Some people say Dallas “has no soul”, or that it’s “plastic fantastic”, but I say it’s a great place to live if you travel a lot. One thing I noticed right off the bat was that most women were blond, fake that is. Not that it’s a bad thing and I suppose if I were a woman with mousy brown hair or started to prematurely gray, I would consider hitting the peroxide bottle too. In fact the first joke I remember hearing in Dallas was.. What’s black and blond and black and blond and black and blond? A blond doing cartwheels.

Enough of that, on to the important stuff. Life here is actually pretty good. We have an over abundance of (deep breath) restaurants, gas stations, grocery stores, clothing stores, liquor stores, car dealerships, bank after bank after bank after bank after bank after bank, tons of pawn shops, a bazillion car repair places, too many movies theaters, (3d, reg, drive-in, independent, etc..) at least a couple hundred sushi bars, tons of strip clubs, parks, lakes, walking and biking trails, way too many doggie day care centers, lot’s of airports, auto race tracks, sports teams, horse racing, massive arts community, the grassy knoll and way more Churches than you could ever imagine or want to see in one place. You could start your Sunday morning in a Baptist Church, walk to a Lutheran, Church, mosey on down to the Synagogue, skip over a block to the Mosque, drop by the Hindu temple on your way to the Vihara (Buddhist monastery) and wrap up at the 3rd Church of Christ Scientist (whatever that means) all within about one square mile. I’m not joking about that.. they don’t call this the bible belt for nothing and the lord giveth mightily to those willing to venture into the lucrative (and tax free) business of Religion.

Dallas is a great place for the workforce and for business. Texas has as massive economy, great airports, highways and rail systems so goods flow easily in and out. Tech is big here as well since space, bandwidth and electricity are plentiful and cheap. Dell is right down the highway, we have EDS, American Airlines and lots of other big Companies that call Dallas home.

Personally Dallas is a bit drab when it comes to things to do. Sure restaurants, movies, museums and the like are fun but if you want to get away for the weekend, you have to either get on a plane or drive at least (3) hours in any direction (but West) to find anything that does not resemble Dallas. It’s also hotter than hell in the Summer and it gets pretty cold in the winter. We had a full month a few years ago when the temp was over 100 degrees everyday with no rain. We’ve had (2) bouts of snow already this Winter and just saw 12.5″ which is a new record. In fact it was below freezing for at least (5) nights in a row. We can’t really complain though because having lived in NY, I know all too well how mild our Winters are in comparison.

One of my favorite things about Dallas is that I know my way around and I know lots of people. Even in a city of Millions, I find myself bumping into a friend or acquaintance at the market or movies or museum, etc. It’s also a great place to go for long walks if you have a dog (or even if you don’t) although I’m amazed at how may people prefer to sit on the couch when it’s nice outside. I’m not qualified to comment on traffic since I live less than 1mi from my office. That’s by design but I do know that any freeway here can and will become a parking lot at least once during a typical day (weekends included).

So there you have it. Dallas is a fairly new city, it’s mostly clean, fairly safe, nice roads for the most part, great to travel in and out of and most of all it’s economically stable with somewhat mild temperatures. I would have to give it a solid 7 out of 10.

Till next time ~ John

My car is a 2008 M3 E93 (hard top convertible) and it has about 420+HP but weights close to 4,000lbs. While this car is clearly not track ready out of the box, it only takes a few thousand dollars to get you to the promise land, as I’ve learned. My ongoing dilemma has been that all I did was use racing brake fluid (Motul 600 or 660) and pop on racing pads before each event. The stock tires are Michelin Pilot Sport PS2 265/35/19 rear and 245/35/19 front, which are great tires but at 6,000 mi I’ve shredded the fronts and the rears have less traction than the reunion tour of New Kids on the Block. My goal is to be safe, go fast, finish track days without mechanical issues and save money without tearing up my street tires or my wallet. This all led me to the purchase and now I’ll outline a few reasons why I decided to do this.

Speed
Slicks provide better grip which allows me to go faster. Also I dropped close to 20lb of unsprung weight going from stock 19″ wheels to these super light 18′s which makes the car easier to stop, keeps the brakes cooler and lightens the load. 20lbs might not seems like much but it’s huge when it’s unsprung.

Brake Preservation
Dropping the weight on the wheels really does allow them to run cooler which will positively affect the entire braking system and will hopefully allow me to get through events without significant brake fade or other failure.

Tire Preservation
Since my stock tires are staggered (larger in rear, smaller in front) and the new ones are 275/35/18 square (same size all the way around) I can rotate the tires front to back, sided to side, corner to corner, flip them or whatever I need to do to extended the rubber life.

Money Preservation
While I had to drop $3,000 to buy everything, I can sell the wheels, spacers and lugs for pretty close to what I paid for them and I can even resell the tires if need be. So my actual cost when it’s all said and done will be far less than $3,000.

One issue is that since I am still relativity new to tracking my car, I’m learning in leaps and bounds as opposed to tiny increments. The events I frequent use different “run groups” which separate drivers by skill. Everyone starts in green, then blue, then yellow and after that you go red. After red you can probably be an instructor if you want to but I’m still trying to figure out why anyone would want to do that aside from the free track time in the instructor group. We are running at Texas World Speedway this weekend and I will be starting in the yellow group which is a step up for me but I have earned it by consistently driving faster than others in my run groups and by being safe, no spins and never had I gotten more than 90 degrees sideways. Which brings me to my next point that these tires are not very “audible”. In other words they are pretty quiet on the track so if you start to slide you don’t really get a warning, it just happens all of the sudden. The PS2′s scream like Richard Simmons at a George Michael concert. They let you know what’s going on and you can use that sound to make corrections. Slicks are not that friendly so when they let go (as I’ve heard) they just let go really quickly. So I’m a bit apprehensive as they also require a couple more laps for warm up. In fact I run (2) laps briskly and midway through the 3rd lap, lower the boom. At Eagles Canyon I got to run this new setup for a couple sessions and got sideways in a turn only to later lose all (4) wheels in another. Luckily I was able to reel it in quickly on both slides. Texas World Speedway is much faster so I will have less time to react but it also flows better so I’m not running 140mph to a hairpin turn and wailing on the brakes. On to the purchase and installation..

Tire Purchase:
BF Goodrich R1 275/35/18
Two words.. Tire Rack. They kick ass, heat cycled them for me, had them in stock and I got tire totes so I can transport them in the car without messing up the interior.

$1,048.00 – (4) tires
$      30.00 – Competition heat cycle all (4) tires
$      39.90 – (4) tire totes which are great BTW and highly recommended if you don’t have a trailer.
$      82.64 – Shipping to Dallas TX
$ 1,230.54 – Grand Total

~

Wheel Purchase:
D-Force LTW5 Lightweight Forged Alloy Race Wheel 18×9
Bought these at Turner MotorSports which is a great place but they did muff the shipping. They quoted me an extra $100 for 2nd day and when they realized they under quoted me, rather than calling me to ask what I would like to do, they shipped them regular ground. This could have caused me to miss my Sat track day because if they did not arrive on Friday, I was screwed. We were lucky and they arrived at 1PM on Friday so I had time to get them balanced, installed, spacers tested and then uninstalled and put in the tire totes. They sent me a sweat shirt as a “sorry about that” gesture and I appreciated that. Decided to go with flat black since they looked nasty and I like it like that.

$1,159.80 – (4) wheels
$     89.95 – pair of 12.5mm spacers (front)
$     96.95 – pair of 18mm spacers (rear)
$    69.60 – (10) 75mm studs (12 x 1.5)
$    69.60 – (10) 90mm studs (12 x 1.5)
$    45.00 – (20) 17mm (12 x 1.5) open lugs
$      0.00 – (2) loctite 262 thread lockers
$  204.32 – Shipping
$1,735.22 – Grand Total

Here are the tires delivered to my office and the wheels delivered to Autoscope with the spacers and lugs..

These things obviously look great and the weight savings combined with added grip means they should absolutely kick ass at the track.

~

Fast forward a couple weeks after I did Texas World Speedway, Nov 2009

~

Got to run the entire weekend (4 sessions per day) on these new tires and wheels and as expected they made a huge difference. Had one spin coming off the front straight which caused me to slide at least (50) yards off the track into the grass backwards. Don’t really blame that on the tires because I has just passed a good friend and was going way too fast into that corner. The spin was going to happen one way or the other simply because I was way carrying too much speed into the turn and I’m apparently not good enough to convert a rotten corner entry into a blazing exit. On the bright side, my lap times were cut by about (13) seconds which for me is HUGE. I also ran more consistently and on (3) complete sessions, all of my laps were within a few seconds of one another. Best time for me around Texas World Speedway clockwise was 2:04 and my goal there next time is to get under 2:00 by a few seconds.

Here is the spin and BTW, this is after I passed a bunch of cars:

In closing, for anyone trying to figure out which tires, wheels and spacers to buy for an E92 or E93 M3, I can honestly say that I feel as though I made the right choice. It was cost effective, everything is very high quality, the tires are awesome, the wheels are light like you would not believe and the results are in the (13) seconds I shaved off my lap times.

Side note:
I switched to Castrol SRF brake fluid for this last track day at Texas World Speedway and completed the entire weekend without any brake issues. Highly recommended over motul (which is still great stuff).

Till next time ~ John

So anyway I told the guy “no you can’t have $0.25 cents” and he said “thanks allot asshole”. I said “what did you say” and he said “you’re a racist”. So for him the difference between a racist and a non racist is only $0.25? Anyway I suggested he attempt to procure gainful employment (AKA get a f*cking job) and he said “I have one”. Then I said “so why are you asking me for $0.25 cents” and he said “because I didn’t get paid today.. mother fucker”. I literally busted out laughing which I’m sure he didn’t appreciate.

Now this is the truth but I don’t care if that guy was white as a ghost and dressed in a Armani suit, I still would have said the same thing. So he walked off with his middle finger in the air and I laughed my way back to the car but when I got in the car I started thinking about the much larger issue. About his life and what made him hate me the way he did. I’m pretty sure he didn’t hate me over $0.25 cents, so it had to be something else. Then it occurred to me that I really didn’t care because I try not to generalize and am pretty sure that guy didn’t represent anyone but himself, and that he was just another dumbass. It was sad to see him so bent out of shape over $0.25 cents and ready to get into a fist fight because he assumed I hated all black people when he appeared to hate all white people.

So where does that leave us? Who knows and who cares.. I voted to Obama but agree with tax cuts for the rich (because they create jobs). I’m liberal but I believe in people taking responsibility for themselves and I support the death penalty. I’m tolerant but think we should lower the boom on people who milk the system from wall street execs to food stamp abusers. I’m a non believer but respect religion and feel that it has a valid place in society.

We all have a long way to go..

Well I love Mexicans.. so much in fact that I married one and have a permanent crew of Mexican friends. My sister even has one and calls him “husband”.

Now on to this true and startling story about a well to do, ignorant racist. My wife is 100% Mexican of Spanish decent and a 1st generation American as well. She completed the citizenship process around 2000 and enjoys dual citizenship. We have lived in Dallas for nearly 15 years and our home is 2 blocks from Highland Park which is the self proclaimed Beverly Hills of Dallas. It’s embarrassing but we actually have magazines called “Envy” and “Image”, both of which apparently enjoy robust circulation if you can stomach that. Anyway we are dog owners and our dog enjoys at least 2 hours of walks per day which are usually in and around Highland Park. Traffic is low, sidewalks are wide, homes are HUGE and you better pickup after your dog or else.  It’s a nice, safe and clean place to take a dog for a walk.

More often that not you run into the same people over and over and oddly enough, you find yourself remembering the dogs name but not the owners.  So anyway on one of our marathon walks we met a nice lady name Unice and her husband. Her name was easy to remember because he husband said “yea, her name is Unice and it’s spelled u…nice, but she’s not very nice” followed by a penguin-esq (wah wah wah). They seemed nice nice enough and obviously were very wealthy. Within 2 minutes of the conversation she was bagging about how they take their private jet to Vail. Good for them I say, no jealousy here and I’m happy for their success. We talked for almost an hour before we finally managed to pry ourselves away. We ran into Unice many times after that and she always had a way of making you stick around when you really wanted to leave. If you don’t know what I mean then you probably have that same problem. She was fun to talk to but she would not stop and we eventually started avoiding her from time to time because our dog needed a good walk more than we needed to hear the latest local gossip.  We would run into Unice at the grocery store, see her in traffic or at a restaurant. Unice is in her mid to late 70′s and is attractive for an elderly woman. She claims to have been a Neiman Marcus model back in the day and always makes effort to fix her hair, makeup and all that stuff.

Well the other day my wife who co-owns a successful business, provides jobs for people, pays lots of taxes and contributes mightily to the growth and prosperity of this Country, ran into Unice while walking our dog. They exchanged pleasantries and then Unice proceeded to tear Obama a new one about how he was costing them so much money that they had to pump their oil wells faster since Obama already raised taxes on the rich. My wife reminded her that no taxes had been raised yet but Unice was not interested in hearing about facts since she already knew everything. She asked my wife who she voted for and she told her “Obama”. Unice seemed surprised and then asked where she was from and she said “Mexico”. She then turned to my wife and said “It’s people like you that are ruining everything. Why don’t you go back to your own fucking Country and leave us alone”. Then she turned to her dog and said “come on Coco, let’s go” and stormed off.  BTW her dog is named after Channel, hence the Coco part.  My wife was in shock but started tailing Unice asking her what she was talking about and saying things like “‘Unice, I’ve known you for years and we have spoken for hours and I can’t believe that you are judging me because of who I voted for and where I come from”. Unice turned around crying and said “I’m sorry honey but we are losing so much money” and my wife said “why are you losing money, Obama has not raised taxes yet”. She had no answer because she obviously has no idea how the system works. Then Unice went on to say “well you don’t have money so how would you know?” to which my wife responded “what makes you think we don’t have money, we have plenty of money , we pay plenty of taxes, we employ lots of people so what are you talking about?”.

This went back and forth for almost an hour and over the course of that hour my wife proceeded to respectfully tear Unice a new one without raising her voice, using profanity or being an ignorant racist. Of course Unice never stopped to think about the Mexicans who manicure her lawn, repair her homes, built her homes, cook her meals, wash her dishes, iron her clothes, wash her cars, wash her plane, sweep up her hair at the beauty shop and god knows what else those awful Mexicans are doing to ruin this poor woman’s life. Who do they think they are? My wife explained to her that migrant workers don’t come here to steal jobs, they come here because Americans are as willing as ever to exploit them with illegally low wages so they can cheat on their taxes and make more money. So who is really causing the problem here? If the contractors, restaurateurs and anyone else exploiting them would stop offering them jobs and pay their fair share of taxes like the rest of us, they would eventually have to go away or go through the system and become legal. It’s funny but American people really believe that Mexicans WANT to come here.. when in fact they don’t want to come here at all. Seriously, would YOU like to have to leave your Country, your family and your friends, be treated as a second class citizen, walk across the desert, risk arrest and deportation all because you need more money to provide for yourself and for your loved ones?

I’m as white as they come and with a name like Cunningham it should be a crime to be anything other than bleached white. That said, I too felt discriminated against and was really upset that my educated, cultured, beautiful and amazing wife was disrespected by an old, ignorant, racist republican. Especially one that we knew and had built a meaningless but long lasting relationship with. My wife’s friends were upset, her parents were angry, my friends were angry and now Unice has been demoted from nice white lady to an ignorant, old racist who has probably never even left the Country. Talk about judging a book by it’s cover, we judged her in a positive way and could not have been more wrong. Maybe it was my wifes light complexion, total lack of Spanish accent or the German car she was driving, but Unice could not have been more wrong when she judged her. Unice’s husband was right and she is “not very nice” so we are done with Unice and feel pity for the misery that fills her life each day as she walks alone around Highland park with only Coco to complain to.

Now when Unice and Coco are out walking, we cross the street before we get close enough to say hello. We have chosen not to associate or even exchange pleasantries with someone as ignorant as her. Hopefully as her generation dies off a more well educated group will replace them.

BTW, we stole Texas and pretty much the entire southern part of the Country from the Mexicans anyway.

In no particular order here they are.

Don Verplank – Las vegas
Don and I were really best buddies at High School in Las Vegas during the late 70′s. It’s funny how songs take you back and there are a few that I can’t hear without thinking of a person, place or thing from that time. For Don it’s “Hold the Line” by Toto and “Running with the Devil” by Van Halen. We would sit in my car smoking weed and screaming along with the radio. Our purpose in life was to A) chase girls and B) have fun (hopefully while chasing girls). We did pretty well for ourselves and managed to stay out of trouble because we were into having fun and hung around nice, cool people who didn’t judge us and weren’t trouble makers themselves.

We did some crazy stuff like hike to the top of a desert mountain with (2) joints and a lighter as our only supplies. That’s right, we brought pot but no water. We also hiked pretty deeply into abandoned silver mines for fun and almost never had a spare flashlight or batteries. We would play air guitar at parties for friends and would put on a serious show. I’m talking about jumping up and down, head banging, windmill right arms and all. Funny thing was we didn’t give a crap who was watching or what they thought, we were just (2) friends having a blast and enjoying ourselves. One year it snowed (6) inches in Vegas and we were driving on a (4) lane road and I just looked over at him, cranked the wheel all the way to the left and smashed on the brakes (there were no cars around) and we spun like an Indy car for at least 12 circles and a quarter mile until we slid to a stop on that snowy road. Once we took my car into a mud soaked field and did donuts for about (15) minutes until the car was 100% covered in mud and we finally got stuck. We had to hike around (in the mud) looking for a plank to put under the wheel and about an hour later we finally got unstuck. We went to a desert party that got busted by the cops as they came in with multiple helicopters and had also setup up a roadblock on the only road back to Vegas. We were the first car out and as we tore down the highway we quickly became first car to reach the road block, with no less than (200) cars behind us. Well the cops searched every car starting from the last one which meant we were in for a long wait. Nearly (2) hours had passed by the time they got to us and they were past ready to go home themselves. The cop shined his light inside the cabin of the car and we had forgotten to hide the pipe that dangled from the sun shade. He asked if it was ours and in two part harmony we both blurted out “nooooooo”. He laughed, took our pipe and sent us on our way. Good thing he didn’t check under the floor mats.

Fred Lane – Houston
Fred was a good friend that I made while living in Houston. Living at the same apartment complex made it easy for us to hang out in the evenings and since I played guitar and he played keyboards (he could tear up the Maple Leaf Rag) we had plenty to entertain ourselves with. Fred had a job working as a bartender at a strip club and while I never really got into that scene (it was too hard for me to pretend that I didn’t know that the stripper really only wanted my money) I enjoyed visiting him at work from time to time. Fred was a quick friend because he moved away but we became very close and shared a ton of fun times during that probably (6) month friendship. Mostly evolving around his stripper friends and playing music.

Chaz Moreland – Las Vegas
Chaz was a blast and we hit it off right away because he was funny as hell and I appreciated a good sense of humor, especially if I had to hang out with that person. Seems like all Chaz and I did was get dressed up and go to parties. That probably sounded gay but trust me, we were not. What I meant was that we would wear nice clothes, fix our hair, chow down on breath mints and anything else we could do to gain favor with the ladies. We were both dorks (sort of) so we needed all the help we could get. Also his car was an AMC something. It was like a Pacer station wagon but with a broken AC, saggy headliner and rusty side panels. That car sucked so hard that we actually had to turn on the heat during the day time, in the Summer, in Las Vegas to keep the car from overheating. It even had dual AC units, they were called windows, one on the left and one on the right. Imagine pulling duct tape off the hood off a black car during August in the middle of the desert. That’s what it felt like pulling your nut sack off your thighs when you got out of that POS. We still had fun and that car took us to the promise land on more than one occasion. I sure wonder what he is up to now.

Hank Townsend – Houston
My surfing buddy and a great singer too. This was in Houston and we would go surfing in Galveston which is quite hard to do. The water is murky, the waves are flat and if you’re lucky you might get to ride (1) good wave every (30) minutes. We usually went during the Winter because the swell was bigger (not by much) but anything helped. One night we drove to Galveston so we could wake up at the crack of dawn (AKA feeding time for the sharks) and get the best waves. Let me preface this by saying that I really dislike lions. Any animal that will start eating you before you die has front row seating on my shit list and the lion sits front and center. So we decide to sleep on the seawall because the car is too small and right at dawn I feel something poking my face.  When I opened my eyes I literally thought I was dreaming because a full grown lion was sniffing my face. Some dumbass had a full grown lion on a leash walking down the seawall of a public beach and he let it size me up while I lay sleeping. My initial reaction was bowel busting panic followed by a 300bpm mini heart attack. I’m talking the kind of shock when your legs gets separated from your torso but you feel no pain because you’re in that kind of shock. As I started to regain my senses, the dumbass pulled the lion off my face and started strolling down the seawall like it was no big deal. That was a rough morning. This might sound odd but the water would get so cold that we would drink as much hot chocolate as we could stand and chase that with a few glasses of water. The purpose was to make yourself have to pee.. a bunch. We wore full body wetsuits with booties and yes we pee’d in our wetsuits to stay warm. Sure it might sound disgusting (OK, actually it is) but everyone did it and you knew when someone was letting go because you would hear that familiar moan of ecstasy echo across the water. Hank and I would play music all the time as he was a guitarist as well as a talented singer. We both shared an affinity for Journey and he could actually sing that stuff pretty well. Hank had a great family and I think he went on to UNT and I would assume he has done well for himself.

It would be easy to go on and on but enough for now. If you guys see this, look me up.