Joey Redmond - My Blog

So I got a seat assignment for my flight to Seattle in the emergency row but Montye got a “See Gate Agent,” which translates for your not getting on this plane. So we rolled down to the gate and Montye was denied a journey and put up in some sweet hotel in College Park for the night. The plane is delayed forever and we finally end up landing at like 1:45am in the morning. Well luckily after this horrid flight where I stayed up and did 2006 taxes all night…..Alison Merion (driftlive.com Photographer), everyone’s favorite female Drifting Photographer, was still waiting for me even though she landed at 11:00pm or so.

So we sit at baggage claim for quite a while and then boom, the conveyor system shuts off and still no Slide America luggage. So excellent, Airtran lost my luggage, horray! I was starving and annoyed in general with the airport. So I drug Alison to go get my rental car. Sure enough, as we are almost to the rental car place….I see an Exedy sticker on a green piece of luggage (this is Montye’s). Who in the world even knows how are luggage wound up in a Delta terminal but alas, we have luggage and are on the road by 3:30am….

As we arrived at the hotel we drove into some straight relationship DRAMA which later on oriented the police force, but that is another story for another night. We got all settled in and ventured to Denny’s for the evening. So finally around 6:00am I crash and go to sleep with a 8:15am wakeup call.

This is what I found outside the hotel, the hottest PT Cruiser in Seattle on white walls.

Rain came early at the track but cleared up around the early afternoon. Tyler Mcquarrie took the JIC/Hankook Porsche finally for a test lap and then send it back to the pits. Here is a video of the car on a parade lap.

Here is a youtube.com link thanks to the Drift Zone.

Porsche GT2 Drifting

Yukio, John, and the rest of the JIC crew are anxious to have this project going. Since Tyler’s home track is coming up next month at Sonoma, I except to see the car operating in competition form! The rest of Friday was pretty calm. Jessica (our friend from Microsoft) took us to this Korean BBQ spot. Two thumbs down……..they were playing like Kelly Clarkson inside and spoke English (totally NOT Korean BBQ) and the Kalbi was wack. So I cannot even report the name of the place to you……but avoid this place big time when in Seattle.

HIN Orlando promised to be a good one since we were in Central Florida! Warren Shin-quec and the Tjin family were in full force with the Tjin Edition rig. Jason Siu came in from Los Angeles to hold down the Tunerzine.com booth. He also brought his Integra over from the west coast which I haven’t seen since SEMA 2006.

Andy from Theory PR was also in town holding it down for the General Motors guys with his photography booth. We stole Neil Tjin’s Pontiac Solstice from his display and set it up for the GM booth. Andy then staged a lovely Slide America sticker on the Solstice for me.

I barely saw Jenny Chu over the weekend but she was around somewhere, holding it down at the Deepvision.net booth if I remember correctly. The highlight of the show was finding the most awesome Escalade every made. This is on my list of things to own sooner than later.

This last item was from the trip home but it just made my weekend. Box air conditioning in a van!!!!! Oh yea, man I love Florida. (yes, the window is removed and YES that box air conditioning is taped to the van.)

While at Bossa Nova in Hollywood Brook was telling me about her Dad’s resteraunt in Orlando so I had to check it out. It’s called Broadway Pizza on the corner of University and Alafaya Trail out by University of Central Florida (UCF) campus. The Italian food was excellent and Donny Mak said the wings were great as well. A fantastic little spot with a great atmosphere. It’s a must visit when your in Orlando. Well Donny Mak left his Honda Fit at the show so we picked him up and headed back to his place up north.

Here is Donny Mak’s Honda Fit on roll in day.

Thanks to Greg Deese and tunerzine.com for the picture!

Us at Dmak’s house with my favorite Audi of all time, he has a STACK cluster in that TT, I love it.

Well around 8am we left for Daytona Beach from Port Canaveral. It’s about a 77 mile trip and our tugboat was going to travel around 7mph. So I was pretty much prepared for the worst day of my life before things went horribly a muck. Well I don’t even really want to bother writing to much about the journey and relive it….but here are some pictures.

For those of you who are totally confused, let me go backwards and explain. I have worked for Melrose Pyrotechnics for a while doing pyrotechnics. I actually do the Brave’s games on Friday nights for those of you who were not aware. Well, someone from the city of Daytona Beach came to the game and requested us to shoot their show. This should be a great weekend at the beach but of course…..I fail. So basically Floridafail (a nice subculture reference for some Florida Drifters).

This is what I lived on for over a day…

This was about 9-11 hours into the trip when we saw the storms coming and pretty much expected our imminent death…

This is right when it started to get pretty bad…..Mark was sitting on the ground because he was sea sick all day. In fact, the best memory of the trip is when Mark was vomiting right next to me eating my lunch….he turned back after puking and offered Jason some pickles for the sandwich he was making. Note, the slant of the barge in this picture…..

So about 15 minutes before it was time to fire, huge waves come crashing over the barge. We have no where to go really because the barge has no shelter. We get soaking wet and the firework setup gets knocked over.

So in an eager state to get off the ship Mark makes some phone calls. The tug boat cannot come rescue us because they are afraid when they swing the ship next to the barge it would hit it and flip us over…..at the current time this doesn’t seem like a total loss to me but whatever. A helicopter rescue is not possible due to the fact we are on a ship full of pyrotechnics and the possibility of a spark charging the fireworks and setting them off. So, our last alternative is the coast guard who REFUSED TO RESCUE us! So this is a lesson to not believe Hollywood, remember that movie with Ashton Kutcher rescuing all those people at sea, it’s a sham! The Coast Guard didn’t want to lift a finger to help us as we were trying to remain on board this barge….

Well we ended up taking a 15 hour trip back home to port while hiding inside a clear plastic wrap fort we built to keep dry. It was terrific! Here is what our barge looked like once we returned to port.

Here is Mark’s version of the story on his blog

delusionsofgrandeur.org/index.php/archives/134

Here are some misreported stories from the local news.

Local 6 news Daytona Beach

News Journal Online

WFTV Channel 9

Channel 4 Jax News

So oh man…..I almost missed my flight out of LAX due to general slacking and a meeting that we had way to late in the morning. Once I realized I was going to make my flight I highly doubted I would see my luggage again since their was a line to drop off your bags at TSA and boarding started by the time I got my bags to these people. Well I landed in Atlanta at like 9pm but wasn’t so lucky to make it to our gate. The plane at the gate we were suppose to enter had a medical emergency and it resulted in us sitting on the ground for over an hour. So finally around 10:45pm, we are able to exit the plane and go about our business. Well the luggage takes forever to show up at the North Terminal which was expected, I was still happy to see my luggage at all. Now it’s about 11:30pm and we started heading to Cocoa Beach by car. Jason and I ripped up I-75 and opted to take I-10 down to I-95 south instead of listening to navigation and taking the Florida Turnpike. So we roll into Cocoa Beach at around 6:30am and have a 8am takeup call to go out on the Atlantic…..TERRIFIC. Little did I know what disaster was coming…….stay tuned.

So Sunday was a little out of control to say the least….we had some crazy accidents but luckily everyone was okay. Chris Cook, formerly from Nascar’s Busch series showed up to shake down the Viper with Mopar partner Nick Hogan. During the top sixteen qualifying in the morning he swung a little to the outside and put the rear end of the Viper into the water barriers. He ripped the barrier in half and the car caught traction and drove up the next barriers along the wall. The car landed upside down after cartwheeling in the air. The car was finally put back right side up and Chris was taken to the hospital with minor injuries. Looking at the car post damage was a true testament to NuFormz great craftsmanship and concern for safety in their projects.

Here are two pictures from the wreck. I actually got some video but that will be released with our new project coming out. Pictures were taken by Brady Stribling and courtesy of S3 Magazine.

Many other cars suffered minor damage at the fate of the Home Depot track as well. The finals ended up in a big bang with Forest Wang slamming into Colin Frost which made for a great finish! My boy Lance from Dori Garage ripped it up and put on the best show of the day doing tandem battle with Ryan Hampton in the Corvette Z06. Lance drew the runs to a one more time and ended up slipping up on the second set of runs.
After the event we met up with some people, Mike from Prosites and Brooke from ESPN. We wound up in Hollywood at a Brazilian place called Bossa Nova. It’s right on Sunset Blvd. and has a great atmosphere and food! If you swing by, make sure you have the delicious plantains for an appetizer. They are also open till 4am which makes for some perfect late night antics. I took pictures at Bossa Nova but they don’t seem to be in my phone so my apologizes on that one.

Well I woke up from a deep sleep around 9am because Crispin dragged me out of bed. His little girls toured me around the house and I got to play sticker book with Isabel! So basically they are officially my two favorite girls in Los Angeles after spending the weekend with them, they rock.

Well we packed up and headed down to Orange County to check on the cage going in the S13 chassis Nissan 240sx. The cage work looked great and I cannot wait to see the car completely finished. Here is the car still getting the finishing touches down on fabrication and cage work.

My neighbor actually has a new Escalade and I hadn’t paid much mind to one until we took one out for the day. The rear camera is out of control, it’s like a high grade fisheye lens that is perfect for viewing your surroundings in reverse.

Here is a quick picture of the car as well.

Once at the track things were somewhat calm. Marty ended up blowing up his Miata and Cody Wellon’s 240sx which put him out of contention for the weekend. Qualifying was entertaining and everything went pretty smoothly. We ended up sneaking off early to attend Ernie Fixmer and Cassidi’s wedding! It was very exciting except I was quite under dressed, haha. Thao wanted to make a point that I was the best dressed person at the wedding by taking pictures of me. Thanks Thao!

After the wedding we ended up grabbing some King Taco, which was delicious. I am not sure if it was 100% from the food or the fact that we hadn’t eaten since 1pm, but it was some good 24 hour Mexican food regardless.

So I basically missed my whole first day to fly and blah blah blah disaster…..but in the end it was all good. I got on the 9am out of Hartsfield into LAX and got to role first class. First class would of been way more exciting except this little girl behind me punted my seat for at least two hours of the trip. It’s all good though, I arrived at LAX and waited for my ride at pick up and witnessed one of the most amazing things of all time.

Yes…..this lady is barefoot walking around LAX. I was so dumbfounded I was almost forgot to take a picture of the incident. Maybe she just hopped out of the car and wasn’t thinking but come on! If you click the image below you can see the full resolution version as well.

So after that I was picked up from the airport and we headed down to the Home Depot Center for NOPI Los Angeles. The media day was hosted by Andy from Theory PR and it went over great. I don’t have many pictures because I was filming for the weekend but have no fear, I’ll steal some from Brady Stribling for stories! So after media day we went to some sushi bar in Pasadena and back to the house where I past out with the quickness.