“When the world gives you lemons, make lemonade.” It’s an old proverbial phrase used to encourage optimism. It’s also how I’d describe the weekend we recently spent in Washington attending Formula D Seattle. Us Canadians enjoy visiting the the United States of ‘Merica – as long as we don’t injure ourselves and have to pay for health care, and we avoid getting sucked into conversations about guns and how we’re “missing out.”
When the car community rallies around one event, it usually makes for a great weekend. However, when your weekend is filled with rainy days (both figuratively and literally), the best you can do is hope for sun.
What I’m trying to say is that much like the weather in Washington, it was a constant up and down of gloom that would quickly be exchanged for very bright moments. It very much felt as if we were handed a big ol’ bag of lemons.
The Friday we arrived was filled with the usual Seattle car hangs, which was great, but the night ended in the wee hours of the morning with one our American friends visiting the E.R. Thankfully everything worked out in the end, but it wasn’t ideal. Saturday was filled with drifting and cool car shows, but ultimately ended with me “board sliding” my Aristo over a hard-to-see meridian in Monroe. This little incident left me with a bent wheel and a slow leak.
If you’re going to break something on your car, it’s probably best to do it with a bunch of car people around. Lucky for me, Aldous Esperanza (the owner of this Mazda 3) and Brandon Murthi were around to help get the Aristo sorted enough to drive home.
By “sorted” I mean we took the wheel off and beat it with a hammer and a 2×4 until the wheel held air. This sounds sketchy and maybe it was a bit, but it did the trick as I obviously made it home and am not dead.
On Sunday morning, we found ourselves on a back country road near a correctional facility. This situation had all the makings of a real life horror film, but as it turns out we weren’t actually lost. We fully meant to be there. To be fair though, we didn’t intend to be there for so long. Our friend Josh Reading and his R33 Sedan had become stranded on this road in the middle of a shoot for Canibeat. So instead of heading to Evergreen Speedway to watch Tandem Mayhem, we headed for the middle of nowhere.
It wasn’t long until a big group of us congregated around Josh’s car. While the crew adjusted Josh’s suspension enough to limp his car to a local shop, I decided to pick up a camera and unintentionally steal this shooting location from Canibeat.
Melissa Power’s Nissan Cedric remained unscathed from the ups and downs of the weekend, so it seemed appropriate to grab some photos.
The same could be said for Ryan Vanbaal’s Nissan President. While he was busy helping with the blown air bag on Josh’s R33, I was being slightly less helpful taking photos.
Eventually we got everything sorted with Josh’s R33, and instead of sticking around and waiting for something else to go wrong, we headed back up north. Everyone was nice enough to roll back together –because that’s just what you do in case some other misfortune strikes.
Metaphorically speaking, I think I had enough lemonade to last me a while. But I’m not too bitter about the weekend because as most car people know, it’s the people behind the cars who make scene worthwhile. What could have been an awful weekend still ended up being a pretty good weekend… and an okay story.
Talking about the people behind the cars has become a theme in most of my articles. What made the weekend different is that it was my first time hanging around with most of these people and I think that speaks volumes to the car scene. The moral of the story is when life hands you lemons and you decide to make lemonade, it’s better to make enough for everyone; a good lemonade is best served so everyone can enjoy it.