I left Michigan after work last Friday and headed down to Normal, Illinois for the annual Nissan BBQ at Toby Broadfield’s house. The event was actually on Sunday, but I drove down early to hang out with Kyle and Toby for the whole weekend- makes the almost six hour drive a lot more worth it that way. It was cloudy when I rolled out on Friday evening and just generally sort of gross out. Naturally, it didn’t take long before I broke out my favorite road trip items- Red Bull and Teriyaki beef jerky. It does your body good… I think I was in southern Michigan near the Indiana border when I drove through a pretty cool thunderstorm- especially for mid October. There was a ton of chain lightning across the sky- I tried to capture some with my phone camera, but I am still new to using it. I caught some of it in this video, I just can’t figure out a way to rotate it lol. It’s not like you guys have never seen lightning before- if nothing else, at least you can hear the exhaust and my dope tape player/stock speakers:

video

Pretty cool sunset after the storm passed...

Once I got to Indiana near the state line, I met up with Max (s0apgun) and Tony (Midwest Myriad) for dinner at a brewery in their hometown. It was pretty cool to meet up with those dudes- chill guys for sure. I am jealous of how close they live to Toby and Kyle, haha. I ended up getting to Kyle’s place around 12 AM, blinding him with my headlights, and crashing out a short while later after checking out Forza 4.

On Saturday, we hung out with Toby at his shop for a good chunk of the day. In the afternoon, we headed back to his place and washed the cars in his baller garage.

We test fitted each other’s bride-fabric-wrapped glove boxes and arm rests in our cars for the hell of it, and ended up trading. I think both cars look a lot better with the colors swapped.

I don’t have any pics of the arm rest and glove box in the car yet, but I will grab some later this week. When I am down there next I will buy Kyle’s red fabric he has left and do up a new set of door panels to match the rest of my interior. That will probably be in January or February. In the mean time, I will probably sell my door panels with the black fabric on them.

On Sunday, we cruised over to Toby’s in the morning for the BBQ. Kyle’s car had a bad MAF sensor, so we had to limp it over there blowing smoke like a turbo diesel. Thankfully, Daoud and Ryan both brought us MAF sensors they picked up from junk yards the day before, so we were able to get the car running so that we could cruise a bit on Saturday night after the BBQ. The cookout was awesome and the Forza contest was a lot of fun, despite the fact that I can’t play XBox to save my life.

Kyle's car had an upset stomach after the bad MAF and pooped on Tob's driveway.

It's even crazier in person... nuts.

I hit the road pretty early on Monday morning when Kyle left for class. About ten miles down I-55 from his place, I got pulled over by an Illinois State Trooper. Sweeeeet. He ended up being a super cool guy and only gave me a written warning for my exhaust. He had me sit in the police car and chat with him about it while he wrote the warning, which was pretty weird… can’t say I have ever done that before. It was really funny though- he said it sounded like an airplane when I drove by and asked why I had so many bars in my car, lol. With my warning in hand, I was back on the road. Thankfully, the rest of the drive home was uneventful and the weather was a lot better than the drive down. It’s crazy how different the landscape is just six hours from where I live- its all flat corn fields out there with very few trees compared to Michigan. They also have a ton of these wind generator things everywhere that are wild looking- I saw trucks hauling the individual blades going the other way on the freeway and they were about three semi trucks long. Pretty nuts- nothing like that in Michigan that I have seen.

Flat.

Looks like something out of a sci-fi movie...

I lol every time...

So yeah, it was an awesome trip! Kyle took a few snaps with his nice camera that I will post up later this week. The weather here feels like it is taking a turn for the worse, with high temps in the mid to low 50s for the next ten days and a lot of rain. I will probably only get to enjoy the car for another month at the most before she gets tucked into the garage for the season. 😦 I’ll update as much as I can before the season’s end, though. Thanks for reading! Damon