Joey Redmond - My Blog

We flew into Philadelphia on Thursday night to gear up for the NOS Energy Drink NASCAR Busch car to rip up the Monster Mile! We picked up Phil and Andy from Theory PR and rolled into Dover! We crashed at the Dover Downs Hotel and had a killer view of turn three.

At the Ski Motorsports trailer we got to try the new NOS Grape which was delicious. You guys need to try this one, way better than fruit punch.

I saw many “firsts” this weekend including fried candy bars which Jason somehow consumed. He ate a fried Milky Way…..don’t worry, video will surface soon! This is us watching Stanton Barrett hammering out his qualifying runs which ranked him 15th for the Busch race on Saturday.

This is right before the race started, on lap 4 Stanton Barrett got into the Discount Tire car right at turn 3! Luckily the team was able to hang out and finish the race with a ton of duct tape all over the front end. All and all a killer weekend!

I decided to toss this whole weekend in one blog. It was still a rather interesting weekend……don’t get me wrong but hear goes nothing. This is us unloading on Friday for setup at the Slide America booth. A hurricane came straight through AMS (Atlanta Motor Speedway) so the booth got like half setup and we stored most of our stuff in the Exedy booth inside the pits. Here is the sky right before the thunder.

After the storm cleared up we found some people did not take the time to secure their booths correctly. Here is the Turtle Wax booth after attacking this Ford Mustang. This is why we didn’t quite setup yet and waited till Saturday morning.

Friday night we grabbed dinner with the General Motors crew that were in town for NOPI with the Theory camp at Up the River or On The River or whatever yuckie seafood that place was serving us. I scored lucky with a pretty good New York Strip. Saturday called for a 6am wakeup so we could arrive early at the track and start filming our first NOS TV production for the energy drink. This is us knocking out a game plan with the vendor row map in the Escalade.

I will spare you guys the drama of the NOPI Drift contest but if you really want to know, they have a good running 10 page thread right on in the General Forum……it’s quite a good read if you have a free moment. This next shot is actually from Sunday afternoon at the airport down the road from the track. I ran with a few people from NOS and Theory out to the shoot to slap NOS Energy Drink stickers on the S3 Magazine cover car before it’s shoot. “Stunna” Ben knocked out a shoot that will come out looking solid I am sure, stay tuned to S3 Magazine to see it in the next few months. Also, just down at the next little hanger they were totally filming some kind of porno with a Stingray Corvette and a Cessna. I somehow missed the golf kart that went for a “closer inspection,” damn me for being in the golf cart driven by a girl, haha. I still really have no idea what was going on down that way….who knows, people in middle Georgia are rather absurd.

Here is a sticker from the Bullrun Lotus Elise that was in the JVC Mobile booth. I really like this sticker for some reason so now your going to look at it…….

My show car of NOPI 2007 goes to this EK from Ontario. I just love the Jline Wheels. That really concludes the weekend, I will be sure to post the NOS Energy Drink NOPI Nationals video when Andy wraps it up in post!

Wow people are stupid, get off damn I-75 already, stay at home or go bake a cake! This is the list of hours lost in traffic. Over a full work week a year in Atlanta, excellent. The AJC wrote an article that seemed excited that we had fallen in hours lost, I still manage to sit in a cluster of stupid and traffic ALL the time. Someone needs to give me a tip on these secret back roads. The iphone carries google earth which shows “live traffic” but I still seem to get nailed all the time! Traffic is so bad I book my flight schedules around it….oh well, one day!
Need my proof? Hear is me today trying to get downtown at around noon, stuck in bumper/bumper at Delk Road!? Come on…get a hobby people!

Here is the hours wasted in traffic by city.

1. Los Angeles: 72 hours

2. (tie) San Francisco, Oakland, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta: 60 hours

5. Dallas-Fort Worth: 58 hour

6. San Diego: 57 hours

7. Houston: 56 hours

8. (tie) Detroit, San Jose, Calif.,and Orlando: 54 hours

11. (tie) South Florida and Denver: 50 hours

Woohoo, finally an upgrade. Thanks to Andy Sapp, Jason and everyone’s hard work we finally got a chance to buy a new camera. Doing some filming for new clients this weekend so we have to step the game up! We are now rocking the old ass Panasonic DVX 100! This camera is way more solid than the GL2’s we were using. So good news, ready to rock it this weekend at NOPI Nationals.

Well it’s September 11th and just six years ago I was sitting in high school math class when my friend Blane ran in telling me an airplane hit the World Trade Center. He was a prankster and I remember not really believing him. I walked into my Spanish class moments later to watch the second plane crash. It was a truly unbelievable thing to see and I’ll never forget the disbelief I was in. My prayers still go out to the families who lost life and all the people that suffered through the experience. It will always be a dark day in the history of the United States but at the same time the city of New York came together with emergency workers and truly made a lasting impression of how great the United States can be. We remember 9/11!

It was very chilling as four nights ago was my first time ever to the site of the World Trade Center. I never saw them standing in my lifetime but looking into the huge hole in the middle of Manhattan was a breath taking experience. It was something I cannot really describe and something I will not soon forget.

Right when we got into town we swung over to Times Square and chilled out in New York City for a minute. Hooman lives in the Financial District just a few blocks from where the World Trade Center was and it was awesome to be able to swing by and admire the spot where the towers were. It was mind blowing to see the space missing (a whole city block) in the middle of Manhattan.

Once we finally made it down to Jersey it was promising to be a great event. This was the sign at the entrance of the track after we finally found it……someone struggled with the navigation but we won’t say any names! Gotta love the DA boys always up to some kind of trouble!

The event was great. Sam Hubinette and Chris Cook had some insane battles with Chris Cook winding up on top. The RMR Solstice got the crap kicked out of it. First it was rammed by Ross Petty in top 16 and then it kissed Dai on the bank in the finals. Hopefully nothing too bad happened and it will be 100% at Irwindale for the finals coming up next month.

After awards Mike Shin let things get out of hand……first I got rammed in the ass with am umbrella……associating Mike Shin and my ass being rammed is kind of awkward however, but we like Mike Shin now, after working for Toyo Tires he got smart and now shoots Canon.

Here is another worthless picture, Photo Credit: Mike Shin.

The Mopar team came down to Atlanta for the weekend to perform some demo’s for the Haynes Dodge/Tunerfest weekend. It was a great chance to hang out with Sam Hubinette and Chris Cook and get some interviews done for the new bonus features of Slide America.

Here is Chris Cook’s Dodge Viper.

Here is Sam Hubinette’s Mopar/Dodge Charger.

Here is Chris Cook getting the car ready for more demo’s. Note the tape on the rear quarter panel, Chris blew his rear tire in the first demo and it sheered off the rear quarter paneling on the car! Of course Chris managed to do this right before we started filming.

Big thanks to Paul and all the guys from Importatlanta.com who put the event together. Somehow the rain chased us down again…..I think the event might be cursed but the Drifting demo’s were great! Thanks to Haynes for bringing out Sam and Chris as well.

Here is Sam Hubinette and Paul Firestine (owner of importatlanta.com)