First Night with the Viper

First Night with the Viper

Get home late around midnight Friday after a 7-hour trip.
The only highlight worth mentioning of the ride home was when i was in the lead in the right lane with my buddies G35 behind me in the middle lane. Another red G35 comes up behind us in the fast lane and i can tell he notices my buddy�s car first cause he slows down to give him the nod. Then as he moves forward i see him look over like "damn! a viper" My buddy takes off with the red one following him, i drop it to 4th and blow by them and we play cat mouse for a little before redG35 flashes us before taking his exit. I�m pretty certain that we made his night!

So we get home and naturally stare at it for a good half hour before deciding its best to get some sleep knowing tomorrows gonna be a long day. The plan was to spend all day detailing her to get her ready for the night, but when we opened the garage the next morning she begged us to take her out, I couldn�t argue, we took a nice hour drive or so and grabbed some breakfast at the waffle house.

From 10am till 8pm was all about getting her pearled. no breaks no food, just a couple natty lights to keep hydrated. The result was:

A couple of my friends called me from the Philly car show to tell me of all the spectacles. When i told em that we were having a car show of are own with my fiends two G35's and MY viper he was like, "dude we're leaving right now, meet at our crib!" haha At this point we're starving so we decide to make the half hour drive up to Newark to meet up with em to chill out and eat. On the way up we decide to take rt13 instead of rt1(which is much faster) because i wanted some periodic stop and go�s to get more comfortable with going through the gears. After a couple lights I say "alright, time to get a few soft easy practice launches in to test the waters" Ease the clutch out at 2K and eeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrr. YeeeeeHaaaaaa! that was fun as she eventually hooked up and we took off following more wheel spin at 4K. Wow, that wasn�t "soft and easy", after a few more lights I nailed a couple decent launches but will still need much practice before I am satisfied. Shit, no more practice tonight as it begins to Rain� Some luck, first night out and its raining. O well nothing is gonna put a damper on this night (in fact, maybe we�ll have some fun with the rain later�) Comeing in to newark, we're about to pass by my Sis's house and i think, it be wrong to not atleast stop by to give her and her boyfriend a glimps. Nate was pretty siked up to see it, he is the one that is responsible for noticing my passion for motorsports and getting me to join the SCCA to enjoy organized racing. We leave in a hurry cause we're still starving, I assure them that the next weekend we get nice weather they'll get to ride. Pull up to my boy Jason�s house and him and his bro Jessie follow us out to find a place to eat.

The viper is hungry as well, so we stop at the gas station to get her some protein.
Under the fluorescent lights with wet reflections the viper looks absolutely stunning. As she�s fueling the four of us are starring at it like it�s � well a Viper! I snapped a couple pics that do it No justice:

Next stop, Pats MVP in newark. Good food and a great place to hang out. As I step outside to take a phone call from my fianc�, I see a couple people taking pics of my car on their camera phones. Hummmm, they�ve got good taste. Haha , Back inside and the foods waiting. Just what I need after along day, mozzSticks and wings. As we leave, its still raining. We drive a little down the road and pass a couple troopers that have someone pulled over. They must have noticed me, cause my viper is Loud as a stampede of 450 horses (as it has headers, and No mufflers(and no comment on the cats). My friend goes to make a U-turn a couple blocks down and I think to myself, �this is a tight lane, maybe I�ll swing the tail out a little to get around the turn. I was SO used to doing this in my previous race-car my miata. I could make that thing dance, whether it was on the street or autoX track. Well anyways , I throttle just a tad to-much around the U�y and end up facing the opposite way. Its just a 2-lane rd with no shoulder, so we�re forced to drive the opposite way down elkton rd to find a road to turn around. As someone passes me going the Right way I picture him going home and sayin �Yo, you wont believe...� and his friends saying �you expect us to believe that shit!� haha. Still just 2 blocks away from the 2 cops, were driving toward them now and I�m thinking O-Crap, do you think they saw us do that? Well I�m not sure if he didn�t notice the spin-out or if they we�re just busy, but I�ll thank the viper gods for letting me by on that one.

That�s IT! I�m determined to be able to control this thing as confident as I was with my miata. I want some more practice. To the Spot we go!!! The Spot is a undisclosed parking lot that we used as a race way at night back in the day. And more recently have been using it to set up cones to practice slaloms for autoX. Heading down the road following my friend�s imprezza, we pick up a couple more subies; a wrx and an sti. Naturally with their allwheeldrive they want to play in the rain with the viper, but I know better. I only give them the pleasure of a couple 3rd gear bursts past em before I let them escort us down Kirkwood highway. Arriving at the Spot. I decide to start with locking up the brakes a few times to get a feel for the lack of abs which was pretty predictable as I was already very familiar with locking em up on my non-abs miata. Then start tossing her around a little to get a feel for the balance.

What happened next was inevitable. Simple Math: Viper + Wet parking lot = Donuts. Hell Yea, that�s right, first night in the Viper and we�re doing donuts.

I couldn�t think of a better way to end the night!

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click here (or copy into browser) to check out my first post on the VCA ViperClubofAmerica forum:
http://forums.viperclub.org/rt-10-gts-discussions/610807-new-owner-thank-you-mom-dad.html
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