wolfseitz

From the perspective of little Matt Kingery

Driving home from a car meet in North La at 2 am, getting home and figuring out what to bring. Scrabling across my dirty floor picking up batteries and camera goodies and making sure they were all crammed into my bags. Set the alarm for 6:00 am, just 3 hours away, and sent a few texts to Tyler, “Plz pick me up at 6:30″ just so he would remember not to forget me.

Morning sun rises and I get up, to my insanely loud alarm a little woozy but full of my sleep deprived energy high. Grabbed all my bags and tripod and walked down the driveway to for the drift hauler to arrive.

Tyler and Alex pick me up, I’m the youngest and newest to the gang so I’m automatically in the middle. Which is fine by me. We stop off at Maccers for a quick bite. First time ever eating from a McDonalds was weird. Probably won’t do it again.

From there we headed up the interstate 5 for a good long journey. Tyler and Alex were amazed at how quiet it was, due to the fact that Tyler’s girlfriend wasn’t on the trip, even though we all love her. Her crazy techno can be a bit much in the early hours of the morning sometimes.

As we were heading up we saw a few note worthy things that I snapped a picture of, here is one of them.

Tyler was a little over excited the whole way up as he was hauling ass in the truck. Even when we got out to fill gas occasionally he was super stoked!

We pulled off at infamous Rosamond Boulevard, one of the last exits before you leave the valley. Stopped to get the essentials, water, snacks and fill the truck up on gas and headed for the track.

Quickly got our wrist bands and moved over to park while Tyler went inside to get a ‘test’ pass. Headed up to The Balcony parking lot where we were the only people parked.

Unloading the truck at the balcony skid pad, so we could start checking out the car was Mr. Alex.

Rolled the car down and then finished unpacking everything else while Tyler made some calls.

Had to put on the front bumper as usual with some zip ties and fill the AEM water/meth sprayer with DI water. Then Tyler suited up and headed out for a warm up run.

Most of the day we spent drifting, filming and tinkering with the car. After a few practice laps I went and got the video camera since my tripod was missing the mounting plate. Such a bummer.

When ever Tyler found a problem Alex was right there to tell him what to fix, what to correct to grab the right line or how to get more angel on the initiation.

After the warmup round we rounded up the cameras and went back to base. Just a short pit bike trip over to the parking lot where Tyler refilled the methanol water mix for the engine.

Took her back out for a few more rounds and then came in and jacked the blue beast up onto a jack and headed off to eat at the race track diner.

I wasn’t feeling to good after I had a few bites of my food. I appreciate Tyler shoulting me the food which I ate later that day but my sleep deprivation was killing my appetite.

If I can remember right we drove back up to the balcony and readied up for a few laps at Horse Thief Mile.

Alex took the pit bike and followed me to the track entrance where we met up with Tyler who was already waiting.

Tyler and Alex had a little pep talk and discussed some things while I figured out where I wanted to shoot. Then let them know and drove up in the truck, to the first uphill hairpin.

I’ve never shot at horse their before but one thing is for sure, looking up at it from Streets of Willow makes it look like an easy, small course. In reality its pretty technical and bigger than you think. Plus it has a varying slope that is kind of gnarly in some sections of the track.

Tyler explained to me later that recently their have been a few cars which have rolled around the last sweeper of Horse Thief.

Tyler had a few laps and me and Alex whipped out our film cameras to capture the fun. I should also mention that there were a great deal of donuts laid down around two special cones that live at the Balcony course all year round. The cones even brave freezing cold desert nights in winter, bare chested!

Tyler got a call during one of his laps at Horse Thief from his parents, which is beyond belief how he even heard the phone ring in the first place. But it was quiet amusing when we found out why he had stopped drifting and was slowly lapping the course.

He told me after driving that when he picked up the phone he could barely hear anything and had to shout down the line trying to explain he was driving over the noise of his ported rotary.

After the phone call incident we decided to head back to balcony because the willow springs staff wasn’t to pleased with Alex’s moto gp style chase camera action on the mini bike. Which looked something like this:

Running out of tires wasn’t an option for Tyler so we emptied the back of the pickup and crammed all the new tires off the trailer, along with the old used ones back into the flatbed.

Being on a budget mission meant we were headed to a local desert tire junkie. Just a few miles out of the race track we came upon a old and new tire store who changed all our tires while we waited and hung out with the local pet dog.

Back at the track Tyler was determined to practice some solid entires so Alex took up the Dewalt wonder drill of torque and popped on some new tires, lowered the car down and let Tyler start laying down some rubber.

He started with a few warm up laps and then Tyler seriously started going for it, nearly killing Alex with an insane scandinavian flick.

Every couple runs or so Tyler had to do a cool down lap. The nature of drifting made Tyler’s rotary continually heat up quite quickly and with the lack of ventilation going sideways resulted in a short cruise around the sun lit track.

This cool down lap also provided Alex and I sometime to catch our breath, hoot and holler at how excited we were and position our tripods in new positions.

We grabbed one of the two trusty cones from near the entrance and placed it at the initiation point to give Tyler a clipping point to aim for. Then we switched to the inside of the clipping point as a new position to film from.

Finally after a lengthy amount of drifting, which his always a good thing, Tyler finally pulled up to a stop and got out. Letting Alex burn the rest of the rubber off as he watched and stretched his legs.

The weather that day was something to be remembered.

I took a few shots after Alex was finished of the car in the twilight of the setting sun, with out all the vampires. Then we pulled the car up on to the trailer and finished packing up.

I think that it was one of those days you don’t get to see very often. Yes the car was perfect for once and Tyler and Alex were hyped up on that, but it was not just that. We had two race tracks to ourselves, we were the only ones there for most of the day and on top of that, the weather was incredibly immaculate. Not a cloud in the sky for most of the day and only a light wind. To finish the day Tyler let out a bunch of happy gay moments that us three laughed about. He was so excited that he didn’t sleep much on the way home. Even the next day I got texts that were just long strings of letters, “adsakajfkl;asjf;sakjfs” as such expressing his happiness. Of the other things we talked about on the way home coming back in a couple of weeks was the most important so check back soon to get more coverage on the Dec. drift day.

Dramatic finish with a black and white photo I really liked.

wolfseitz

Some Serious Badassery

Awesomeness

Gettin Extra Medium at Willow Springs

balcony fun

Drift day November: From the lens of little Matt Kingery

Carbons

CSI: Las Vegas

Follow “wolfseitz”