Big boi being relative here, but with the other two cars in our household being a 3 series and a Buick Encore, the C6 with its 6.2L LS3 counts as a big boi indeed, and what a good boy it is! I forgot how much I absolutely adore the burbles and pops of its exhaust.

Unfortunately, my car insurance requires a 5 day waiting period before they'll allow me to put collision coverage back on it. It's going to be a hard wait until Friday to drive it again. Anyways, stopped by the park on the (careful) drive home to nab a couple pics!

I scored these sweet puffy camp shoes at my local REI last week. This would otherwise be a rather boring and completely not noteworthy except for the reason for the return on the tag.

HAH! Sorry guy, your loss is my gain!

MrsMTB has apparently been planning this little surprise for me for quite awhile. She asked me to take yesterday off work so we could drive to "Ann Arbor" for something fun.

"Ann Arbor" turned out to be Michigan Speedway, and something fun was the "extreme experience" (no, I won't accept their dumb branding practice of eliminating the "E"s. Misspelling words for the sake of branding is dumb.)

Basically, this is a track experience for anybody from beginners to people who know what they're doing but want to get a bit of seat time in a car they don't own. They provide a short classroom session, instructors, and lead-follow laps in your choice of 6-8 sports cars.

My wife had apparently asked my buddies which car I'd like to go with, and they chose the 911 GT3 RS for me. When I first saw a Huracán doing some safety check laps I was thinking I might want to swap to get some V10 in my life, but then the GT3 went around and my worries were squashed. That thing is LOUD! Easily the loudest car there by far. (The Huracán was next on the list, the rest of the fleet were leagues behind.)

I did a few laps sitting shotgun in the Charger Hellcat lead car to get the lay of the land before joining the line for my turn in the Porsche, and I'm glad I did. We got "3" laps... I put that in air quotes, because they count your time entering and leaving pit lane as part of your third lap, so you only get two shots at the straight. I'd count that as 2.5, but tomato, potato I guess.

When I got behind the wheel, it was immediately clear how focused the car is. The racing bucket doesn't recline at all, and to be honest the seating position was a bit too stiff and upright for me, especially with a helmet. But I got used to it pretty quick. All the cars there are autos, so I didn't have to learn a new clutch. And I have to admit, PDK was incredible. It was exactly as aggressive as my right foot told it to be, with it dropping gears into the power band the instant my foot stabbed the throttle. The acceleration was great, the braking and turn it was even better, but by far the best was the noise!

After my two-and-a-half short laps, I was definitely thirsty for more. This car has definitely worked its way onto my bucket list.

My overall impressions of the event were pretty positive, but damn was it expensive. I was a bit turned off by how many opportunities they had to work more money out of you. Want a photo of you in the car (that's already printed out on a rack as you exit) ? That'll be $20. Want to unlock the onboard video that they took on a USB while you were driving? That's another $60. More laps? Several hundred.

Considering they're providing the cars, all the consumables and wear items, I guess the price isn't too bad. I just wish I had gotten more than a couple minutes of seat time! If you have a car that's capable of surviving a track day, that's definitely a better value at $200-500/day with probably four or five 20 minute sessions full of lapping. It's definitely a great way to get some full-throttle time behind the wheel of your favorite supercars though, just not cheap!

I’m browsing the intertubes from my iPad today for the first time in awhile (read: no ad-block) and wow do I appreciate what @jminer and all of you other amazing helpers have built here. I hopped over to ye olde FP to try and see what’s the weekend crew is up to but cheese and fries the ads are so bad it’s almost impossible to browse over there now.

Bye bye, jello picnic. Long live OPPO!

Here’s an imperial for your time.

We had a near-biblical amount of rain here in Metro Detroit on Friday night. I woke up around 1am to the sound of rain hitting our windows so hard I thought they might break. Luckily everything was closed up tight, so I tried to go back to bed.

When I woke up on Saturday morning, it was to a text from my wife saying that though she had made it to work at 5am, she had passed 67 (no, seriously, 67!) stalled or abandoned cars on her way into work. She drives to work around 4:30am and typically takes the highway for about 70% of the journey. She said there was no flooding present, but obviously there had been some significant rains causing it overnight, probably around peak get-home-from-the-bar time.

In addition to that, she said she witnessed multiple people driving the wrong way, or just straight up walking (walking!) on the highway. Trying to either get their cars back up and running again, or just wandering around wondering what to do.

Sounds like a wild night! So, I flip on the news. Turns out, there's still some pretty widespread flooding. Naturally, I hit the road on my bike to see what's what.

I met up with a friend who lives on the east side and we rode around following the major interstates that slice through downtown, wandering from one overpass to the next just surveying the carnage. The sheer amount of stalled vehicles is just alarming. During the 10-minute period we were camped out over I-75, we actually witnessed the state police, or some contractor removing a late-model Taurus with a large digger with a fork-lift attachment.

Then, not 5 minutes later, a bunch of semis thought it would be a good idea to try and drive through. They started to make it, so naturally a bunch of pickups and SUVs thought they'd try it as well. We witnessed three CUV's (Equinox-sized) drive through but hydrolock themselves and stall on the other side. Luckily, most people seemed to decide that was a bad idea and started turning around.

Here's your friendly reminder that you shouldn't drive through massive puddles!

We kept riding from there, picking up I-94 along Midtown near the M-10 freeway, and started seeing some genuine carnage. Thus began a roughly two hour journey of us hopping from one overpass to the next, each time seeing worse destruction than the one before.

We finally ended up on one stretch of I-94 with a moderate sized lake at least 1/4 mile long. There were so many truckers stranded in it I lost count. Several of them were still hanging out in there cabs, and had probably been there since 1am. It was deep enough that it was above windshield height on some of the semis, and there were definitely submerged cars in there that we couldn't see.

We also saw state police divers along this stretch, undoubtedly checking submerged cars to be sure no one was trapped inside. The water here was getting seriously deep, we could tell from a nearby overpass it was likely above 10' in depth.

At this point we were getting exhausted and sunburned despite the overcast clouds, and honestly a little depressed at all the destruction. We were both remarkably lucky to have not been caught out driving in this weather, and we both made out with only some mild flooding in our basements (which we still had yet to deal with).

So, just a friendly reminder, and I can't believe I have to say this again, but DON'T DRIVE YOUR SHIT THROUGH WATER! Here's a lovely 944 that we saw out sightseeing for your time

I know these are a week or so old by now, but I find myself clicking refresh over and over to see all the different logos. Well done folks!

Gotta submit this one to r/ThereIFixedIt

I went to go see the IMSA cars practice and qualify at the Detroit Grand Prix on Belle Isle yesterday afternoon. This was the first racing I've seen since COVID, and my first time seeing the C8-R's in person. Holy fack these things are LOUD! The WHAM-WHAM they make while downshifting under braking is amazing. There were other fun cars there as well, Lambos and Parsches and some excellent DPI cars, but these beasts took my heart. And my eardrums.

I got me a Pugsley! Just picked it up yesterday and of course had to immediately test it out on a short 2-mile trail that had been recently groomed. (Groomed trails around here discourage trail users with less than 4" of tire to avoid messing up the groom.)

After nearly getting my E46 stuck on the road at the trailhead, I hit the snow! My first impressions are that this thing is an extremely capable beast, even not on a groomed trail. My first lap I had my tire pressures set a tad too high, but once I aired down a bit further, it was almost unstoppable. Still very technically challenging, mind you, but totally ridable as opposed to very frustrating if I was on my other bike with it's 2.8's.

The frame is probably a touch on the small side for me (it's a medium and I'm probably into large territory) I'm hoping I can make it work with a set back seat post and/or a longer stem / wider bars. It's almost impossible to find a fat bike in stock anywhere around here due to the bike shortage and everybody wanting to get outside this winter, so when I saw this little Pug on the list of Craig I snapped it up while I could.

Plus, this being a Surly, it's got tons of braze-ons and mounting points that I'll use this summer to do a longer bike-packing trip if I can map out a good route that doesn't have too much pavement in it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some snow to plow through! This is the way.

@old-busted-hotness

I'll first clarify my statement by saying that I'm a cis-gendered straight white male, so take this with an enormous grain of who-says-you-get-to-have-an-opinion-on-this salt.

I understand that some people can get very competitive and may do almost anything to gain an advantage.

That said, a person's gender identity is such a core part of their being, I don't think someone would go through all the trouble of changing their sex for such a trivial thing. Not to mention all of the mental pain and anguish many trans folks experience feeling not at home in their own bodies, identifying that disconnect, then choosing to do something to improve it AND having to come out to friends and family about it.

I have a genuinely hard time believing that anyone would go through all that trouble just to gain a couple places of advancement in some arbitrary ranking. Just my $0.02.

@benn454 That yellow guy.... yeeesh

Damn that’s nice.

I don’t really love 2nd gen camaros in general (those models in the late 80s with the plastic fantastic rubber bumper awfulness nearly ruin the whole generation for me) but I would 100% rock this beast.

I think most of us are gainfully employed, but definitely still can't afford the cars... mostly because we want ALL the cars.

@bicyclebuck

I feel like the yoke is an interesting idea that could work if you used software and electronic power steering to vary the steering input and adjust it according to speed.

Something like this (please note! I'm no scientist or automotive engineer, this is just the concept)
Low speed / parking lot: 1degree of steering wheel input = 1 degree of wheel turn.
High speed / highway: 10 degrees of wheel input = 1 degree of front wheel turn.

If you could theoretically vary the steering ratio so you always have only 180 degrees of steering input from lock-to-lock, I'd say this would be pretty cool. Once you have to start going hand-over-hand, it falls apart.

Voted! It's hard to resist the urge to add a third color name option though... I did indeed resist it, but it's sitting there like a giant red button with a "DO NOT PRESS" label beneath it. What if I did???

@just-jeepin I definitely want some business cards to leave on cool cars to help evangelize spread the oppo love

Street parked Mr-two with Lotus wheels and covered in stickers... gotta be an Oppo!

MINI!!!!! I wish you lots of trouble free motoring... looks like you have a > 2010 car, so your odds are better than if you had an '07-10.