Old times

I wanted to update this old blog and let my readers know I upgraded to a self hosted blog here: http://www.chixwithtrix.com

Racer’s Road on the R1

Last Saturday Ian, Jason, and I went out to the country to ride. Here is my GoPro HD helmet-cam video of my ride on 1458 “Racer’s Road” with my R1.

Cupcake Meet 9

Cupcake meet 9, also known as the 2 year anniversary meet, had quite a showing of car enthusiasts this year on February 5th, 2011. The event was held at the Travis County Expo center in Austin and all kinds of stock and modified cars managed to fill up both outside and inside lots. The weather turned out to be very nice with a sunny day and decent temperatures.

Along with the car meet itself they also had drifting and stunt bikes. Event goers could even take rides in the drift cars. I was somewhat sad to see that both were located in the back of the complex and few attendees actually came back to support the drivers and riders. Despite that, it was great to see some old friends again. The meet was very enjoyable and I hope that the next Cupcake Meet will continue to grow and support the community.

As the sun was fading below the horizon the stunters continued to ride for the small crowd. In the light of a Nissan’s headlights, the riders did some of their best stunting of the day. The shooting condition was difficult to say the least. All of these photos were shot at 6400 ISO and 1/30th of a second shutter.

Late evening at Rio Bravo Motocross Park

Yesterday evening a friend and I decided to check out another Houston motocross park facility since we are always looking for new places to ride our dirt bikes. I brought my 5D Mark II along for fun to work on some low-light action photography. It was a cloudy evening and the sun was quickly setting so most of the photos were taken at ISO 3000 and higher. As far as the facility; everyone was super friendly and we will definitely be bringing our bikes out in the future! You can check out their website at: http://www.riobravomx.com

Over the handlebars I go!

Late in the day, and later I found my forks were badly messed up, I went around a rut, my front wheel plowed out and over the handlebars I went!

Volunteering at the local animal shelter

Went to volunteer to walk dogs and play with the cats today. Lots of animals there who need homes. One of the shelter cats decided to claim me while playing with the others. Too cute!

New Job!

I have some good news regarding the job front! A few weeks ago I found an automotive photographer job posting – submitted my resume and application, was called for an interview, and was hired on the spot!

My first posting is at a Porsche dealership, hell yeah! Basically I work for a company that offers turn-key car photography for dealerships for their website and online auctions. Show up, get keys for the cars, drive them to designated spot, take 23-27 photos of the interior and exterior, return the car to its spot, and move on to the next. So far I’ve played with a Ferrari F430, Ferrari 360 spider, Porsche GT3, and all kinds of other badass cars. My next posting is looking like a Ford/Lincoln dealership.

Trail riding in Austin

Last weekend Ian, his father, and I went to Hidden Falls Adventure Park for some trail riding fun. That place has some pretty crazy trails. After the CRF’s fork rebuild I was happy with its performance. Can’t wait to get on the track!

My bike is the red one, Ian's father's bike is the blue Yamaha TTR 225

Here is a GoPro vid from my helmet, nothing spectacular, just riding around having fun

The new toys

R1 Raven
-DynoJet power commander
-Aftermarket clutch handle
-Yoshimura slip on exhaust

CRF450

Holy blog update Batman!

So I’ve been MIA from my blog for months. Quick rundown of whats happened since the last post…

-Graduated college in August! Now have a Bachelor of Science in Radio Television and Film
-Still working at OfficeMax in Austin
-Picked up a new contract job in Houston working in a metal fab shop for irrigation cages
-Traded my Honda CBR 929 and Yamaha YFZ 450 for a 2005 Yamaha R1 Raven, hawt!
-Sold my Honda 400ex for a 2003 Honda CRF 450R dirt bike
-The car hauler was stolen

Pretty much just trying work hard and play harder!

Weekend of riding

My friends from elementary/high school visited from Houston this weekend towing a trailer full of bikes for a weekend of street and offroad riding. Had a really fun time, I’m loving my new gearing!
So much fun!

Jason's R6

Stephen's R1, Ian's CBR 600, My CBR 929 after running Lime Creek

Ian, Jason, Stephen taking a break from riding

Stephen and Ian out at Cross Creek on Sunday

Ian and Jason

Stephen catching some nice air in the background

Stephen does a wheelie on his dirt bike

Jason and Stephen tear it up on my quads

Exploring and Adventures

When I’m not at work or doing stuff for my summer classes I’m probably out on my bike. Since Ian and I got our motorcycle licenses and two bikes we’ve been hitting up all the cool spots and roads around Texas. We’ve lived in Austin for over four years and only now have we started to go up to Lake Travis and see what else Austin has to offer.

The first spot we found was totally by accident; we went for a ride up by the lake since there are good twistie roads around there and ended up on one of the best roads in Austin – Lime Creek! From Lime Creek there is a park that you can swim and camp at, on the weekdays its free to get in so we’ve been up there two times in the last few weeks. Its really refreshing to cool down in the lake after some hot riding. For this spot we usually ride 70 miles round trip or so.

Last weekend we came in to Houston to ride with some friends, Jason and Stephen, who have been riding for the last year or so. They took us their normal route plus some extra roads and it was a lot of fun. We got up at 6:30am to be out riding by 7:30am and the weather and scenery was actually quite nice, especially on 149. We hit up 249, 149, 362, 3090, and a few other roads I can’t remember. That was 250 miles round trip and about 6 hours of actual riding.

Taking a break off of 3090, all the bikes here

On 362 they had the road blocked off while these giant tanks heading to Arizona came through. They were huge!

Everybody getting photos of the big tanks

This weekend we decided to stay in Austin and try out a known motorcycle route around Lake Travis…all the way around. Came out to be about 150 miles round trip and it was very scenic and curvy. Austin has some awesome motorcycle roads! And of course we brought our swim gear just in case we found a swim spot to check out. Sure enough we did – south west of Austin we rode by Hamilton Pools, which was closed, but they directed us to the park that was a little ways down the road from them. After going a few miles down this bumpy, tiny road we ended up at the park just to find out there was over a mile of dirt road that needed to be traveled to get to the river beach parking area…plus a quarter mike hike from there. We decided to do it since what is life without some adventure. We rode our sport/race bikes down a dirt road for a few miles and got some interesting looks, but made it fine. The hike to the river beach was not too bad and the water in the river felt great. I even got some GoPro footage in the water!

Ian stands next to a 60ft cliff drop off to some beautiful rock climbing areas on the river. Was neat to see the tops of trees on the top of the cliff here.

I had to look over the edge of the cliff, so pretty!

Hiking down to the river, here you can see it in the background

The river swim spot

people swimming downstream

Ian cooling off in the water

Trying to get a photo of myself with the river in the background

The parking area a mile down the dirt road and yes, those are our bikes parked in the boonies

Got me a bicycle!

Ok…so its got more power than a bicycle and it a lot of fun to ride. Picked of a 2001 Honda CBR 929 with 20k miles. Awesome bike, good power, good gas mileage, just a good bike! Traded riding Ian’s 1998 CBR 600 and found that I liked my bike much more. Took a two day course to get my motorcycle license and that was actually a lot of fun. Had to ride around little Eliminator 125s, but it was a good way to learn and get better skill without having to gurt your own bike if you mess up.

My 929 and Ian's 600

OMG Busy

Wow, lets see where to start….

I bought a new car!
Well, not new, but an new used car. Got it about 2 weeks ago. A 2005 Toyota Matrix XRS, 6 speed manual, metallic black paint, sunroof, 60 something thousand miles. Not a bad little car – hauls lots of stuff since the rear seats fold down and the front passenger seat folds all the way down too! Its my first front wheel drive car, no torque, but revs to 8,300 RPM. Suspension isn’t all that bad either.

Sold the 95 240sx…it was my our last running RWD fun car. Got $3k for it which I was happy about. I miss it though. Haven’t been riding since we’ve been busy going in to Houston and other stuff on the weekends. Still working on selling the leftover car parts from my race car project.

A few weeks ago while picking up Avatar at Fry’s we ended up going home with a new Onkyo home theater system. Oops. I can say that we were looking into getting one for a while and this one was at the right price. Sound awesome!

My spring semester at UT finished last week. Now I only have one more summer semester left and I’m DONE! for now I’m working Mon-Fri 10am-7pm until I go back to school. I hate my job…but at least I have one. Saturday we spent it out at the outlaw field where Ian flew his 50cc electric for the first time. Ran into some trouble, but nothing too serious.

House stuff

I’ve been taking photos pf the pretty things around the house when I get a chance, here are the latest photos…

Roses

Cedar Waxwing in our front yard

Tree zard

Riding

Now that the YFZ is running again (albeit with clutch issues) and the Honda’s oil reservoir tank was tig’d back together Ian and I have been out to the track every weekend we can get free. This last session I completely cleared the first jump and landed on the flat part, I love my quad! Ian is getting much better through the corners even though he has a power and cornering disadvantage on the smaller/narrower 400ex. The YFZ’s rear brake continues not to work, so I can’t use it to my advantage in the corners, although my quad is wider. With the new exhaust and clutch the YFZ hauls ass!

Here are some videos of Ian and I on the track.
Cross Creek with new exhaust and clutch

Ian drifts/does donuts around me on my quad

Houston’s Three Palms river track, with old clutch and stock exhaust

Me drifting around on the YFZ

Sexy with the new exhaust

The latest RC event photos

These happened a couple weeks back, but here are the photo albums for TEFF (Texas Electric Flight Festival) here in Austin, and the Houston ProBro. Got some excellent photos!

TEFF album: http://www.rc-tvproductions.com/teff/index.html

HoBro Album: http://www.rc-tvproductions.com/hobro2010/index.html

Long road

The YFZ is running and has started on the break-in. Wanted to post a little timeline of what has happened to the engine since I started the rebuild 3 months ago.

After the first break in run Ian and I went on track for some fun, here is the video of last weekend’s track day on both quads.

Found the metal shavings

out of chassis before rebuild

Rebuilding

Going together

Break in tome on track!

End of a good day

She’s Alive!

My YFZ450 started for the first time today after I rebuilt the engine! So exciting! Turned out what was causing the engine to backfire and not start was a mis-aligned shim under the cam buckets which was causing the valve to be held open. Fixed that and she started up like a charm. Need to put the chassis back together and get out to the track for breakin now.

Shim shifter off center

Properly timed

Video of it running

Powerful song

Today I was sitting waiting for another class to start and decided I would check out some of the band Puscifer’s (Maynard James Keenan) music. Came across the song “Momma Sed” and was really moved by it. Powerful lyrics, simple folk/country style guitar and wonderful bass support. An excellent package, I wish they would play it on the radio. Enjoy