Dan on June 24th, 2006
I spent Monday and Tuesday at Watkins Glen International participating in a PCA driving school. For those who have never heard of such an event, a track driving school put you and your car on a real race track with an instructor. You learn better car control, smoothness, and confidence in yourself and car. There are also classroom sessions to teach strategy and theory. These events are open to anyone with a car that will pass tech.
I believe that these driving schools should be a part of getting your license. By learning you and your car’s limits and improving your skills you improve your everyday driving ability. I know my ability has improved significantly since I participated in my first driving school in 2004. Every single day I see people who make basic driving mistakes that put themselves and others at risk because they just don’t know better. A track driving school teaches a foundation of good driving, along with being an absolute BLAST.
We also got to see the new Porsche 997 Turbo. There were 8 or so of them there for a private media event.
Pictures can be found in the gallery here.
Dan on May 24th, 2006
Don’t you hate it when you spend 10+ minutes typing something and accidently delete it all? That’s what just happened to me. I had a pretty long entry written out and tried to hit Ctrl+T to open a new browsing tab. Instead I hit Ctrl+R and reloaded the page. I lost the entire entry. Now I have to retype it. Grrrr…
Anyway, this summer is looking like it could be the best ever. My first month of trading went extremely well. I have very few obligations which means I’ll be able to do what I want: relax, workout, trade, and drive. I’ve settled into what I believe will be my daily summer routine. Go to bed around 12:30, wake up in the 6:30-7:30 range. Make breakfast then eat it will checking out market futures and overnight news releases. At this point I plan on working out once I join another gym. Then I’ll come back, shower, eat my second meal, and review how the market is doing. If I feel the need to trade I will. If not I’ll have the day to do whatever I want.
I’m researching some trading strategies that will give me plenty of free time. Instead of being glued to my computer or a TV I’ll be able to watch the general market movement daily and still make a nice return. I’m waiting for some money transfers to go through so that I can open another brokerage account. This time it will be with TradeStation. Trade station’s fees are SIGNIFICANTLY less than my current broker, optionsXpress. For example: If I sell a single covered call the total fees including buying and selling the stock would be $3 with TradeStation and $45 with optionsXpress. That can make a big impact with covered calls and other small transactions. Also, optionsXpress has a $25,000 requirement to trade futures. TradeStation does not have this requirement. I’m not planning on trading futures right now but it’s something I may do in the future (pun not intended). I’m still keeping my optionsXpress account for autotrading with the First Class Advisory service. The FCA strategist has been offering this service for over a year and a half now and has never had a losing trade. His overall results from 8/2004 are well over 100%. He also issues a daily newsletter detailing his options about the market. If you’re interested in the service contact me. The price on his site is about 3 times as much as I can get you signed up for.
I’m developing my summer workout routine. I plan on hitting the gym 6 days a week. My actual workout is still being developed but it’s going to involve focusing on a different muscle group each day of the week. On Saturday I plan on hitting the rowing machine for 15-20 minutes (increasing as time goes by). The first thing I want to do is reduce my body fat. I’m in the 13-15% range right now and have some love handles showing. Once I bring that down I’ll begin bulking again. I’d like to gain at least another 5 lbs of muscle. I also plan on biking and hiking a lot this summer.
One thing I haven’t been focusing enough on is my eating habits. I’ve been straying from my meal plan quite frequently. Not only is it setting me back in my plans of losing some more fat but it’s setting my wallet back too. I think the problem is that my meals don’t vary enough. I have been having frequent cravings for sugar. I’m going to be adding more fruit to my diet in the hopes that it will reduce or eliminate the cravings. I also started getting sugar free mints. Those help quite a bit but not enough.
The autox racing season started a few weeks ago. Taking a year off hurt me. My driving skills have declined significantly! I’ve lost the little smoothness I had and my overall ability has seemed to suffer. Add to that my lack of experience racing a turbo car and the results are sloppy, slow runs. I’m slowly improving but I’m not expecting to place this year. I have a driver’s school at Watkins Glen race track next month. I’m hoping to improve my smoothness and figure out how to drive a turbo car. While significantly different than an autox, a driver’s school on a real track helps every aspect of driving. I learned so much from the one I did in 2004.
Now that I have the time I’m hoping to increase the frequency of my updates. Hopefully I’ll get it back to daily posts soon!
Dan on April 4th, 2006
I apologize for the lack of updates. Between school, projects, and extra sleep I haven’t had much free time. I’ve changed me sleep pattern yet again. I found that the pattern I was on (2 1.5h core naps, 3 20 min naps) just wasn’t cutting it. I was frequently oversleeping and was tired during the day. I slept monophasicly this past weekend and found something interesting. I woke up after 6 hours and had trouble falling back asleep. So maybe 6 hours is what my body wants. To test this I’m trying two 3 hour sleep periods, one 11:30PM to 2:30PM and one 3:30PM to 6:30PM. This allows me to maintain my eating schedule and have some extra time at night to shop, prep food, or do whatever. Last night was my first trial. I ended up adding an extra 20 min nap in there. Today I was wide awake all day. I had no trouble paying attention during class. I found it much easier to focus on the subjects. This may be the best solution for me. We’ll see how it goes.
My new car (92 Talon, as mentioned in the previous post here) is a lot of fun. I visited my parents this weekend. The 5.5 hour, 400 mile drive was quite enjoyable, especially the twisty roads on the way back. If you live close to the western part of MA try driving Rt 2 between North Adams, MA and Troy, NY. It is probably the most fun drive in the area, assuming you don’t get stuck behind slow drivers. Even then there are a lot of passing zones. I managed to make it though most of the twisty sections without interference from other drivers. The combination of coil overs and sticky tires make the car handle very well. I can’t wait to start the autox season!
Dan on March 26th, 2006
Wow, it’s been a while since I last posted. I haven’t had much to discuss, but I’m going to try to update at least a few times this week.
The news is that I’m finally getting a better car. I’m picking up a 92 Eagle Talon TSi AWD this week. It’s setup for street and SCCA STX autocross racing. I’ll finally have something fun again. I’m setting up a new company, Perfect Apex Racing LLC. The car will be owned by the company and the goal is to get sponsorship. More details to follow soon, including a sponsorship proposal.
