This photo that Shawn took kinda sums up our weekend. Motorsport Nationals got pummeled by intense rain all weekend long. There was a lot of random drifting on a soaked course… and only two ‘proper’ demos got performed once the rain let up for a bit.More to come…
We will be down at Atlanta Motor Speedway this weekend for a drift demolition at the Motorsport Nationals. If you’re in or around the Atlanta-area… come on out and watch us destroy our Yokohama ADVAN Tires!I had the honour of wrenching on most of the print-collateral for the drifting portion of this event, and I think it turned out killer! I wanted the flyer to be packed with energy, and be something nobody in their right mind would throw away.
I teamed up with Southeast Drift to produce some more ‘Trophy Decks’ for the end-of-the-season “South East Drift Challenge”. Taking cues from BH Design’s killer bear motif… and following my idea from the last set of SEDC Trophy Decks, I made the decks piece together to form a giant image of a bear. Overall I’m very pleased with these.
The DriftMechaniks Chicago invasion for the 3rd round of the D1 Gran Prix was a riot. About 16-20 DriftMechaniks descended on this gorgeous waterfront city. Panda, Tyler, and I headed north in the Vitz. Byron and Greg were in the WRX… and Alex, Shawn, Hater Dan, and Wes were flossing a rental Mazda 5. We stopped outside of Nashville to rendezvous with Marlow, P. Haire, and Struka. A slew of folks from St. Louis came down… including Cankles and Koopa.
Northbound behind Marlow.
1st night in Chicago… we hit Geno’s East.
Genuine DEEP dish. We’re talking hella flush pizza here.
I’m stoked for good-offset pizza.
Saturday there was drift racing. Yay drift racing.
Sunday morning we hit some (amazing) breakfast a few blocks from Charlie’s place.
BEST. PANCAKES. EVER. Seriously. They are deep fried.
Atlanta College of Art (R.I.P) Crew. From left to right: Charlie Smith, Tyler Clayton, Myself… and Carlos “Panda” Richard behind the lens. All ACA grads.
There was a mass of sticker tagging along this trip. We did a rough count and figured Tyler bombed over 500 stickers by himself!rn.
Panda on the loose.
We hit the MOCA. Amazing works inside. I burnt my leg doing so many rail slides out front.
We had to rock out Sears Tower (sorry… Willis Tower just doesn’t sound right).
110 stories high… in a tiny li’l glass box.
That night we hit a local watering hole for more good times before we migrated back south.
Special thanks to Alex and Panda for the pics… and an even BIGGER thanks to Charlie for the amazing hospitality<3
All packed up and loaded down for the DM Chitown Invasion. Panda and I are shooting media for Motor Mavens at round 3 of D1GP USA at Soldier Field… and something like 10-12 other DriftMechaniks are heading to Chicago as well. Hopefully we don’t burn the city down this time. No promises though.
Random (and awesome) choke-and-puke en-route to Virginia for the North vs. South event at VIR.
I found this old news clip while digging through some old files. A pretty cool Fox News feature from the Hyperfest event at Summit Point Raceway in West Virginia. My buddy Tony Schulz gets a spotlight, and I’m in the video for a split-second around the 2 minute mark. A pretty cool find from way back. These were fun times for sure.
The revamp of the Slide Style™ site is finally complete, and live online. A lot of work went into this site, and I like it a LOT more than the old version. It looks a lot cleaner, and much more polished. I think the catalog of products looks awesome. I have some more items to get up on the site… but for the most part, she’s full-steam ahead.Take a look, buy something, and support American drifting!
Equally as overdue as the DriftMechaniks forum upgrade/re-skin, the new dM blog is up and running. We’ve had a ‘coming VERY soon’ page since 2004, and everyone else always seemed to come first… knocking the dM site down on the list of to-do’s. No longer. The whole crew has posting access… so subscribe at your own risk and commence the ‘elite’ mentality that is dM.
My buddy Will Roegge was in town working with the Tripp and Tom from Spitfire Studios… and the timing couldn’t have worked out better, because the second installment of Southeast Drift’s Triple Threat II was going down at Turner Field while he was here.Will brought out his Letus35 adapter so we could try it out on my newly acquired XL-H1. I had heard a lot of great things about adapting 35mm camera lenses, but never had a chance to mess with it at all. Boy was I in for a surprise.Here you can see ‘Man of Action’ Brady Stribling helping with the merger.
With the adapter, rails, and lens… it adds a significant amount of weight to the camera. By significant, I mean a TON.
Petey says okay… the camera looks hella legit with all of that – but how does the video look?
Let’s take a look at some screen captures. These are straight from the camera – no post whatsoever. rnFor reference… we’ll start with a shot from the XL without the adapter. The focal length seems almost infinite.
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The focal length is slightly different with the Letus35, don’t you think?
With the flick of the wrist, you can pull focus for an amazing look.
Overall… it gives the digital medium the filmic quality that I’ve been after for years.
Special thanks to Will for turning me onto this bit of equipment. My credit card hates you in advance… because I can’t wait to get ahold of one of these!
I stumbled across my old Nokia 3650 which had a 16mb SD card in it. To my surprise… it had a slew of old photos and video on it from around 2002-2004. A fun trip down memory lane for sure.
My best friend Hooman when he was working at United BMW in Roswell.
Random shredded Bridgestone at GTE.
My Corolla preparing to fail emissions miserably.
My car on the lift at the OLD Batlground Engineering.
One3 Creative computer upgrades.
My good friend Michael at Jack in the Box after GT Live in 2004.
My 330i loaner car and Jason Greene’s ’64 Impala outside the old One3 studio.
My Corolla feeling sleepy the night I bought it.
On stage the last night I played with my old band: Katapolt.
New transmission for the e46.
My Corolla… freshly panda’d.
The Autopower rollcage for the e46 that was promptly returned to have a full custom cage built instead.
These photos were in this order on the phone… it looks like the vinyl gets washed off at Cactus Carwash.
Superior erecting. That’s right.
A project that I’ve been wrenching on for a minute has finally gone live!!! I’m working with some great people on this project, and I am really excited about it. We have some really big plans for this site.Take a look, subscribe, and comment it up!rnwww.motormavens.com
If you were to search the pages of any dictionary, you would find that a maven is a connoisseur – a person who has specialized knowledge or expertise dealing with a particular topic.Though this definition is true, there is much more to being a maven than simply gaining knowledge or experience. True mavens are created by their passion for the subject; after all, relentless passion is the driving force behind the mastery of any subject or skill.That passion is what drove us to create this site and we look forward to all of the specialized knowledge and experience that you, our fellow Motor Mavens, bring to the table. Email us at (motormavens(at)gmail.com) with any suggestions, contributions or special insights you may have.
Panda managed to snap a shot before the car ran into more ECU issues forcing and early retire at Southeast Drift’s Triple Threat II. This was one of two passes that the car was operational for. So frustrating.
