Safety First!

6/10:

I try to do as many racing-related activities as possible, including getting to the local go-kart tracks and occasionally racing in my own car during autocross events. I finally got a little tired of borrowing/renting helmets that who-knows-how-many people had worn before me, putting up with scratched shields that didn't stay in place, and generally not feeling very cool and decided to buy my own helmet. Considering how much I like racing, this was a pretty big deal.

I did a little poking around and found out that there really aren't too many places around Cambridge to buy racing helmets. Fortunately there are many different places online ranging from the helmet manufacturers themselves (www.simpsonraceproducts.com, www.bellracing.com) to Herb's Helmet Hut of Kenosha, Wisconsin. Comparing prices of various helmets across these options revealed minimal differences, so I opted to go straight to the manufacturer as I thought cutting the middleman would be a good idea. My first choice was a Simpson Avenger (the link was good as of this writing), which I thought was a great deal: a decent helmet from a well-known manufacturer for only about $220, where other apparently comparable helmets cost at least $40 more (and some were $1000 more). I eagerly ordered one up the Monday before Memorial Day. Two days later I got a phone call from Simpson: apparently they don't have any of those helmets left in stock, and in fact they don't even make them anymore. I'm not sure why you can still add one to your cart on their website, but the helpful customer service lady seemed pretty unconcerned about it. Unfortunately, their next-cheapest option was $300, so I moved on to Bell Racing. Their website offered, among others, the Bell Sport which again is a decent helmet from a well-known manufacturer for about $260. Supposing I'd forget about the $40, and not finding any sweeter deals elsewhere, I added the Bell, size large to my shopping cart. As an aside, I had tried on a few helmets in the pro shop of the go-kart track, and the mediums were rather small: my chin poked prominently out from the bottom and the padding was borderline-uncomfortable. I added a helmet bag to my order (I'll need something to carry it around in, after all), and a pair of karting gloves, also size large, to round out my accessories.

Clicking "Buy Online" didn't quite do what I thought it would: I was brought to the site of something called "Shopatron," which to me is essentially Spanish for "what the hell is this?" A little poking around revealed that Shopatron (seriously? What, was Shop-O-Matic already taken?) is a company that facilitates online merchandise purchases, and Bell Racing has outsourced their online store to them. It appears to be legit, but it also appears to be either something straight out of '98, Bush League, or both. Regardless, all of Bell Racing products were there, and my cart seemed to be accurate, so off it went.

The following morning, Thursday, I got an e-mail from Shopatron letting me know my order had been submitted and would be shipped shortly. Of course by "shortly" they meant the next morning, when I got another e-mail, this time from North American Race Gear (wait, who?), letting me know my order had shipped. I was a little miffed that I had deliberately gone to the manufacturer to get the helmet straight from them and had been piped through a middle man regardless, but there was little I could do about it at that point. I had chosen the cheapest shipping option ($17.90 for "3 to 5 days" via USPS), and considering it was just before Memorial Day weekend and the USPS takes Sundays off anyway, I expected everything to arrive sometime between Wednesday and Friday of the following week. Of course my shipping option didn't include online tracking, but I honestly wasn't concerned about it.

Yet.

Of course Wednesday and Thursday come and go without any deliveries. I was still holding out hope for Friday, but I got yet another e-mail Friday morning, this time from Bell Racing. It was a product satisfaction survey, as they wanted to know how much I was enjoying my new helmet. When I clicked the "I don't know, I don't frigging have it yet" button, I got a message to the effect of "You should have gotten it by now, we'll look into it." Here's a tip: if you want someone to think something is wrong, tell them something is wrong. It worked like a champ on me. I would have loved to have checked the online tracking to see where my $350 of stuff was, but as noted above that wasn't an option. I helpfully mentioned this in the "Do you have any other comments?" section...

Fortunately the doorbell rang Friday evening, and Amanda came back from answering it holding a helmet-sized box. With a UPS sticker on it. Hmm. It would have been nice if they had sent over the tracking number once they decided to forget about the USPS and send it via big brown truck, but whatever, it was here. I popped open the box and the gloves were sitting on top. I pulled them on and they fit like gloves. They were just barely big enough without being too small. I rightly figured that a few races would break them in and they'd be awesome. Under the gloves was the helmet bag, and under the bag was the helmet. In a bag. Turns out Bell Racing helmets come with bags. It would be helpful if they mentioned that on their website so you didn't go spending $20 on an extra one, but I guess that's what I get for accessorizing. Finally, I pulled on the helmet, and of course it was massive. I could almost spin it around my head. It was big enough that with it on I could fit my hands up in it and waggle my fingers in front of my face. I didn't think I had an unusual hand-to-head ratio, but apparently my hands are a size large and my head is somewhat smaller.

I kicked an e-mail to North American Race Gear (specifically Chris, who had sent the shipment confirmation message) letting him know I had selected the wrong size helmet and could I possibly exchange it, and oh I bought myself an extra bag and if there was anything he could do about it that would be awesome. Fortunately for me, Chris and North American Race Gear shoot pretty straight, and he let me know all I had to do was send the helmet and both bags back, and he'd send me what I needed. It took me until Wednesday after work to get to the UPS store to send the helmet back. The nice UPS man charged me $10 and said it would be there on Friday, two days later. Turns out he was extra-right, as (according to the online tracking) it got there early Friday morning, about 36 hours after I had dropped it off. While that was awesome on the surface, and while my math skills aren't stellar, it was also half the shipping cost to cover the same distance in a quarter of the time, with online tracking. Hmm. I had sent Chris the tracking number the morning after I sent the package, and he assured me he was preparing my new shipment. Unfortunately all I can do now is wait and hope that everything is as it should be when it gets here, probably sometime next week...

In the meantime, if you're considering buying a helmet, go find a local race gear shop to buy one from, even if "local" means an hour or two away. You'll likely get to talk to someone who can help you find one that is appropriate for what you're going to use it for (although you'll probably feel like you don't know what you're talking about), you'll get to try on as many as you need to find one that fits nice, and you'll take it home that day for just about the same price as you'd pay online before shipping (either one-way or several round-trips). Now you know.

Update 6/17:

Last weekend passed without any sign of any packages being left for me, so Sunday night I e-mailed my pal Chris at North American Race Gear looking for an ETA. I didn't hear anything back by mid-day Monday, so I gave him a ring... and had to leave a voicemail. I got to work today (Tuesday) still without any word at all, so I gave Chris another ring and finally managed to catch him. It turns out that the helmet was back-ordered when he went looking for a medium to send me. Apparently they're due to get them sometime in the next day or two, after which he said he'd "ship it immediately and e-mail or call me with the tracking number." What a peach.

Update 6/23:

Finally.

After one failed attempt to deliver the helmet while nobody was home, UPS managed to catch Amanda this afternoon. Well, barely. She had to run down the street in a bathrobe to catch the departing UPS guy, as he had rung the doorbell while she was in the shower. She knew who it was and what he was delivering, and since she is amazing she ran him down for me.

Fortunately for everyone involved, this helmet fits and I'm pretty excited to get it out on the track.

Moral of the story:

DON'T BUY HELMETS ONLINE. It's enough of a pain in the ass to get one; you sure as heck don't want to have to try to get another if the first isn't exactly what you need. Seriously, just go to a local race gear shop, even if "local" means an hour or two away. You'll likely get to talk to someone who can help you find one that is appropriate for what you're going to use it for (although you'll probably feel like you don't know what you're talking about), you'll get to try on as many as you need to find one that fits nice, and you'll take it home that day for just about the same price as you'd pay online before shipping (either one-way or several round-trips). I've said it twice for a reason. Now you know.

Celtics vs. Toronto

Another slow week this week, although I went to the Celtics/Raptors game Monday, and it was my sister's birthday on Wednesday. Amanda came with me to the Celtics game, and that's always a good time. The Celtics as an organization put on a wicked entertaining show. The basketball is obviously good, but the clips they play on the big screen, the music, and everything else they do works really well together. I like watching basketball about as much as I like watching hockey, but going to Celtics games is a lot more fun than going to Bruins games.

We didn't do anything for my sister's birthday, although everyone sent her cards. Mine was an e-card, and she hadn't checked her e-mail for most of the day so she was pretty peeved when she thought I had just been lazy or forgotten. I gotta remember to follow that up with a phone call or something next year.

Bruins

This past week was fairly quiet, although on Tuesday I made it to a Bruins game. It was my first (and possibly only) game this season, so I was pretty excited. They played the Minnesota Wild, which is the team we got our backup goalie from, so we were hoping they'd play him. Unfortunately (for him), Tim Thomas got the start. Unfortunately for everyone, the Bs lost 1 - 0. While we were there, we noticed the Wild's logo is much more complicated than it appears at first glance:

Looking closely, you can see the main shape is that of a wild cat or bear, but it incorporates a river, tree line, and full moon, ostensibly of the Minnesota landscape. The "eye" of the animal represents the North Star, an homage to the Minnesota North Stars hockey team.

New Years, etc.

Amanda and I had our two year anniversary this past week, along with New Year's Eve. For our anniversary we went to one of our favorite restaurants in the North End, The Florentine Cafe. We had our third date there, and for some reason we always seem to have really good luck walking in and getting a table without much of a wait.

A few days later for New Year's Eve we went to our friends' house in Mansfield. We knew it would be a  good time, but the drive was a challenge. The highway was mainly wet, but there was a lot of salt, which kept coating the windshield. Of course it was about 15 degrees outside, so my windshield washer sprayers were frozen. I'm always amazed when that happens; it seems like something we would have figured out how to prevent a while ago. We actually had to stop a few times on the way to scrub the windshield with snow so I could see.

Once there we had a great time. Equipped with the safety net that is Alka-Seltzer Wake-up Call, we downed several bottles of champagne, vodka, and High Life. We ran out of champagne flutes, so I was using a Sam Adams beer glass instead. The next morning we hit up Percy's to sample New England's Largest Breakfast menu, and it was absolutely delicious.

This about sums it up:

Note that is a bottle of High Life, and a glass of champagne. Happy New Year.

Adenovirus

Last week I was fighting off what I thought was a fairly routine sore throat. People around the office have been coughing a lot lately, and I thought my insanely-robust immune system was simply shrugging off whatever was floating around. Unfortunately, come Sunday morning, I felt bad enough to not leave the couch all day. I made it out Sunday night to catch Body of Lies, which was solid, but woke up Monday morning with my eyes full of garbage. I took the day off of work so I could sleep off whatever cold/allergy combination had come to visit, and while I felt better Tuesday morning, my eyes were still full of slime and had gone all pink. My throat didn't feel any better either, so I worked from the couch, sure that I'd be ready to roll Wednesday.

Of course, I was wrong. I was in the same condition Wednesday morning as Tuesday, so I headed for the doctor's office, where I found out I had a strain of Adenovirus. Allegedly "rampant in the community" right now, I blame the coughing carrier monkeys at work.

The doctor put me on Sudafed, Advil, and fancy eyedrops, and I'll cease to be contagious by about noon today.

Friggin' monkeys.

Colgate

This past weekend, Amanda and I drove out to Hamilton, NY to visit Colgate University where she got her undergrad degree. I don't think I've ever been out to that part of New York, so it was interesting to see. Amanda drove for sentimental reasons, and I was actually pretty nice to just hang out for a few hours.
As scenic as it is, there isn't a heck of a lot to do out there, so most of the weekend was checking out parts of campus and checking out the bars. The campus buildings are mostly pretty new, although they're all built to look old. A new science building was put up since Amanda graduated, so we spent an extra few minutes walking around in it, and it was damn impressive, especially for a primarily liberal arts school. Plus, any building with a planetarium gets extra marks in my book.
The bars in Hamilton are all predictably small and crowded, but they also all have plenty of cheap beer. One, Risky Business, had the two scariest bar tenders I have ever seen. Both women, one looked like she must have been 60+ but was dressed like a 13-year-old, and the other was probably late 30s but looked like she had literally just gotten out of bed. A huge selling point, aside from the cheap beer, was the most badass Miller Lite sign I have ever seen. I can't even find a picture on the Internet, such is the awesomeness. It looked like it was from the 70's, and was an animated, scrolling city/mountain/beach panorama.
We had driven out to Hamilton on Friday night, so our drive home on Sunday afternoon gave us a chance to actually check out the scenery, which was pretty nice. There were a couple of wind farms just outside of Hamilton and as scared as I am of huge windmills, they really do look awesome. The ride home took us about four and a half hours, and despite my hangover it made for a nice end to a nice weekend.

Wedding in the Poconos

Early in August, two of Amanda’s best friends got married in the Poconos. The wedding itself was on a Saturday, but we headed down Thursday night. Amanda was a bridesmaid and the associated brunches, lunches, and parties started Friday.

I’d never driven through the Poconos before, but it was about what I expected: lots of hills, lots of trees, some deer, and not really much else.

We stayed at a cottage complex in the area. We arrived at about 11pm Thursday night, and there were virtually no lights at all near our cottage, so it felt a little like we were sneaking through a neighborhood as we unpacked the car.

The rehearsal dinner, wedding, and reception were at the SkyTop country club (which has a well equipped bar, and a well equipped lawn bowling court), but the brunches, lunches, etc. were at the Maid of Honor’s parent’s house on a nearby lake. The house was on a “preserve,” which I found meant an elaborate gated neighborhood surrounding a huge lake, with nothing but muddy dirt roads. Miles of muddy dirt roads. It was one of the few times since I’ve had the Mustang that I actually missed my old Bronco II.

Despite the terrain, all of the events were fun and it was fun hanging out with everyone, none of which we get to see very often.

Helping Move

About a month ago one of my good friends and his wife moved from one house in Western Mass to another. He's helped me move a few times at least, so it was really no trouble to wake up a little early on a Saturday and head out there to help. No trouble until I sat stopped in traffic on the Pike for an extra hour, anyway.
Traffic, and the 90+ heat aside, the move went about as well as it could have. It's essentially standard procedure now that I'm one of the goons who crawls around in the recesses of whatever truck is being used, cramming oddly-shaped things into oddly-shaped spaces. My goal is to make myself useful by lugging heavy things around the hot truck and keeping the number of required runs as low as possible. You'll have to ask the people I've helped if that is actually a useful thing to do or not...
The movees are renting space in a friend's house, which was essentially already full of stuff. I felt a little bad about piling all of their things in either the garage, the living room, or their bedroom, but hopefully they have it all sorted out by now.
I unfortunately had to leave early in the afternoon to make it home in time for dinner plans, but as far as I know nothing was seriously damaged in the move, which is about all you can hope for. The leg of a table or couch or something made a bit of a mess of the plastic frame around a TV screen, but as far as I know it still works fine. Besides, now it has character.

Walking with Dinosaurs

Last month Amanda and I went to Walking with Dinosaurs at the Garden. I didn't know anything about it other than a vague promise of animatronics, and I was not disappointed. The show was actually pretty awesome. We were guided through a history of dinosaurs and their evolution by a nearly fearless human guide, who was dwarfed by the massive dinos walking around him.
The show was immersive, with elaborate and clever backgrounds and environments for the dinos to lumber around in. The lone flying dino required some slight imagination, but the effect came off well.
The dinosaurs themselves were surprisingly lifelike, and it required as much imagination to figure out how they worked as to think of them as real.
It was definitely worth the price of admission, and not nearly as campy as I would have thought.

New England GP

Last month the American Le Mans Series came to Lime Rock Park in Connecticut for the New England Grand Prix. Six of us made the three hour drive down and it was a blast. If you've never been to an auto race before, the first thing you'll notice is how loud it is. Some of the cars are absolutely deafening. One of the draws of the ALMS is the variety of cars racing against each other. Most series, like NASCAR, essentially use just one kind of car, and this is completely different. You can close your eyes and easily tell if a Corvette, Ferrari F430, or Porsche 911 just went by.
Lime Rock is a short, fast, narrow track so the racing is exciting for the whole race. There were no major wrecks, although one of the Audis pitched itself into a barrier pretty hard.
Basically the whole day was sitting out in the sun watching loud, fast cars scream by. I really can't think of too many other things I'd rather do.

July 4th on the Cape

This year Amanda and I spent 4th of July weekend at her parents' Cape house. Her parents were in Chicago for a wedding, so there was plenty of room for three of our friends, too.
The weather was not great, although it was warm the entire time. There was a period of good sun on Friday afternoon, which we took full advantage of by playing bocce in the immaculately-maintained yard. Saturday was a total rain-out, but we got to the beach on Sunday.
Most of the weekend was split between sleeping, eating, and drinking, but we managed to get some bowling in as well.
Unfortunately there wasn't anywhere for us to go to see fireworks, although there were enough backyard shows going on to remind us what day it was. Other than that, it was a great weekend, and a nice follow-up to the Jersey vacation.

Stone Harbor

Towards the end of June, I went with Amanda and my family to the south shore of New Jersey. If you've never been to the beach there, it's a lot nicer than you think. The sand is really fine, almost like a powder, and the beach itself is very well maintained. We stay in a cottage a few blocks away and for the most part it is completely awesome. Amanda came down with us last year, too, so everything was pretty routine. We've gone down there basically every year since about 1981, and I'm definitely looking forward to next year already.

Celtics

"Amazing" is about the only word that covers it.

Scoring 131 points in four quarters

to beat the LA Lakers

in the Finals

to win the first title in 22 years

Actually being in the building for that was one of the most incredible things that I have ever done.



The craziest part of the game was when we were up by 30+ in the fourth quarter, the Lakers got the ball after another Celtics basket, and the whole place was still chanting "DEE - FENSE! DEE - FENSE!"

To say that we've had a good run in Boston recently would be a colossal understatement.

And to say that I've been lucky to see Manny's 500th and the Celtics' 17th in the span of a month would be just as colossal an understatement.

I guess "colossal" works, too.

Paintball

We headed back down to Upton for more paintball this past Sunday. It was hot. The thermometer, sitting in the shade, read 90 for most of the day. The upside was we were mostly in the woods. The downside was we were mostly running through the woods. The other downside was that our team got its ass kicked. The teams are essentially random, with the refs mainly concerned about equal numbers. It usually shakes out about even, if not in our favor, but we looked like kids this time out.
For some reason we took a fair number of nasty hits, too. I started it off by getting shot directly in the Adam's apple. Fortunately the shot was from a pretty good distance and I was wearing a neoprene neck guard specifically for that purpose. Nonetheless I ended up with a scratchy voice for a few hours, and a bruise that's still visible four days later. Another one of us came across a kid who didn't exactly know the rules, particularly the ones about close-range combat, and got blasted in the arm from something like three feet away. 280 feet-per-second is the maximum velocity allowed on this field, and it turns out that a paintball hitting your arm at 190 mph will raise about a 3/4-inch bloody welt. Totally nasty. We were all sure that was going to be the worst of it until the last round of the day. One of us got tagged right in the throat, but from much closer than my hit and without the benefit of a neck guard. You should see what it looks like when someone has a golfball-sized bloody welt right in the middle of their neck. Actually, you shouldn't, it's friggin' disgusting. He was a wicked trooper about it and thought it was "awesome," although I'm not sure if he still thinks so.
Don't let any of this deter you from thinking it's a good time, because it is. Let me know if you're interested in going next time and I'll kick you an e-mail.
And yeah, I have extra neck guards.

Baltimore

Two weekends ago, Amanda's parents brought us down to Baltimore to catch some Sox games. The trip has been planned for months, and none of us really thought too much about it other than to be excited to finally get to Camden Yards.
First, the bad news. Shortly before the trip, we learned that one of Amanda's relatives passed away as a result of complications from a recent, and extremely unexpected, heart attack. Everyone took the news hard, although in some weird coincidence all of the proceedings happened in North Carolina that Sunday, so essentially Amanda and her parents were halfway there already and headed south after the games.
Being huge Sox fans, and somewhat in need of a distraction, the trip to The Yards was still on. Of course, we get down there only to realize that Manny Ramirez is sitting on 499 career home runs. Friday night's game was great, as it was the first time we had been to the park, and our seats were good. The crew directing people to their seats even escorted us (and everyone else, of course) right to our seats before Windexing and wiping them down for us to make sure we didn't have to sit on Oriole poop. No Ramirez home runs that night despite the game going 13 innings, but the Celtics booted the Pistons out of the playoffs and there were numerous Celtics banners getting run through the stands. Remember, this is in Baltimore.
Saturday night's game was incredible. We were sitting in left field, just beyond third base. Watching Jacoby Ellsbury steal absolutely everything was wicked fun, but then the 7th inning happened. Manny absolutely cranked the first pitch he saw into the right field seats, and the place went berserk.

The rest of the trip, Sunday's game, the Harborside area of Baltimore, Babe Ruth's house, Annapolis, seeing the Sox in the lobby of their hotel, was all great. Seriously though, 500 home runs.
Wow

F1 Outdoors

F1 Outdoors is a go-kart track in East Bridgewater we've been meaning to get to. It's run by the same company as F1 Boston (an indoor track in Braintree) but is, as expected, outdoors. A group of us finally made it over there, and it was awesome.

The karts felt like faster versions of their indoor counterparts, although the time sheets suggested they were actually about the same speed. The biggest difference was the fact that there were no guardrails immediately next to the track; the whole circuit had standard red-and-white racetrack curbing and ample runoff before getting to the barriers. The track layout was also a little more conducive to flat-out racing, as opposed to the extremely tight and windy indoor courses. Both of these details not only made it feel faster, but actually allowed for better racing and more fun. I had a couple of come-from-the-back runs that I wish I had on camera.

We're definitely heading back there fairly soon, and we're toying with the viability of starting a race team; it's that much fun. Let me know if you want to come with us next time and I'll shoot you an e-mail.

Celts/Detroit

People can be loud. I've been in a lot of loud crowds and I thought I was reasonably familiar with just how loud a building full of people could actually get. The roar of the crowd at Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals was without any doubt the loudest human-generated noise I have ever heard in my life. Seriously rock-concert, so-loud-you-can't-hear-yourself-scream loud.
Loud
Even though we lost, the game was great. Both teams played well, the aforementioned crowd was unbelievable, and right up until the final seconds of the game we thought the Celtics would take it. Being there for the first home loss of the playoffs obviously isn't the best thing, but since we now know that the Pistons won't be getting new rings, it's all good.

Birthday

A couple of weeks ago, Amanda and my sister took me to a Sox game for my birthday. The weather was awesome, which was good because we were out in the open; it just started to sprinkle as the game ended, but otherwise it was sunny and warm.
The Sox won, and I had a great time.
Afterwards, we went to a bar to watch the Celtics knock the Cavs out of the playoffs. It was an absolutely awesome day.

D.C.

My grad-school-bound little sister graduated from college this past weekend down in D.C., and the whole family headed down to watch. It was actually the first time in a long time that the five Copes went anywhere without additional company, and it worked out pretty well.
D.C. is a neat place with a lot of interesting monuments, although basically everyone upon entering the District gets a strong and vocal opinion about all kinds of political issues and isn't afraid to share. Even people who don't normally talk about politics decide it's a good place to start, including myself.
We took a bicycle tour around the city, and that was a great time. We were led along the numerous walking/bike paths to some of the monuments, where our travelling guide would tell us about them. After a few minutes of wandering around we'd get back on the bikes and head to the next one. I forgot how much fun it was to get air off of bumps in the sidewalk and it almost made me want to get a bike to ride to work. Almost.
The graduation ceremony was indoors and out of the rain, and it actually wasn't too bad. They break the students up by school, and we only had to watch two schools' worth get their names read. The speaker was Dr. Vernon Jordan Jr., and he was actually pretty interesting.
I can't believe that my little sister just graduated from college... It's amazing how nobody ever gets any younger...

Paintball

A couple of weekends ago a bunch of us dusted off our paintball gear and headed down to Upton for the day. We played a couple of times per month last summer, but we definitely didn't start until later in the year. The field, which is usually pretty dry, was loaded with mud and running water, and it was a great time. It threatened to rain all day but all we ever got was a quick misting mid-day.
I personally played fairly well, especially considering it was the first game of the season, although our team as a whole wasn't particularly dominant. Our pack is still relying too heavily on the actions of the other goobers that are there, and that never works out. Hopefully we'll figure it out next time.