Live from the BMW Performance Center, Spartanburg, SC

7:50am – Got in around 7:30pm ET yesterday, 6h 15m drive from Pulaski to Greer, SC. Terrible traffic in Atlanta. Got a good night of sleep, woke up early. About to leave hotel and head to the Performance Center. Updates to follow.

4:45pm – Back at the hotel. Activities today included slalom course, ABS braking exercise, skidpad, another slalom, oval skidpad/mini-race, powerslides, and timed autocross. I had the best autox single run time, but only by a couple tenths. I’m exhausted.

Morning started out slow, classroom session was overly simplistic and nothing new (define apex, etc.) and the first few exercises were easy, but looking back built up both confidence in the car and set some benchmarks for the rest of the day. I’m the youngest in the group by quite a few years. Many in the class don’t even own BMWs. One of the instructors does WERA road racing. Going to get dinner and get some sleep. More tomorrow.

Day 2: Wow! Delayed posting this, I’m back at work, but what an awesome time. Due to special circumstances, we got bumped up to M3s from the 330is we drove on day 1. Amazing cars, and I may be convinced on SMG now. More slalom, skidpad, emergency braking, emergency lane change, just at faster speeds. Also more autox. Then we got to test-drive the Z4M Roadster, M5, M6, 760Li, 650Ci, and X5 4.8L on the autox course. After that we took the X5s out to the off-road course for a bit of fun.
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Quotes

“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” -Benjamin Franklin (attr)

Numquam ponenda est pluritas sine necessitate.

People should not fear their government. Governments should fear their people.

“I think we risk becoming the best informed society that has ever died of ignorance.” -Reuben Blades

“Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.” -Ronald Reagan

“I don’t believe in a government that protects us from ourselves.” -Ronald Reagan

Merritt-Pop

I went with my grandfather today to check out the popcorn crop. We met with Charles Johnson, writer/editor for The Furrow magazine (published by John Deere) and he interviewed us about the popcorn and how its grown, etc.

The crop is going to be lean this year, which isn’t good, but considering how dry this summer has been it could be worse.

Merritt-Pop 2006

Merritt Popcorn Company