In the eyes of competitors around the world a regional and triple points event could make or break a year's worth of competing (and thousands of hours of labor). With the 2002 Spring Break Nationals held in Daytona Beach coming up fast and with competitors driving from as far as Canada and Washington, we got together a group for a caravan for what can be a tedious coast to coast trip. What came of it was the first Beach-to-Beach Tour.
As a USAC, IASCA competitor (I own and co-built the Image Dynamics Passat Demo vehicle) I found this opportunity to be a golden chance to bring the manufacturers together, as well as competitors, in the long drive from California to Daytona Beach. I had made this drive solo in 1998 and 1999, a total distance of 2617 miles each way. In 1999 the total drive time came to 36 hours non-stop. This year with less than three weeks before the departure date I spoke with Eric Steven and Matt Borgardt of Image Dynamics to help organize the trip. Eric and Matt suggested that I speak with Rodney Wills of CA&E. After speaking with Rodney and after several phone calls to manufacturers the concept became a reality.
After three weeks of organizing, hours on the phone and e-mails to interested parties it was time to hit the road. In a understanding of how hectic it can be for a competitor to get ready for this show with just less than five days to departure we knew that some work had to be done to make this trip a success. With no time to waste I had to tear my vehicle back down to the shell for a few additions and some wiring and paint corrections. Four days later and still no sleep from the beginning of tear down the car was back together and ready for the drive.
Santa Monica Pier
Tuesday morning : 6 a.m.
Waited for the remainder of the diehards that were going to attempt to make this drive with us. Only expecting one other car to show for the start; we got a helpful visit from the field crews at Red Bull with a nice going away present: a case of those energy packed silver cans. We even got to hear the story about the mascots that live in those 5 foot cans on the back of their trucks. Just about at 7 a.m. I received a phone call form the other person that was to join us and he had to cancel due to a family medical emergency. Just as we were leaving we got flagged down by a long line beautiful tricked out cars and trucks. My old car club Art of Noize had read about our little trip to Daytona and wanted to join in for the ride as a couple of them were heading out to Phoenix Arizona for a meeting and show with their Arizona chapter. WOW this just got big, nothing like rolling down the freeways of Los Angeles with eight cars that look like they all belong on the cover of Truckin, Sport Compact, and Euro Tuner magazine.
To tell you the truth it gives you a whole new outlook on other people's vehicles and that of your own when you have the opportunity of seeing these vehicles driving down the road for hours at a time. I had the chance to ride along with a few of the Art of Noize crew and got to hear their systems and talk to the owners about the intense work that goes into their vehicles.
Six hours into the trip and we finally arrived into Phoenix Arizona; the Art of Noize boys were ready to split away and invited us for lunch. We stopped off at a hamburger chain and was amazed to see one of these guys take down a double 1 pounder. I mean this burger came on its own loaf of bread; of course he refused to let me take a picture for posterity. After about 90 minutes worth of insults and story telling we were back on the road. On the way out of Phoenix I noticed a new shopping complex going up and right dead smack in the middle was a newly opened car audio shop called Audio Atmosphere. We decided to shop and spoke with owner Kevin Luther. Kevin is new to the industry having previously dedicated his financial endeavors to authorized online sales for a few manufacturers. Just recently he'd decided to steer away from all online sales and pick up more reputable brand names and bring the business back to the local. He has gone form only carrying four lines to currently carrying a beautiful line up of Image Dynamics, Focal, Pioneer, JVC, Stinger, Zapco, Brax + Helix and Dynamat.
Texas : 5:30 p.m.
Continuing back on the road after what turned into a two hour stop at Audio Atmosphere Matt and I were now looking at another six hours to our stop in El Paso Texas. We arrived around 11:30 p.m. When we got to the hotel I had failed to realize exactly how close we were to the border. I wasn't exactly too comfortable with our location. There was a security guard at the front of the hotel, so I inquired about his services to keep a eye on things for us. We retained his service for the entire evening for a 6 pack of Red Bull, $40 and a copy of the latest Truckin' and Car Audio and Electronics magazines. When we woke up in the morning we found our friend still awake and sitting in a folding chair in the middle of the parking lot right next to my car.
After paying off the guard and packing up it was back on the road. As we were pulling out of the parking lot a 2001 white Volkswagen Bug flagged us down. In the bug was another representative from Red Bull with yet another case of energy drinks for us. I think at this point you can tell Matt and I were wired beyond belief for most of this trip.
Now back on the road and with the hardest part of the drive ahead of us we had almost 12 hours of nothing but desolate flat desert style driving -- the insanity of keeping occupied and keeping Matt and I from strangling each other brought out the movies and the X-Box. Unfortunately for me Matt who at first was against having the X-Box in the car finally tried it and got so tied up in playing Halo that I had to listen to every shot, jump, kill, and fall for the entire portion of the drive all the way to Houston. I still have nightmares of these sounds.
About 100 miles to go the front of my car had seemed to acquire a major vibration and then it progressed to violent shaking. After pulling over in the middle of the night I had realized that the entire driver's side of my car was covered in what appeared to be axle grease. We called a tow truck and they towed us into Houston where we dropped the car off at a VW specialty shop (since the local dealership said they would not touch the car because of the severity of the modifications to the vehicle). Well $420 and the next morning later I had a new drive axle, knuckle bearing, and driver's side brake line (what had been damaged). This just goes to show that even with preparation and normal maintenance on a long drive like this anything can happen.
Houston
Texas : 9 a.m.
Well anyway, finally we'd made it but -- oops we overslept. We hit the road with no breakfast in a mad frenzy to get caught up on time. Still, running late, we stopped off at a local Tweeters to visit an industry local Amseley Fukuda. We had a chance to talk with him and see what a good high-end retail chain is all about. He gave us the tour of the shop, which had a beautiful chameleon 2001 Ford Expedition that was in the beginning stages of getting nine 15's, a complete dash rebuild for a 15" monitor and dash pods as well as full 5.1 and rear mobile video. That's a price tag of $18,000 just on the labor; and with Amseley's reputation for installs you know this is going to be something worth seeing. Touring the shop I was surprised to see a chain store with the kind of amenities of a custom shop. There was a full isolated wood shop with vacuum and fume evac. system, multiple router tables, paint booth, and a full upholstery shop with enough reserve carpet and vinyl to make most any installer envious. Touring the sales area you walked into ab area with a plethora of product from Xtant, JL audio, Kenwood, Alpine just to name a few and with home brands such as Pioneer Elite, Mitsubishi, and Sony. If I lived there I know where I'd be doing my toy shopping.
Continuing back on the road toward Florida it was time to really pick up the pace and set some land speed records since we were supposed to be meeting up with the other portion of this drive in Tallahassee Florida at 8 p.m .and man were we running late. After 917 miles of road in Texas, as we were coming to the Louisiana state line, I was all set to get out of the car and kiss the welcome sign to our new state. But with all of the construction going on the state line marker had been taken down and all of the stopping places were blocked off with barricades.
I don't know how many people have driven the roads in Louisiana but for a car with low profile tires this state was a nightmare with potholes and bumps in the road that when you hit them feel like you just did 80 mph into a parking curb.
Mississippi--Alabama
Moving along through Mississippi and into Alabama we stopped off the side of the freeway just inside Mobile, Alabama to recognize our troops memorial at battleship park where the USS Alabama rests at dock for the world to see, along with a B-52 Stratoforce in the same lotted area. It's sights like this and the chance to stop and see these things that make driving cross-country something to remember.
Tallahassee
Florida : 10 p.m.
Well it was late when we arrived in Tallahassee, Florida, that's right I said 10 p.m. You can do the math on what our driving speed was, and we finally met up with the northern group which had a impressive first time outing count of five vehicles. Local car audio guru Mic Wallace was in lead with his '92 Acura Integra, Anthony Fusco in his '95 Camaro, Jason Ewing in his 2002 VW GTI Golf, Rob Offut, a '98 Acura Integra, and John Sites in a '95 Honda Civic, along with passengers Lori Welsh, Edwige T., Stephen(a.k.a Smokey) and two others (I failed to get their names, how hospitable is that?). Everybody was at this point in a rush to get off to Daytona Beach so we hit the road at full force rolling into Daytona Beach around 2:30 a.m. and no matter what the problems we had and the aggravations between co-pilot and driver every time I do this drive it's worth every minute and every mile that comes with it.
XM Radio
A Three Thousand Mile Listening Test
Many of us spend much of our lives in vehicles commuting to work. These days it's not even that rare to hear of someone driving in excess of 100 miles a day to their jobs. To kill the boredom we listen to some wretched talk radio, bad commercial pop stations and the same CDs over and over again. Of course! Who can afford to buy all the music you want when you're spending a small fortune on gas! And I haven't even mentioned poor AM or FM reception, or that lame DJ with the stupid jokes. But all that is a thing of the past now. In a digital world technology has the cure for the rush hour blues. You know what I'm about to say - look, up in the sky....it's super satellite radio. As they say, then there was XM.
Recently in March I spoke with William Lee of XM. We were able to install the Pioneer XM digital RF tuner with the Terk TRK-2 roof mount antenna into my 2001 Passat. The tuner would be controlled off of an Eclipse 55090 CD/DVD deck and interfaced with the soon to be released Blitzsafe Eclipse CD changer control XM interface adapter. When opening the box of the main unit you find yourself looking at something like your conventional RF modulated CD changer down to the wired remote control unit with mounting shroud. Installation on the entire unit including antenna took about 90 minutes with the hardest portion being the antenna. Because of the way the factory window surround on my Passat is done I was not able to run the antenna wire as per the factory recommendations, so I chose to modify the factory radio antenna opening and mounted the Terk antenna directly behind the factory AM/FM antenna.
As Matt Bougardt and I left Santa Monica pier in Los Angeles, California we turned on the power of our new system and found ourselves with the key to a whole new listening world. The controls even through the changer adapter in the Eclipse deck control of the XM tuner must still be controlled by a dedicated wired remote unit for channel and band selection. During the drive I did find myself looking toward the radio for the information and, at times in traffic, found it frustrating not having that up front information on the main unit; but after the first 500 miles of the drive it was easy to get used to. Once familiar with the controls operation of it seemed like second nature. One obvious solution to conventional radio blues of not knowing who the band is or what the name of the song is was more than taken care of by XM with the remote unit displaying not only the station name but the band name, as well as the song title. The information on this display was a delight to see with constantly changing information; e.g., as each song starts and ends and as any changes in the DJ's or broadcasting location occur.
Early on during the trip I went to a favorite of mine from previous demos that I had heard on channel 80 BPM. That is a non-commercial channel for 24 hours of dance music featuring the music of DJ's from around the U.S. You hear all types of electronic music: trance, techno, club mix, and variety mixes. A personal favorite, DJ Enrie was on and after the song ended I pulled out the CD for the comparison; to my surprise it was very close. On occasion I thought the sound quality of the XM signal would temporarily change with a slightly enhanced bass response below 200Hz and a slight compression of the dynamic range above 10k. This signal change would only last momentarily and then return back to digital quality. Next we moved on to jazz and blues, some great stuff that should please even the most critical audiophiles. On channels 70 - 76 we were able to experience the sounds of Don Branden and the Hang, Chris Bang and The Guiding Light, and even Frank Sinatra. Listening to this broad range of blues and jazz with great sound fidelity brought back the memories of my high school jazz band days as a sax player.
We also tuned in to a comedy channel. It had us laughing so hard we had to pull over to wipe away the tears. Another great thing about having XM is that even though you might be on the road for a few days, you can keep up with the news just as you might when at home. There is a wide selection of news stations available. We spent over 40 hours in a car going coast-to-coast and I didn't have any regrets leaving the majority of my CD cases back in L.A. During the 40 hours and 2600 miles of driving I got to hear what XM radio's idea of commercials are. On a average of less than 5 minutes of commercials an hour on the few stations that don't offer commercial-free listening. It was minimal enough that I didn't consider moving to the next station.
You're probably saying that the fact programming is great is all well and good, but... Like you, that was my key concern. That is, the biggest issue with XM that I was out to test was the coast-to-coast capabilities of this system. From Santa Monica to Daytona Beach, Florida there was only one interruption of service and it was for a period of 25 seconds going through the tunnel in Mobile, Alabama near Battleship Park. On that note we had experienced the system through other tunnels and experienced no interruptions. Other than the instance in Alabama the service was flawless and the signal never lost clarity.
On a final note the XM radio was a blessing to have on-board for this trip; the availability of a hundred channels that can meet the needs of any person in most any mood and help break the boredom of driving cross country or even a daily commute to work is terrific. With sound quality and channel availability unmatched by any local radio station in the U.S. the XM system is a worthwhile investment and a welcome addition to the latest releases of new consumer technologies.