Brownsey Family

This morning at 6:15 am I checked telelephone freeze alarm at camp and got a busy signal, tried again and got the same signal. This means that the heat is below 44 degrees. Something was wrong. I called Terry and asked if he saw BJ Queen in my yard Monday, because he was going to take the bad generator out and bring it to his shop. He said he saw tracks in my yard and would go over and check to see what was wrong with the heat. A short time later Terry called back and said there was no power and that he would start the wood stove. Both he and I called BJ Queen. By 8:00 am they had the power back on that they shut off when the bad generator was removed. It was 18 below outside and 41 in the camp. Terry checked again in the afternoon and everything seemed ok. The thing I am worried about is the washing machine on the cold outside wall. Any comments on BJ Queen Enterprises?

Dad

I went to see the Miami Heat play the Raptors last night. The client who was supposed to take the tickets backed out so I went to the game with a coworker. I got to see Shaq play in person where he looks even scarier than on tv and I got to find out why everyone says some player on the Heat named Dwyane Wade is an mvp candidate.

Mom would like a Berkeley t-shirt... the navy blue one with yellow text.

Joel

Unofficially, I have been told that I am (will be?) accepted to UC Berkeley for a Master of Science in Range Management (Read: grasslands and cattle). Unofficially, I will have my tuition and all of my fees waived and a research assistantship. I might look for places to live in Oakland.

This weekend highs have been in the forties. It is the warmest it's been since December and the first sign of spring that I've seen so far.

Philip

Seabass and Bruno to drive for Panoz at Sebring.

Two Ndinjas had a tough time during the sprint race in Mexico this weekend.

He made contact with the Team New Zealand(Matt Halliday) during a caution period, and flipped two and one half times. Two Ndinjas should have recognized it was two dninjas to drive top speed, caution period, steering quick...ly, car too slowly. Needless to say, he was unable to participate in the feature race which saw Enge, Herta, Rahal, and Carpentier finish 7, 13, 14, and 15.

It's cold outside, will be home and at camp in some combination at some points next week. Made some chicken with the mondi's sauce last night. It was good.

I also added our own two ndinjas to the side of the blog because I think it's good. Yay!

-Paul

Brownsey Family





Jonathan and I had a great time at Stillwater. Thank you, Mom and Dad, having us. There was plenty of snow. As you can see Jonathan and Cameron got stuck on the Mini - Z. We hope Kate gets better soon.

Chris

If you scroll down, you will see a "free speech" sign made of legos. It is from a demonstration in front of the Danish embassy inWashington, in support of the Danes and free speech in general. I thought the sign was clever.

Mom

Memorable weekend, a few things come to mind...
Best snow all season for boys weekend at camp;
Closed radialhead fracture for Kate (skating fall);
6 Hour emergency room trip for x-rays and sling;
Computer games for Oliver & Grandpa;
Mini Z tip & trip for Jonathan & Cameron;
Duct tape diaper for Oliver;
Model airplane & sewing for Oliver, Jonathan & Cameron.
"Orange tic tocs for Cameron & Oliver (Jonathan introduced his cousins to tic tacs)

Finally news from Audi on the status of Champion, the R8 and the R10.

http://www.americanlemans.com/News/Article.aspx?NewsID=1762

Champion Audi, Joest, and Audi Sport will be involved in the R10 debut race at Sebring. Following Sebring the R10 will go back to europe in preperation for LeMans. For the next three races on the ALMS schedule Champion Audi will run the R8 (Houston, Mid Ohio, Limerock). Then the R10 will return for the remainder of the ALMS races with Audi Sport with support from Champion. So expect the Factory Audi livery being run by Champion.

Also Patrick Dempsey will be the grand marshall at Sebring, maybe Joel can get his autograph.

On our way home last weekend we stopped at Mondi's and had food and bought some of there sauce. It is very very good.

Two Ndinjas was 19th fastest of 22 drivers in third practice at A1Gp Monterrey(still no explanation on why Japan has reentered the series). Graham Rahal born in Columbus Ohio(son of Bobby Rahal born in Medina Ohio (son of Mike Rahal also born in Medina Ohio(son of someone from Syria))), was 12th fastest for team Lebanon.

Update: Rahal, Dninjas and Carpentier will be starting 14, 17, and 19 respercively.

Paul

Brownsey Family
Jonathan and I arrived up North today. BJ's henchman was still here doing something. There was progress; the generator now runs for 30 seconds at a time. The service man was consulting with BJ in the Caribbean.

Three tips ups are set up. The ice rink is cleared and ready to go.

Chris

Brownsey Family
Jonathan and I are all packed to head over to Stillwater. Megan is helping me type this post. Jonathan is begging for another Lego set as I write this. Jonathan was at a friends house all day. Christine may take Megan to Curious George tomorrow.

See some of you soon.

Chris

We took Cameron and Oliver to Chuck E. Cheese today. They had a great time up until the end. Apparently children never want to leave Chuck E. Cheese. They want to stay and play forever. It was pretty busy with school out. I missed the Daytona 500 due to power line/generator problems. Not sure I really missed it though.


Noah

Had dinner with Grandma Saturday, she also visited my apartment, pictures to follow. Sunday I went sailing for the first time with my roommates' parents and sister on their "$150k 36' sailboat". I learned that out at sea rope is refered to as line. It is only called rope when docking. The boat traffic even way out in the ocean is almost as congested as the traffic on the highways down here. Between the "power boats", sailboats, fishing vessels, cruise ships, scubadiving boats, and "cigarette boats" there is a lot you have to look out for. I also learned how much sailing people hate "cigarette boats" for the noise disturbance they cause, I had to bite my tongue. I took the wheel of the sailboat for a while and also got to pull the lines for "tacking" or moving the "jib" sail from one side to the other for the purpose of turning around.

-Joel

Camp this weekend: big trouble.

Friday night Cyndy, Tim(her brother), and me went to camp, got there about 12. When we got there the generator was running but the power in the camp was off. Big trouble. I went around switching switches, knobing knobs, pushing buttons, opening secret compartments. Finally Cyndy got hold of one of BJ Queen's henchmen and we found the correct switch to switch and all was well again. The generator hummed through the night and we lived in TV luxury watching, trick your truck(big rig), American Turkey Hunt, and RFD TV. The next morning I watched the cattle auction on RFD TV, all black angus cows from Nebraska going for $2-3K.
Saturday brought Peter, Donnie, Noah, Kate, Oliver, Cameron, Howie, and Jo. Power wasn't expected to be restored until Monday. Big trouble. The generator was struggling as the day progressed lights dimming, Dad worrying. Then at about 11 the lights dimmed all the way for good. Big trouble. Noah, and I went to see the generator, and hit the manual start button. Klunk, click klunk, groan. Smoke poured from the starter, electrical style. Not good. Noah checked the oil. Big trouble. We looked at the exhaust and it had oil all over. Big trouble. We all went to bad, Dad never even got out of bed he was so sad. Sad dad. The next morning Noah drilled a hole in the ice to get water for the toilets via buckets. This isn't like the olden days when we had a 30 gallon water tank, now we have a 5 or so gallon tank. So no fresh water was readily available. BJ's henchman showed up and proved fairly worthless for a few hours saying the starter was bad. The starter was mad because it couldn't turn a stuck motor, but whatever. He left promising to bring another, smaller generator, at 8pm we gave up on his promise. Everyone except for the extremely old and extremely young went off to the Stillwater to play cards via wagon, but Kate forgot her wallet. Big trouble. So we turned around and while she went inside the lights went on. Noah honked the horn in celebration. Now we are using lights and whatnot. Paul did an excellent job keeping the camp warm with the wood stove. Whee! It's been cold and snowing, started off with just enough snow to ride. Traffic has been moderate. Very windy on the lake.

-Paul

Happy Birthday, Donald Steates

from the Brownsey family

Picture 2

Jonathan and Megan's friend Andrew's party: 'Spark' from Spark's Ark did an animal demonstration.

Chris

Yesterday I went with a high school group up to Yellowstone. We drove to Flagg Ranch, then took a snowcoach to Biscuit Basin and skied back to Old Faithful. It was pretty nice. I rode in a fifteen passenger van with 2'x4' tracks that bolt on to the hubs. It broke down right when we got to our destination. They got a 1965 Bombardier snowcoach to take us back. That was fun. Sorry I don't have a picture of it, Merr's camera was full.

It's cold out: a high of 4F today and the warmest low predicted through the weekend is -15F.

I got into UC Santa Barbara's Master of Environmental Science and Management program. I am still waiting to hear what kind of funding I will get to go.

Philip

Blob activity report.

October had 29, this was the first full month of blob.
November had 33 posts, the highest to date.
December had 30 posts, which dropped expectedly since everyone was in the same place and had to actually talk to eachother and stuff.
January had 26 posts, a disapointing drop, probably because we were still recovering from all the seeing eachother and what not at the end of December.
February has had 20 posts to date and is projected to have 33 posts if the trend continues.

Unique visits to the blob have stayed constant at about 450/month.

The percentage of racing related posts has been steadily increasing: February 35%, January 27%, December 20%, November 17%, October 7%.

Warm here today in the high 50's. This photo is of the connecting rod out of Chris' Murray lawn tractor. It looks like the crank journal is bad as well.

Noah

The last post was by Noah. I just assume people will know sometimes.

Sheep are considered to be the best livestock type pet. They do not kick and they are considered the least smelly of all farm type animals. Thier only defense is to run away which makes them good with children. Rabbits are good too, they don't bring dead mice or birds into the house. They can live indoors or outdoors. A garage or shed with a heat lamp for really cold nights would work. Of course our rabbits always survived with only shelter and thier own fur for warmth.
Here are a couple fo race car pictures for the older crowd.

Last night was the unveiling of the new Formula Atlantic car for 2006. A number of other announcements were also made during that event.

The series entered a partenership with Mazda for three years.

They will reintroduce standing starts at Cleveland(and possible other events to
follow, such as Road America).

Katherine Legge has signed with PKV for a full time Champ Car ride.

Jimmy Vasser said, "I will be doing a lot less driving next year." He said he
never wanted to make a big retirement announcement so this is how he did it.

Ryan Hunter-Rhey and Bobby Rahal were at the event(seperately).

There are now 27 confirmed drivers, 31 confirmed entries, and 40 cars ordered.

It appears that Dyson racing does not have any immediate plans to enter the
series.

Charles Zwolsman was there (last years champion) and he has no anounced plans
for this season as of now.

I think the Infinite Pro series has about 10 confirmed drivers.

The video of the presentation is here,
http://www.champcarworldseries.com/News/Article.asp?ID=9957 ,
it starts off with a few videos of Atlantic history.

Vasser drove the car onto stage(below).

Also Takuma Sato and Yuji Ide are confirmed for Super Aguri F1. Should have been Two Ndinjas.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Check out www.leded.com, my friend Rob who went with us to daytona finally overhauled his site and put up his pictures, there are some really good shots.
-Joel

Speaking of pets, Monday and Tuesday evening is the annual Westminster Dog Show live on USA Network. Peter and I always enjoy watching it and try to interest Paul's cat in the show also.

In racing news, Harlequin Romance has started publishing a new line of romance novels with a Nascar theme. The 1st one is out!

It is snowing here, very pretty. But, we got none of the big one. I think these huge storms should start being named as hurricanes are.

Donnie

Our snowstorm was a bust we got "officialy" .5" of snow. NYC central park got a record 27" of snow.
According to the Speed World Challenge website the following cars are being "homologated" for the GT class, Aston Martin DB9, EVO 8, Skyline, Lincoln LS, and Ford GT. I don't see how a Ford GT could be in the same class as the others.
Tony Stewart put on a show in the Bud shootout today. He was able to drive to a second place finish, giving his rookie teammate the win. Maybe if Nascar dropped the whole points system we could have better racing. The Ford Fusion is the ugliest race car since the Chevy Lumina.
If Ted's Hot Dogs has a car why not Ted's Fish Fry?

Brownsey Family
It snowed about 8 inches today. Jonathan drove to Bravo until his face shield froze up as it was snowing and 15 degrees.

Both kids are in bed early tonight Jonathan had a friend over Friday and then a full day of activities. Jonathan and I are probably heading to Stillwater Thursday 2/23.

We are thinking of getting a kitten next weekend. Is this a good idea? Megan and Jonathan really want a pet. I'm presenting the school budget this Thursday. Wish me luck.

Christine and I went to a Charity auction and dance last night. I didn’t get the Loudon tickets. Christine got a neckless as an early Valentines present.

Chris

A1Gp Indonesia will be on OLN next weekend. Here are some Indonesians. Here is Two Dninjas wrecking the Indonesian car on the first lap of the feature race. (there has been no explanation as to why Japan has returned to the series) Big Atlantics announcement on Tuesday with the unveiling of the new car. Paul Newman will also announce his 2(or 3?) drivers then, and expect a number of other driver announcements all week. It seems the Kevin Kalkhoven is doing as he said and keeping series announcements spaced out leading up to the season opener. Cyndy was in charge of getting Haymarket pictures, and she failed. She did get a picture of the sidewalk right outside our building. It seems like an odd demand, but to date I haven't started a war, so I guess I don't have to end one?
-Paul

This photo is for Grandpa Steates if he reads this. The photos below are for Paul. I think the Dyson team has found another driver. That is a friday practice shot of the Dyson car without the graphics.

We went to see Curious George at crossgates mall today with the kids. They were both really good and liked the movie. They stuck to the original premise pretty well. Added a girl of course. We saw a very sick or rabid raccoon in Bill Jackson's yard today. It was walking in circles very slowly in the middle of the day. The Niskayuna police came and "took care of it". He waited for me and the kids to leave before doing so. Paul's Ratcat was safely inside the house for the weekend. We are supposed to get 2-4" tonight, downstate and new england will get a fot or so. Mom wants menu ideas for both camp weekends.

I just got 3 cd's of photos from a corner worker at the race. Joel probably already knows this but, Peter Cunningham's racing career strted racing a CRX on ice in wisconsin back in the 80's. The RTR Acura NSX was a preproduction car that was serial #003. It is now in a Honda museum as the winningest Honda ever. Their website has a detailed history section. The ARCA Daytona race is sunday morning at 9:30am. Maybe someone can record it at camp so I can watch next weekend. I watched some of the Dakar race on OLN or National Geo. channel tonight. Robbie Gordon was driving an H3.

Front of the sports section in the globe today:

http://www.boston.com/sports/other_sports/autoracing/articles/2006/02/10/young_at_heart/



Pretty decent article, except the writer said that a bus stop was a hairpin turn and that Daytona had many of them(bus stops). Regardless it's good to see road racing recognized on the front of the sports section.

Toyota Atlantic 2006: 15 confirmed drivers, with an additional 8 confirmed entries, and 10-15 additional entries likely. 24 confirmed cars at long beach, 34+ likely.

Vision will add a third car for Vitor Meira under the guise of Panther Racing with (a much reduced) Pennzoil Sponsorship. Think CART 2003. This puts IRL with 17 cars, the only team that may announce it's participation is Dreyer and Reinbold, which is working to field one car. It seems Tony George will have to finance in part any additional entries(like he did with Panther). It is doubtful that they will be able to double the size of the field for Indy.

Going to haymarket soon, will bring camera for fun pictures.

Boris doesn't look like a snowmobiler, does he? The BMW is the one Auberlen was driving.

http://www.speedtv.com/articles/auto/nascar/21939/
Article on Zippy's annual snowmobile ride in Inlet. Mentions Boris Said was in attendance, I wonder if they made it to Stillwater this year.
Today i called in the purchase of (2) 4-day supertickets for the 12 hours of Sebring including on (or near) track parking on turn 17 for the BMW car corral. Paul you might want to bring dad's scanner for this event, make sure it will be allowed through airport security. Also I might suggest you bring the small purple sleeping bag that is at camp, since we plan to spend friday night at the track.
-Joel

www.daytona24hr.com. Tons of photos from the race. R10 diesel reportedly make 811 lbs. of torque.

Arrived in Atlanta, GA safe and early. Landed at 8:00AM.
This meeting begins at 1:00PM. Why did I get up at 3:30AM?
Hmm.
- Kate

Tentative entry list for Sebring. http://www.mariantic.co.uk/lmp/sebring06.asp Audi hasn't said much about their plans except that there will be 2 R10s. One of those R10s maybe in Champion Audi colors. There is no news on any possible R8 entries. Hopefully, two Dninjas will be there but at this point there is no cofirmation. Japan has pulled out of A1GP at the end of it's deal with Shimoda which expired before the last race in South Africa http://www.a1gp.com/news/index.php?flashNavId=1&newsid=173. A1GP will be in Indonesia this weekend, but with our Two Dninjas, nobody will care. Walker racing is looking for funding to run a third car for Ryan Briscoe in partnership with team Australia. The Panther Racing auction ended today, three current spec cars were sold for 95, 120, and 124 thousand dollars each. The team also sold just about everything else in the shop including the coffee makers and the toliet paper. The cabinet with "paper products" that contained toliet paper and paper towels sold for $150. It looks like the team has 2 current spec cars left... maybe. The 2001 & 2002 championship winning car (that was unsucessfully on ebay) was purchased by Tony George last month.

Had curry saturday night. Going to camp President's weekend.



















-Paul

We woke up to a foot of snow and it's still coming down. About time I say. Mom

Eventually I'll make a trip back home to help sort stuff and so on, not this weekend. I will definately be home or hopefully at camp president's weekend.
Got tickets to Florida, Jet Blue, arrive Fort Lauderdale, March 17 1255am, leave March 19 800am.
-Paul