Whew! The past 2 months have been non-stop excitement for me, and the LB crew in general. As you can see in the above picture, I was not only LifeBlasting, I was working for young pro drifter Ryan Kado as a spotter. Business Geoff.
This post is going to be a little weird… I initially thought to just do a text-free photoblog ala Larry Chen, but there are some pictures in here that have a story behind them. Past that it’s me shooting my best buddies, everyone at FD. Hope you enjoy, and don’t mind the sporadic text.
The journey started at the Kado’s house in Sacramento where we grabbed the tow-rig and set out for Gardena, CA where we would meet up with Ryan’s 350z at SR Motorcars where its new engine was being dyno tuned.
We showed up at 2:30AM to find Mitch Pederson, one of the best tuners around, hard at work on the car. Seems like SR works similarly to how Drew and I do at Lab17… time of day means nothing when there’s a task at hand. Furthermore, since the team had 4 drivers (Myself, Ryan’s dad Edwin, Ryan, and Ry Moore the TD ProAm tech chief) our plan was to drive straight through to Florida only stopping for food/fuel, so when we actually hit the road meant nothing. Sleep schedules were out the window at this point.
Ry and Ryan almost closed down the taco joint across the street from SR Motorcars. Between the two of them, they consumed 20 tacos in about 5 minutes flat.
Ryan wanted to kill us all and crash the truck, so he played Pokemon on his cell phone the whole time he was driving.
I, on the other hand, spent my behind-the-wheel time changing the music and asking the GPS “are we there yet???”
Team RKR <3s Waffle House! After I introduced them to this wonderful place, we ate there at least once a day. My shining record of choosing good places to eat was smashed when they tried Cracker Barrel for the first time, in fact, Ry dubbed it “the crappy barrel”
The 350z was tuned to run on E85 ethanol which has numerous benefits including low cost, but the main drawback is availability. We searched for a while before we found a station that sold it, and once we did we decided to unload the car and top off the tank just to make sure our reserves were absolutely full. Unloading and firing up such a flashy car caused a commotion in the servo, I guess that’s one way to get publicity! Smart!
When we arrived in West Palm Beach, Fla, we met up with our favorite blasterpals, Tandem of Die, who were staying with us for the weekend.
Florida is a new venue for Formula Drift, so it was new to all the drivers which put the RKR team on a level playing field. Also, Florida has amazing clouds.
Meet Tomasz Olech. Tomasz is a beastly Polish guy who loves AE86’s more than life itself. I’ve know him for years and to this day he’s one of my favorite dudes ever, so I was excited when the Kados informed me that he was flying in that evening to act as crew chief for the team. Also, he has a purple tooth.
We had to get to the track early the second morning because a problem had come up with the VK56’s ITB (individual throttle body) system. Tomasz had it fixed in no time.
Tomasz told Ryan “do not have drift so hard, you will blow engine!” but Ryan couldn’t understand what he meant through his thick Polish accent. Plus, as his spotter I insisted that he drift harder!
That morning, Shreeve discovered Gold Bond. Joe, Edwin, Drew and I are all avid GB enthusiasts.
Ry was not interested. “That stuff’s gonna give you ball-cancer, bro.”
With the car in good working order, Ryan made a solid effort in qualifying and made it into the top 32 where he would go head to head with Ken Gushi and win to move onto top 16. Must’ve been his spotter. *wink wink*
They grow’em BIG in Florida.
One of the baddest-ass hachis in existence, Pat Cyr’s F20 Turbo powered AE86 coupe.
Oh no! Avert your eyes! It’s Sean Smithson!
Thank you, come again!
-G
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