So.. I turned 30 on Friday.. wahoooo!! And what a crazy few days it’s been.. it’s been three days of non-stop fun and excitement…
Thursday night, I met a whole bunch of peoples at The Page for a drink, which has apparently become the neighborhood hangout on Thursday nights… So, since I happened to be there when the clock struck midnight, everyone was nice enough to greet the first minutes of my birthday with a raucous shot.. of something.. I don’t remember what it was that we drank. That said, I didn’t have a crazy night out since the next morning I was waking up at 5am to head up to Infineon Raceway (formerly known as Sears Point) for a track day…
So, I woke up at 5am, as planned and headed towards the Golden Gate Bridge to meet up with Jason, who was also going up to the track, at the first parking lot right across the Golden Gate Bridge. As I’m driving towards the bridge, I notice one of those tall cylindrical cones lying on its side in the MIDDLE of the freeway (Paul later informed me that it’s called a delineator) — there was a car in the lane next to me, so I couldn’t swerve to get out of the way, so… I went over it. *THUNK*
You know all of those lights on your dashboard? The ones that inform you when something’s wrong? Well, they all started coming on. Alternator light. Temperature light. Coolant light. Yah.. shit. Something was bad. Very bad.

It was a good thing that I was meeting Jason at the next exit right after the GGB, so I pulled off the exit (only narrowly missing the wall since, as I then found out, my power steering was out too).. We open up the hood and find that, somehow, I hit the cone just right and it managed to knock the serpentine belt off the engine — which powers the alternator, power steering, water pump.. lots of important stuff. Ouch.
So yah, my car was knocked out *before* we even made it up there… how sad is that? (But wait, there’s more) We decided to not let a little setback kill the day, and since Jason had his S2000, we parked my car at the vista point parking lot and continued up to Sears Point.

The morning was cold, and so was the track, so Jason started driving the laps around Sears Point gingerly. After about five laps, at about turn 4, he started to open it up a bit more.. and then… I look behind my shoulder (it’s a convertible) and see black smoke, and a huge FIREBALL. One of the spotter dudes that watches the track from up atop a tower shouts out “Fire! Fire!” so we pull over to the side and open up the hood, finding that the entire engine bay has caught fire. Do we have a fire extinguisher? No. Uh oh. The entire track is under yellow flag, so a few cars drive slowly by us, kind of looking at us with an “oh shit” look on their faces. It seemed like an eternity, but it must have only been a minute or two, but the fire trucks came by and finally put the fire out. Oops.
An oil gauge that Jason had installed to monitor the s2000’s oil pressure had most likely sprung a small leak, causing oil to be sprayed all over the engine bay. Once oil gets hot enough, apparently it catches fire. Crazy. Two cars out of commission, and I didn’t even get to drive (although, lucky for me, I’m getting a credit for the event, and I get to go back in July.. whoohoo!) Good thing I brought my camera.. since otherwise, I’d have nothing else to do up at the track besides watch everyone else drive around the track. So, I did get some good pictures.

We had to call AAA that day. Twice. On the way back from Sears Point, I had Jason’s tow truck drop me off at my car, where I waited for my tow truck. Woohoo.

Since I had some extra time now, since I was home early from the track, I went on a little bike ride with Jason (who was also home and not wanting to be sitting at home looking at his burnt car), we went on a nice bike ride around the city.. It was a gorgeous day, and I didn’t want to waste it. I met Mom, Dad, Andy, Meredith and Stephanie for dinner in South City (bacon-wrapped anything is good in my book) and then headed back to my parents’ house for cake. For my birthday, my parents got me the Digital Rebel that I’ve been taking pictures with for the past month — thanks mom and dad! Stephanie made me some awesome books by printing out the past two years of dennisyang.com — it was actually really cool to see all of this stuff that I’ve written in printed form.. What a great gift! Meredith got me an awesome book of the Golden Gate Bridge, which is completely ironic considering I spent like 3 hours sitting at the vista point waiting for the tow truck. And, Andy got me a new tennis racquet, since I’ve re-found the whole tennis thing lately. We broke out the ol’ VHS tapes and watched some home movies and I headed for a drink at Jade for the last few minutes of my birthday..
Whooo.. tired. So, to re-cap, the first 24 hours of my 30s wasn’t exactly what I was expecting, but.. exciting nonetheless..