in the USA?
Someplace with a mild climate, good soil and a good well.

Also some gardeners think everything they plant has to bear some fruit or something to eat.
We planted more of a scented garden, flowers mostly and plants we saw walking around the SD Zoo and Balboa Park.
Couple peach trees and a blood orange tree.

[GH85Carrera]

We have 3/4 of an acre. My wife is a Master Gardner and she just grows unusual flowering plants. Nothing is food related, unless it is for the bees, butterflies, and humming birds, and other critters.

That is just part of some of the flowers in the front yard. The koi pond in the back yard is full of plants as well.

I put in the well 22 years ago to water the yard. 99 spray heads in 12 sections. Even in the dry periods I can water enough to keep everything green. She has some plants that don't like wet leaves, so in those areas we use drip irrigation. The water well has no pressure tank, it was put in for lawn irrigation. The valve opens up, and the pump starts, and is never pressurized more than the flow rate.






She changes out plants back there all the time. We can see the pond from the kitchen and dining room, and living room.

This is the koi pond.

[GH85Carrera]

Wow, super nice to be at 71 degrees in late November. It is nice out.

My business partner called and asked if I could pump the brakes as he bled the brakes on his mom's car. Easy job, and nice weather, so sure. She has a 2004 Lexus grandma car. I don't knw what model it is but it is the four door grandma-mobile. It even has a tissue dispenser! After 100K miles the brakes were pulsing some. So all new pads and rotors. Quick and easy.

My business partner is single, and he owns 2 cars, one F-150 Pickup, one motorcycle, three scooters, and 1/2 an airplane. He admits he needs to sell some vehicles. One is a Miata, and he drives it a few times per year to put miles on it and keep it alive. A RAV4 that is just dirt cheap and reliable. The three scooters are from when his daughter lived at home, and they would go around the gated community to the community pool. Someone gave him one scooter to fix up and then just handed him the title and said keep it. His motorcycle is some big Kawasaki road cruiser. The F-150 is a pure work truck, but he really does not need it anymore.

Ah well, as a different buddy has said before, not my pig, not my farm.

[ted]

Nice garden!
3/4 acre Is a lot to garden.
You must do a little entertaining outside.

Is that a short electric fence around the water features?
I use one to keep racoons away.

Ever heard the pick up line
Fulfill my fantasy, paint my house.
Lucky your wife likes to work outside and is a Master Gardner.
My wife does the inside, I do the outside.

Mine doesn't garden but she is supportive of my racing.

[GH85Carrera]

Her main hobbies are gardening and knitting. She can't just sit and watch a movie or TV, she has some knitting projects going on, in her had as she watches. On our recent trip to Arkansas, she brought he knitting along and made two hats for friends in the time we were waiting in the car for the group, or in spare time at the hotel. Never while moving.

The stuff around the koi pond is for large birds. We had a great blue Heron back there a few times and it snacked on a few hundred bucks worth of fish. The posts are just copper grounding rods, that I drilled a horizontal hole in near the top. Then a long line of fishing line, in a star pattern. It seems to work, as the birds see the lines and supposed to be startled or afraid their wings will get tangled in it. The Japanese use it in their koi ponds is what she heard. I just sourced the copper rods, drilled the holes and helped string it up. She is out there measuring the salt level in the water to keep it high enough to reduce the algae, and not too high to hurt the fish. We top it off with the well water so no chlorine.

When I go off to track days she never asks what it costs, and I never mention it. I do not do any racing, just have fun on the track, and passing is allowed only on the straights and with the driver getting passed doing a point by to tell the faster car what side to pass on. With an old analog 200 HP street car I get passed a lot by the modern cars with 500+ HP and computers doing the real car control. I have just as much fun.


This is Charlotte Superspeedway. Me at 5,200+RPM in 5th. My great claim to fame is I passed a real 911 GT2 on track. I will admit it was driven by the guys wife, and her main goal was to not crash. But I did manage a pass!

[ted]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

My great claim to fame is I passed a real 911 GT2 on track. I will admit it was driven by the guys wife, and her main goal was to not crash. But I did manage a pass!

Yeah the racoons here chow down at fish ponds.
They like to dig up my lawn like a wedge club in a sand trap then clean the grubs on the pool step.

My wife is passionate about working as a staff accountant for a major hospital.
At least her time consuming passion pays well. lol

My most unexpected pass was start of the 2nd lap.
That day my buddy's 962 was not boosting as quick as it should.
This old IMSA GTO racecar is as analog as your 911.
Skip ahead to 2:10.

[GH85Carrera]

Laguna Secca is a fun track. Easy to see ahead to most corners except the corkscrew.

There is a track near Denton, TX called Eagles Canyon. 2.7 miles of fun. Super smooth, and all the track is cambered to one side or the other, no street like crown to the road. The one exception is going down into the canyon. It is a large off camber, corner 8 story drop into another corner. Hit it just right, and it is a blast. If you are a bit wide from the double apex corner preceding it, and in my car I was suddenly looking out the driver's side window going sideways. Really a blast.

[GH85Carrera]

The seat-belts in my El Camino are worn out again. The driver's side get lots of use, and the edges of the webbing is frayed. I replaced them 150,000 miles ago and the damn things wear out. The passenger side is original and has never been replaced. The center belt almost never gets used, and is rolled up under the center arm rest.

There is a local company, just a few miles down the road from me called Seat Belt Planet. The can reweb the old mechanisms, or sell me all new belts and retractors for $100 less. I bet 99.99% of their customers are on-line or mail order. Since they are so close, I just drove over and walked in.

The build everything right there, and have certified seat belt manufacturing on site. If they do a good as a job as I suspect, I will talk to them about the rear seatbelts on my 911. I would like to have the plastic parts replaced in the 911 to make them look better.

[ted]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

Laguna Secca is a fun track. Easy to see ahead to most corners except the corkscrew.

There is a track near Denton, TX called Eagles Canyon. 2.7 miles of fun. Super smooth, and all the track is cambered to one side or the other, no street like crown to the road. The one exception is going down into the canyon. It is a large off camber, corner 8 story drop into another corner. Hit it just right, and it is a blast. If you are a bit wide from the double apex corner preceding it, and in my car I was suddenly looking out the driver's side window going sideways. Really a blast.

Sounds pretty hairy but you got thru it.
All tracks are easy the slower you go.
Challenge of your heavy 220hp 911 is never to lose momentum.
Could take your car half a lap or longer to get it back.

Airport tracks are flat and easy to see a complete turn in advance.
But runways and taxiways are crowned and surfaces vary so challenging still.

Laguna is not flat so a few areas are hidden by terrain.
The front Straight and T1 at Laguna unsighted as well.
I use the top of the 3rd telephone pole to aim my car over the hill.

Approaching T6 cresting the hill you don't see the turn till you are already downshifting and aim at the apex/point of compression.

Corkscrew yes unsighted but speeds are slow.
The braking area for the corkscrew end of the back straight also unsighted.

T9 is behind your left shoulder kind of harder to see with a HANS and helmet containment chair.
I've done 3 Laguna Seca track walks.
I get 400 laps in on the simulator before a race weekend so that helps too.
A while back it was my favorite track.

DE or racing, street car or race car.
Completely different levels of commitment, but all of it is fun.


Happy Turkey day.

[GH85Carrera]

Roebling Road, near Savannah. GA is dead flat, and a fun track. It is a sweeper after sweeping corner, and more sweepers, then a straight. It is the middle track on my track decals on my car. The biggest challenge there was the oppressive heat. It was 90+ degrees and 90+% humidity 130+ heat index. I was soaked in sweat and drank 25 bottles of water. At Laguna Secca I was standing in the garage and thought I feel a bit cold, I am going to stand in the sun. And it was July! It was almost like cheating to be that cool.

Hallett is a fun and technical track. I have done it enough times that I know the lines. I had a new Ferrari with a beginner driver behind me. He had hired an instructor, and I was slowly leaving them. The instructor even told the guy, follow the 911, and take the same lines he is taking. By the end of the day he was able to get past me with over twice the HP and modern brakes and traction control and milisecond shifts. I was having more fun in my analog car. I have driven a new 911S and Cayman S around that track. With the PDK it is just astonishing. I can brake way deeper, and the transmission reads my mind. And the power level is astonishing.

[ted]

Laguna can get cold and foggy too.
Most of our tracks are in the low or high desert.
So in the summer Laguna is the best place to be.

In the desert I've tested in morning when it got to 100 by 10am.
The car was heat soaked, too hot to rest your bare hand on the roll cage.
F that I'm 65 and even with my cool shirt pumping ice water around my torso and the helmet blower it would cramp my body in no time.

I could yammer all day about analog cars compared to Nanny cars.
20 years ago I thought should I follow the trends and get a new GT3 and embrace the PDK and the nannies?
Then like you I realized doing so would take away some major parts of driving that I enjoy and mostly do well.
Also I can do a lot of the work myself on my old car.

My analog slogan.
Without the ability to manipulate each wheel independently, Its a fun challenge to try and be your own, ABS, traction control and stability control.
or
Every time your Nanny light flashes thank a software engineer in Germany for saving you and your car.

Now I do like the nannies on my dually, makes towing much safer.

[GH85Carrera]

About 30 years ago it finally dawned on me that to go really fast was going to take buying a new car, and spending a lot of money. That is when I got rid of my race tires, and trailer and just drove my car to the track, had fun on the track, and drove it home. Even if I won FTD it was just another trophy, for the attic.

At one of the tracks, I had an instructor that kept telling me to hit the curbs to have a better line. I said NO, I am not going to do that, I am going to drive this car home just as is. I see no reason to risk bending suspension, wheels or stressing the suspension mount points to gain a 10th of a second on an event that is not even timed, I am here to have fun, not hurt the car or me. He said he understood and he would take that into consideration for future students driving a street car.

[ted]

Yeah I don't bounce off curbs/tall gators either.
On the race car it upsets wide slicks and the max rebound front shocks.
Rumble strips are no problem.

On my street vette I could ride up a gator on a slow corner but doing so with 13 inch wide slicks unsettles the race car too much.

Seeing cars airborne bouncing off gators is not impressive to me.
I was watching a run group of younger drivers in import cars.
Many thought it was cool to clip the corner apexes make a puff of dust and spray some rocks onto the track.

[GH85Carrera]

For sure in F1 clipping the corners as much as possible is faster. But the drivers don't worry about the cost to repair and .010 of a second is HUGE to them. I just like getting around the track safely and with no damage except wearing off some of that pesky excess rubber on tires, and brake pads.

[flipper35]

Happy Turkey Day!

I would rather have fun at the expense of going faster with a PDK et al. Manual and no power assist and you can tell a lot about what the car is doing.

[GH85Carrera]

Driving the new cars around Hallett was almost like a video game. Just steer and apply brakes or gas as needed. No thinking, the transmission will drop two gears as I hit the brakes, and be at the perfect RPM as I exit the corner. I can see the appeal, as the G forces and power are amazing but I felt somehow disconnected from the car.

The electric steering and every other computer aid do their jobs perfectly and no doubt I was way faster at any section than in my car.

I always wished I could have someone like Sabine Schmidt drive my car with me in the passenger seat around Nürburgring just to show me how fast it can really go.

[ted]

I hope the new cars have the left foot brake with gas pedal over lap issues resolved.
These new cars are made to be driven with 2 feet.
Left foot always covering the brake, what else does it have to do?

So long ago on an AX track I took a 996 out and anytime the nanny detected any brake pedal pressure the engine would automatically drop to idle.
Frustrating as left foot braking is the holy grail for car control.
Many pro drivers learned car control as kids left foot braking go karts.
You just have to take the time to develop your left brake sensitivity.
Left foot brake your Elko on the way to the nursery, its fun lol.

I left foot brake and throttle steer and paddle shift on my simulator all the time.
I get the new car feel in my $8k simulator much less expensive than a GT3 lol.

[GH85Carrera]

Yea, simulators can be fun. And just hit reset and the smashed up car or blown up engine is fixed for free and instantly, and never a tire budget.

I have thought about getting some components like the steering wheel and pedals and a chair. My biggest issue is space on my desk. I would need to completely change my desk, and it is an expensive L shaped desk and storage cabinets. I will just go to the garage and drive a real analog 911 instead.

[ted]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

I will just go to the garage and drive a real analog 911 instead.

or the elko too lol