Acura ZDX Killed After 2 Years: Epic NSX Road Trip to NSXPO w/ Gas Drama & Winery Fails!

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I realize after doing some troubleshooting that one of the
vacuum pumps has failed. It's completely failed.
It won't hold suction or anything.

(00:20):
This is our parking brought to you by Right Hunt and Right
Toyota out of Scottsdale, AZ. Coming up on today's show, Dre
Mullins. Dre Day comes by the studio and
we talk about our road trip up to NS Expo.
We both went different routes have different stories.
I almost ran out of gas. I'll tell you about that and
more. But first, Acura has recently

(00:41):
announced that they are discontinuing the ZDX.
If you're a car person, you probably already knew that some
of you watching this and listen to this don't really follow car
news, which is why you're here. For me, you know, I think that
the ZDXI like the car. I don't necessarily think it was
necessary, but and you know, Acura's has since in the last 30

(01:02):
days kind of said we were, we'rekind of refocusing.
We're going to do more coups, we're going to do more sedans.
We still like EVs, but we're going to make more improved
hybrids in the future as well. And I think it's just one of
those those global strategy changes that every car
manufacturer is facing. And we've seen a lot of that.
The ZDX was only around for likeless than two years and I almost

(01:25):
tried to convince my wife to getone.
Like I think it's a great looking electric vehicle.
I think it shares some stuff with GMI think it is Co produced
with GM General Motors. But you know, I wonder how how
the ZDX is going to be remembered.
I know they couldn't really sellvery many of them, but there
really wasn't a demand out there.
I think it's just something thatthat Acura wanted to produce the

(01:46):
kind of say they had a a cool EVSUV out there.
And most EVSUVS are money pits no matter what brand.
I mean, Rivian, I don't know if Rivian's turned a profit yet.
I know it took Tesla. You can quote me on this.
I think like 15 years to have their first profitable quarter.
So you know, at the end of the day, it's a money making
business and it hasn't make sense.

(02:07):
And the writing on the wall is it just didn't make sense right
now. So you know, again, I'm a fan of
the ZDXI, think it looks great. I would have loved to have
driven one for a weekend or so at this point.
No thanks. Coming up after this word from
Arcus, Foundry, Sparkforge, Dre Mullins.
It's a quick story for you, a listener.
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(03:12):
tomorrow's profits. Joining me in studio is Drake
Mullins back for the third time.Dre day volume 3.
We both just got back from NS Expo.
We both drove our NS XS across the country.
Yep, Phoenix to Tacoma and we both took 2 completely different
routes. I logged 4200 and approximately
7 miles of mine on the trip. Oh my God, you got it down to

(03:35):
the mileage. All I know is I was in the car
for days. In the cars for days.
So what I want to do is I, I think we it'd be fun if we were
to kind of go through and talk about our, our journeys.
You know, the homework was to take note of some things I ran
out of time rather I didn't manage my time as well as I
would have liked. And so a lot of it, I'm going to

(03:58):
be going off of memory, but to backtrack, we both left
Saturday, September 13th, and based on when I called you from
the gas station waiting for JC, we probably left at similar
times. That's correct.
How did your first day go? What exciting things happened to
you on Saturday on your way up? OK, so and.

(04:18):
Where did you go? Where do I go, Where to go?
So take the journey from Mesa, AZ to Tacoma as well.
But throughout the days we actually made a few stops.
So we ended up me and my wife. We decided to go trying to take
a scenic route, so we actually left from Phoenix area up to
Vegas to go visit her brother for a little bit.
From Vegas, we continued on a journey to Lake Tahoe, South

(04:42):
Lake Tahoe. So you took 93, right?
Because when I called you, you were going to like Wickenburg
and all that. Absolutely. 93 sucks, by the
way. It is horrible, man.
I remember it being better. No, hey, no, it gets worse
because once we left Vegas, onceyou get, I want to say northwest
of Vegas, it's if you've ever driven like West TX, it is the

(05:04):
same thing but more desolate. So I didn't really save too
much. But as far as like scenic, rude
or anything like that, but it was an experience.
I'm glad I knocked it out and I probably won't do that route
again but but it was an experience to go through.
So you guys stopped in Vegas? Did you stop for like, lunch?
Yes. Yeah, so actually what we did,

(05:25):
we just had brunch with her brother and his family.
So that was the beginning of thejourney.
And like I said, we just just took the little scenic room
because we knew we were going toSouth Lake Tahoe, But we got
into Lake Tahoe when it was dark, so kind of defeated the
purpose of getting there. So we actually had to enjoy Lake
Tahoe in the morning and just kind of walked around the lake.
I didn't realize how huge Lake Tahoe was, right?

(05:47):
It's massive so. It's like in the middle of the
mountains. I had no clue.
It was a great experience. And then from there that
morning. OK, So what did you do in Lake
Tahoe? You said you just walked around.
Was there anything that stood out or just OK, so how was the
traffic? Cuz I warned about that.
But I when we went, when we werein Tahoe, we we went, we flew
into Reno and then we drove to Tahoe from Reno.

(06:10):
I don't know if that's. Maybe about an hour.
North East Lake Tahoe. It is about Northeast.
I, I didn't go to Reno, but yes,I kind of remember off the map
looking where to go. It would be about northeast.
But the traffic getting into Lake Tahoe area was actually
pretty hectic because like therewas some type of concert going

(06:30):
on. There was a couple other events
and venues which would explain why a good portion of all the
hotels are booked and what we were kind of fighting looking
for a place to stay that night. So what I'm hearing is you
didn't book ahead of time. Well, I did, but I could have
done a little bit better 'cause like I said, I was when I was

(06:51):
picking the rooms, I really wasn't like, I was just like,
I'm just going to pick a room. But then everything was like
booked, booked, booked. And I was like well something
must be happening but I need to just finding a cool budget inn
that was open but. Did you get in trouble?
Did did the misses help you? Let's just say she had better
words at the outwards at that time, but it was a road trip and
I only knew we were going to be there for a few hours, so it was

(07:13):
just pretty much stop catching alittle bit of shut eye and then
keep it rolling the next morning.
Got it. And then so now we're on Sunday.
So let me back up and talk aboutmy Saturday then.
So we met up at the Shell off ofthe Carefree Highway or whatever
it is up there. Whatever the exit that you took,
I actually took the same exit inthe opposite direction to wait.

(07:37):
Now, this is my first time a lotof people have seen pictures of
the car with the box on top right?
So the story of the box is my dear friend Will said, hey, you
should take my box. If you drive up, I go.
I don't know man, I've never done that before.
And I and I went to Google images and I'm like, all right,
well, NC 1 or 2017 intersex carrier on top.

(08:00):
Nothing zilch. OK, no, what I found out after I
got back is there's a gentleman in in in Canada who has a black
intersex that put a black box ontop of his car.
So it's out there somewhere. So is the NC 1 intersects with
the black box or OK? Yep, Yep.
All right, because it wouldn't make any sense to look up your
car. Nah, Nah.

(08:20):
Totally different cars. And it's like, all right, well,
sure, it'd be kind of cool, right?
It'd be cool. So I went over there and did the
test fit and over the course of the next six weeks, you know the
time just, you know, move reallyfast.
Got you. And so as I showed you, I did a
bunch of drawings and things. I'm like, all right, this
doesn't exist. We got to lift the thing off the
top in the back because it looksdumb.

(08:41):
Just centered on the car. It looks better.
All the sports cars you see on the canopy kind of extending to
the spoiler or something else inthe back.
So I designed a a kit for that. But the sea suckers are good.
OK. But my biggest concern, having
never tried it, I didn't want todrive it, didn't want anyone to
see me driving around, right. So the only test is sucking it

(09:02):
on top of the car in the garage for four or five days, putting
some weight in there and then putting a, a, a level on top of
the box to see if it moves at all.
OK, because we had one hinge point.
Everything else I crossed drilled, had quick release pins.
So even if the pole slipped thisway, it couldn't slip because
the pin was in there. So just kind of do this.

(09:24):
There was one spot on each side of the back that I didn't drill
through and that would have beenthe only point of potential
failure. Two cups in the back, the four
cup system in the front, tight as hell.
Nothing happened. I had all the podcast equipment
in there. I put a couple old brake rotors
in there from the from the old NSX.
It was heavy. Cool.

(09:44):
So that morning we set out and this is the first time I've ever
driven with that box on top. So how nervous were you?
I wasn't, I mean, like you got an experimental box sitting on
top of a brand new car. And this isn't something that
you're just going to go online. It's supposed to just work.
You're, you're like crossing fingers, right?

(10:04):
I wasn't going to a car show, noor cars and coffee.
I was driving to Tacoma over 2000 miles away, right?
And so I didn't really know. I felt pretty confident.
I emailed the company and said, hey, they said that we have
elevation. People online say elevation can
affect the suction of the cups because the air.
So I'm like, so I went and googled, OK, from Phoenix to

(10:26):
Flagstaff, it's it goes from 1000 to 7000 feet.
Yep. At some point in the trip,
Glacier National Park, 8400 feet, 7500 feet, Yellowstone,
whatnot, every, every part. And then, you know, if we get to
Tacoma, we're back on a lower sea level like 1500 or 2000,
whatever. So yeah, a little nerving.

(10:48):
So they said just check it, right.
So our first stop was Flagstaff.And I said, OK, JC, we get to
Flagstaff, I need to pull over and I need to check the check
the boxes because the good thingabout the sea suckers, I got a
little pump system vacuum. Gotcha.
So you can see by the indicator when it comes out of it's losing
suction. Oh, really?
OK. Yep.
So if you see orange, not good, right?
If it's black and it's a little longer than it was before, it's

(11:10):
still good. You just you just walk around.
Just hit every single one of those buttons at every stop.
Make sure it's good. Didn't really have a problem on
the way up. OK, which is perfect.
So Saturday we took a route. We went up to Page, Arizona, OK,
which I guess I knew it prior, but I had never been there.
OK, that's the famous spot with the with the Grand Canyon for

(11:31):
access to the Horseshoe Bend or whatever it's called.
Exactly where you're at. Yep.
So we've never been there beforeand it's it's interesting to see
the terrain change, right. So much looks like Badlands or
something. Yes, it just changed so much.
So we stopped there. So I learned that's where that
is. And then we took another really
a really nice route in between somewhere and somewhere I

(11:53):
forgot, but South of South of Salt Lake City.
OK, so Saturday we stopped at Salt Lake City and then friend
of the show, Kyle Nielsen, who has the Long Beach blue type
SNSX with the Science of speed pure 900 turbos and the white TE
30 sevens. OK, yeah, you met up.
You met up. JC was tired.

(12:15):
Yeah, I'm surprised. That he actually went on the the
long haul like that. I just got his shoulder back
functional. Yeah, and we'll bring that story
back forward later. But he's limited.
And so his driving back and forth, his his shoulder was, you
know, getting kind of sore. So he'd get kind of ornery
toward the end of each day, which is fine, but he wanted to

(12:35):
rest. But Kyle picked me up and or
actually, I met Kyle at STK Steakhouse.
Good for people watching. OK, you know, it's a it's a
steakhouse that have you been toSTK?
No, have never so. We used to have one here in
Scottsdale. It's kind of like a Ruth Chris
style. OK.
So compare it to the one that wehave been to together, Bourbon

(12:55):
and Bounce. Would it be on that level or?
I would say it wants to be on that level.
OK, OK, so I know what kind of steakhouse.
Yeah, STK is cool. It's good food.
Got you. Got you.
Yeah, it's a little glitzy. You walk in there and you know
some kid will walk in with a girl on each arm.
Swear to God this happened. Yeah, or you'll see.
It'll be Bachelorette party style.

(13:17):
You don't really see that at Bourbon and Bones.
No, no, it's more of a. Little up.
It's I wouldn't say upscale because they're both steakhouse,
but you know what I mean. You've been to or you've been to
Bourbon and Bones. We have this table next to us
and there's this a guy with two girls and he looks, I don't know
what he is. He's probably early 20s hip hop
ish looking. Got the sunglasses on and the

(13:38):
hat that he hasn't taken off. It's after dark, OK?
Yeah, right. And this we look over and this
girl's like he's like up taking pictures of her.
OK, so maybe he's supporting herInstagram page, huh?
Huh. Maybe.
Whatever. But but, but there's another
table opposite of them, probably10 feet over and there's people

(13:59):
come walking and there's like 8 or 9 girls and like 3 dudes.
So this is SDK. But my boy Kyle, he's great,
great host. He's like, if you come to my
city, I'm taking you out, OK? I don't care what you say, I'm
buying your dinner. Oh, that's what's up.
Oh, he's a great guy. I love the guy.
OK, But he knows everybody. He's the NBA elf, so he does the

(14:20):
games of Utah Jazz. He's known.
If you Google NBA Elf, that's Kyle Nielsen.
OK, so he's well known in Salt Lake City.
I had no clue but this is awesome.
Yeah, it is awesome. He calls the owner.
He's like, hey, do you have roomfor two, maybe 3 tonight?
I don't have reservations. He's like, show up, we'll get
you in. That's exactly how this works.
Yeah. He's cool with everybody.
Everybody loves Kyle, everybody loves Kyle.

(14:41):
But while we're there, there's like two or three other people
in the restaurant. Kyle, what's up, man?
You know, he knows everybody. It's dope.
So that was that was my Saturdaynight.
OK. And so we're, we, I forgot,
where did we stay at? We stayed at one of the Marriott
properties. So I'm trying to become lifetime
platinum, right? Understood.
Yeah, I think maybe Sheraton or whatever.
So talk me through your Sunday. My Sunday.

(15:04):
All right, Sunday's a little bitmore exciting because we haven't
made plans to link up with the rest of our party.
So that was going to be Jay Jones and Tuck.
The goal was to meet up in Napa.So we left from Lake Tahoe,
drove you know right across Caliinto Napa area and decided to
hang out there and do 2 wine tastings.

(15:24):
So. On the road trip.
Yeah, yeah, on the road trip, but we ain't no, no, no.
So check this out. We stopped driving.
It was to drive to Napa and thenfrom there it was like, hey, we
knew we were chilling there, allright, So it wasn't wine tasting
in off to Tacoma or anything. Nah.
But we wanted to take advantage of the time and then we knew
that we had a, you know, a little bit of a journey ahead of
us. So yeah, let me let me look at

(15:45):
the wineries because there was 2wineries that we went to.
Let's see here. The first one was the V Satui
Satui SATTUAI winery. Now that one there, we just did
the wine taste string at their facility and just kind of
laughed and joked back and forth.
And then that's when my wife wasable to give one of our members
of the party a new nickname. But you know, we'll get into

(16:06):
that later because. Are we going to get into it
later? Because I want to know.
Well, we'll let him let him talkabout that in a video, but we'll
just say that he learned the thing about gravity and glasses
and bumping. And then, you know, his new game
nickname became a, what we call him Spiller.
OK. So we just laughed and joked

(16:26):
about that for a few days. And then from there there was a
another winery that I thought was freaking amazing.
It was the Castillo de Amorosa. And these are Napa.
These are like so actually. These are both in Norcal.
Yeah, well, in that area, so Calistoga was the, well,
actually let me back up St. Helena, CA was the Vista Tui
Winery and then the Casa, Well, Castillo de Armosa, that one

(16:53):
there was in Calistoga, California.
So that's all in that whole Napaarea, but sure.
But the cool thing about the second winery, man, it was built
like a medieval castle. So looking at the website, you
kind of look at it and you're like, OK, that's kind of cool,
kind of whatever. But when you actually go into

(17:13):
this winery, it is literally like like Mason, like rock built
like a medieval type castle. So we were like I.
Assumed you guys took pics. Yes, we did.
So I'm going to forward some to you and you can kind of put some
up. Yeah, I'm.
Going to need those as soon as you get home.
I will. I will make sure I send them to
you because we actually kind of did something kind of cool on
that one. They didn't really have any wine

(17:34):
tours available at the time whenwe got there.
But you know, our wonderful waitress, she's kind of pointed
us in the direction was like, hey, no one's over here.
But if you go take a look at some stuff, you know, enjoy.
So we actually went on our own little wine tour through their
wine Cellars inside that particular winery, which was
freaking amazing. Now, I don't know if we need to

(17:54):
like go through the video or maybe look for lights or
something and maybe, you know, do some edits for slapped ham or
anything like that. But it was a lot of fun kind of
exploring and going into the winery.
So that was pretty much day 2 for us because then from that
point we just already had parkedout and ended up staying at
night at a bread and breakfast. The name of the place for that

(18:16):
one was the Calistoga Wine Way Inn.
It was a little like Airbnb bread breakfast, but it was it
was real easy sample and much, much better than the hotel the
night before. So I was back in the great
graces of the wife and we were ready to move forward the next
day. What?
Tell us more about this sipper Spiller?

(18:38):
Oh well. Which is it?
One of the JS. We'll see.
We'll leave it at one of the JS,OK, and hopefully one day I'll
let him tell this story and go into it.
But so. Here's what people don't realize
is when we travel, there's always a lot of JS.
Yeah. So if everybody understands the
group, it's going to be Jay. Then we have Jay Finney, then we
have Jay Jones and then we have Dre.

(19:01):
So usually if you just get the right Annunciation, we're.
And last year we had John Hansy,which is Jay, and we had Joe,
which is also AJ, Yep, in the same group.
Then when Jason's around us, then that's another J It's just
a lot of JA, lot of JS. Let's see what else happened on
that day. No.
What happened The Spiller? One of the JS?

(19:22):
One of the JS. So you got to remember, well,
they were actually let me back up a little bit.
The goal was to meet Napa at one.
No problem, I'm leaving. You know, Lake Tahoe GPS.
Hey, you'll be there about 1110.No big deal.
As I'm driving, I get this text message.
Hey, we're going to be in Napa about noon.

(19:42):
I was like, OK, that's about an hour off, no biggie.
So they had a head start on the winery area before.
We got there, so they got there early and and pregamed, yes.
So I guess they're a little pregame.
They're all assholes, so we're trying to get caught up.
So as we got caught up, we noticed that we were just trying
to catch up to the race and get a couple drinks down with them.
They were a little bit more fluid.

(20:03):
We was, and then, like I said, they were.
Which one of the days? This is going to be Jay.
We're going to go JJ. OK, Jordan's.
Jordan, so we'll call it. Oh my God, that's.
Because I know there's a Jordan story.
Was that on Monday or was that on Sunday?
That's. Going to be on see here Sunday,
Monday. That's a Monday.
That's a Monday that'll. Be a Monday story.

(20:24):
Yeah, so. But now he would just talk and
we're all having a great time. And the host was amazing.
Yes, he tipped over a glass. But this is the cool thing about
it though. As that glass tipped over I the
tender that was helping us with the wine tasting.
I think he caught that glass right as it went down, wiped the

(20:44):
wine off the table. So smooth refills.
His glasses slid it back in front of him before I can almost
catch what happened. So like some Mr. and Misses
Smith shit, he's a spy. Just it was amazing.
The only reason I even knew about it is because my wife
happened to catch and observe everything and then let
everybody know. But that's that was an amazing,
amazing little situation. So that's a stark contrast to my

(21:05):
Sunday because I mean, you guys are the you're the party group,
right? And so my, my thought was, OK, I
can either do the party thing, yes, because we hang out the
group, I said, or I can take advantage of what I considered
to be not really once in a lifetime, but something super
unique that would justify me want to even drive my car right
from here to the destination. And so Sunday morning we get up

(21:28):
Salt Lake and we drive through Jackson, Wyoming and Jackson
Hole. So we get there in about 5
hours. We and, and this is, this is
peak touristy season. This is what I'm telling JC.
I'm like, OK, well, we're going to stay in Salt Lake and then
it's only about four hours. So we're going to get up, we're
going to drive there, we're going to have lunch and we're
going to push on to, to Bozeman.So we're going to go Jackson,

(21:52):
have lunch, drive up through Yellowstone, check out the
Tetons because he's never been there.
I was there in 2016. I said, well, I would love to
drive through here again like a cool car.
Why not the NSX? So you have these two NSX.
You guys are driving with three,right?
We're driving with two of the white one and the yellow 1.
So keep that in mind because youhad to have seen people and be

(22:14):
like, what are all these cars? Because we broke a lot of necks.
Yes, we broke a lot of necks between JC and I.
And so this is peak season, Peakseason in Jackson.
If you want a hotel room that's like 1500 dollars.
Yeah, that's why we stayed in Salt Lake.
Made perfect sense, yeah. And he's like, Oh, we all these

(22:35):
people because he's sore, grumbly old guy.
But you know, he's I I told him he needs to go back to Jackson
with Pam, his wife, right, so they can enjoy it and they can
stay off the beaten path. Non, you know, peak jersey
season. Have a great time, right.
So we go to this cowboy Saloon and they have, it's one of those
places. It's frustrating because they
have this long bar, they have all these tables and they have

(22:58):
one place order food. There's no servers.
They'll come to your table with drinks.
But if you want to already have stand in line order at the at
the window. OK.
Yeah, but the, the bar, they're not bar stools, They're saddles.
Oh, wow. OK, so you got to straddle up on
the bar and sit there on the saddle.
Yeah. While you're drinking your beer
and eating your chicken strips or whatever, Right?

(23:20):
Yeah, with the big thing right here.
I got a picture. Maybe I'll post it on the
podcast. I don't know.
But The thing is, we're both looking at, you know, our phones
and like, OK, there's three routes that we could take up, go
through Yellowstone. I said here's what's going to
happen. We're going to get back on the
road. We're going to get some gas.
We can get back on the road. And after a while, you can't

(23:41):
miss it. We're going to go by the Jackson
airport. You're going to see the Tetons
on your left. Beautiful.
There was no snow on top, unfortunately, from what we
could see, right? But it's a great place to pull
over and take a photo. I said, I think we want to do
that. He goes, all right, cool.
So we get back on the road and we're driving and we're, you
know, going up these mountains. I'm like, huh, this is kind of
interesting. I haven't been in a while, you

(24:03):
know, 2016. So I'm driving.
I'm like, huh, Why? The mountains are I'm in the
middle of the mountains, right? After a while, the mountains are
on my right. There's not a lot to my left.
It's like, welcome to Idaho. And because I'm like, OK, I know
you have to go to Idaho to get to it, right?
And then I see a little town. I go, oh, I think I remember
this gas station. Oh, OK, I think we're good.
We're good. 22 boring hours later, 2 1/2 boring hours later,

(24:28):
I, I get to the end of the road and it says Bozeman left.
It's AT in the road, right, WestYellowstone, right.
And I go, hey, let's pull over. I'm going to get our bearings.
I use the restroom. So I pulled up on a map and what
we did is we went up to, we wentup the western side, the wrong
side of the Tetons all the way to the, you know, to the western

(24:52):
interests of Yellowstone, which is fine.
It's kind of, but it's not really the intention, right?
So JC, we went past the park. I go.
It's literally right there. You've never been before.
We can go in. I showed them on the map.
We take the little Yellowstone loop.
They have an in, in inside loop.We can take the loop around and
it'll be about two hour delay, but we're here.

(25:16):
Bozeman's only like 3 hours fromus at this point.
And it's like, I don't know, 4 1/2, I mean, 4:30, maybe 5:00.
He goes, OK, let's do it. I go, good.
OK, so we going to the park, we're driving, we get some good
pictures. Now, the thing that I didn't
tell him about Yellowstone is when you're in the park, there
isn't traffic unless people see something.

(25:38):
Then everybody stops. Then it's bumper to bumper and
you're at the mercy of traffic, and that happened to us a couple
times. Going into the park.
Just anywhere in the park because it's a loop, right?
So we're in the park, we're driving and we see, I don't
know, there's Elks like things we normally see.
And it's like, hey, we're on theradios, right?
Hey, you see the bison? He was like, yeah, I see the
bison. It's pretty cool.
And we pulled over to the springs, Hot Springs.

(26:00):
We walked around a little bit, took some pictures and then I
go, all right, we're going to drive up this road and I'm
looking for a spot we can pull over and take a photo because we
didn't take a photo of the welcome to Yellowstone.
You know, you like to you like to get that stuff when you're on
a road trip, right? Especially with a cool car, get
in front of it, you know, do it for the gram, right.
And so we pull over, take some cool pictures and I'm looking at

(26:21):
the map. I'm like, all right, so we can
take the loop and still get out of here.
We're driving for 1520 miles. We at this point, we're up to
almost where Old Faithful is andI'm looking at the map and 1st
off, 90% of this road trip, we don't have real cellular
service. It's the SOS on the phone.
So the maps are kind of goofy offline mode.
And I go, man, at 35 mile an hour at any given time, we could

(26:46):
stop this. This loop is a lot bigger than I
thought, so I raid it and say, hey, JC, here's our option.
We can go down, turn around. We can just go back out.
We can go out the top. We can go out the West
Yellowstone entrance. We came in north inches or the
OR the West. He goes, let's do that.
All right, we turn around. Sure as shit we get caught in
traffic twice on the way out. Gotcha.

(27:06):
We finally get out of the park. West Yellowstone is cool.
I've never been. It's like a little town too.
There's a town literally I thinkcalled West Yellowstone.
I've never been there before. Just outside the park.
Kind of cool. He calls him.
What did you call him? He called him.
Time sucks, you go to the town, you get out, walk around for two
hours, people shop trinkets, allthat stuff.
One thing about this road trip is there were a lot of these

(27:29):
little towns I don't know about on your route, but our route in
the middle of nowhere, there's alot of little towns that man, I
would have loved to have gotten out and just kind of like walked
around a little bit or taking some pictures of bad ass murals,
abandoned American Indian town, Native American Indian towns.
Where they decided to just paintthe entire side of the hotel
that's shut down or the motel and it's art and it looks sick.
It look even sicker with a whitetype S in front of it.

(27:52):
So it's funny you say that because that's one of the things
that me and my wife were kind oftalking about in our road trip,
like when you're with the group.So time comes a little bit
different of a commodity. So you don't want to be the one
to be like, I see because I'm telling you there's visions of
what you saw. Like I see something cool that
is the greatest backdrop ever. Let me get a picture of this
little town, this little setup. Let me put my car here, collect

(28:15):
a bunch of these pictures. But you start seeing that every
so often, all you're doing is slowing down your convoy.
So it was like that, I want to stop and pull over and get this
picture, but you didn't want to like hold back the group so.
No, it's exactly that. Because when we did the road
trip last year, all of us went over to Texas.
Every gas stop. If it's you, it's 5 minutes.

(28:37):
If it's a group, it's 12 right, right.
It's and then you just you just add that every food stop you can
go in and out grab beef jerky. You can sit down and go to
McDonald's you're in and out there 15 minutes.
If you want to do that, you can go to a restaurant here and out
there in 20 minutes. If it's a group, it's 45.
Yep, like every time. So you.
Want to be you want to be caught.
What is it you want to be caringor like cognitive of your other

(28:58):
group. You don't want to be like Harry
love fresh fresh. Everybody's good.
Everybody wants to talk make sure they got their you know
items anybody forget anything? Nope, we're good.
So continue. Absolutely.
So then we get out of the park and you know, we just have this
one little stretch of Rd. I want this on Gallatin,
Gallatin Highway or something like that.
And it takes us to Bozeman and you can tell, Oh my God, dude,

(29:22):
you're driving. And if you're going along the
river, I don't, I forgot what river it is.
It's not a Colorado River, I don't think.
Whatever the river is and you see it and it's taken up, it's
about 6 lanes wide and you can see the rap, you can see the,
the, the whitewater Rapids and all that kind of shit.
And you just go, you're just like, this is the highway and

(29:42):
this is the, the river. You know, it's like this until
it gets dark and you can't see anything.
And then we get into Bozeman andyou know, that's that was
Sunday. Sunday.
So now us our Sunday. We're waking up.
We're leaving Napa Valley, so we've decided that we're just
from Northern California. We're going to go to the
redwoods first and then from thewet woods we're going to dip

(30:04):
back to the coastline and go up the coast of Oregon and then
stay the night as far north as we can get in Oregon.
I think we ended up getting to what is it Crystal, Crystal
Beach, I think it was Crystal Beach is.
That where you guys took all those cool photos.
Yes. So let me kind of back up a
little bit because when we left,that's when we got our my first
ticket. Tell us about the ticket.

(30:28):
All right. So we were doing good, keeping a
good pace and it was this nice little.
Song. Whose fault was it?
I want to say collectively it was all of our fault.
No, no, no. Whose fault was it?
Was it Tuck's fault? I would have said, hey, listen.
Was it Tuck's fault? I don't, I'm not blaming
anybody. We all were speed and going
faster than the 65. OK.
All right. So let's talk but.

(30:48):
Let me explain what happened andthen I'll let I'll let your
audience and make a comment below.
You know who they think's fault it is.
OK, All right. So there's three intersects is
mine is NA naturally 276 horsepower and that's about all.
And we have NC one that's putting out almost around 7, a
little over 700. And then we have another NA1

(31:09):
putting out a little over 400 horsepower.
Well, they were well in front ofme and I was like watching come
to find as we're going, as you know, coming over the hill.
Wonderful CHP. All he sees is 3 NS XS flying up
the hill and he just blocks of his brakes, comes around and

(31:31):
then turns and gets behind us. Now we're driving for a little
bit, but like I said, they were in front and they don't.
Know do you guys not have your radios?
At that time it was too late. It's like we already he saw us
and I was like just whatever. So he ended up following us, get
in front of us, follows to a point where the the road
bottleneck and that's where he decided to pull all three of us

(31:53):
over. So he no.
So come to find out he'd stoppedat my car first because I was in
the rear shooting stuff back andforth.
Come to find out his prior military, he was like, we are
radar somebody doing over 100, another guy doing well over 80
something. And yeah, you were all over
aged, I think 75. And I was like.
Oh, speed demons. Subs, I'm sitting there.
All right, well, which, what wasit anyways?

(32:15):
Long story short, after shootingstuff, I mean, he's probably
military. I'm probably military.
He's like, all right, this what we're going to do 75 over
everybody. So he gave us all three of those
tickets. But like I said, I was in the
back so whatever. Yeah.
Now I know that they were tryingto get pools and try to like

(32:36):
maybe get a little video and they just might even lost life
for a second. Not looking ahead, but.
Nobody has a radar detector I'm guessing.
No, no, no, no. We were relying on I.
Borrowed one for the trip. You know, it's funny, one of the
members of there was like, yeah,I forgot mine at the house.
I was like, it would have been nice, but it is what you can't
forget your. Radar detector.
I don't you know what I don't like using them really because I

(32:59):
tend to like stay below a certain speed and or I trying to
stay with traffic. I've gotten so many tickets in
my life, it's not really worth it for me to try to go 1,000,000
miles an hour as long as I can. I just kind of in little spurts.
It's especially when you're on aroad trip.
It's the towns you're unfamiliarwith that makes perfect Because
I haven't had one since I sold my old NSX.

(33:20):
But I'm like, I'm going on this road trip and it saved our ass
quite a few times. I bet it did.
Because what I mean, you're rolling out of town and you see
it go from 65 to 55 to 45 to 35 to 25.
And that's when you get pulled over going 32 and a 25.
Yep, especially in a nice car. Yep.
You know, And so that combined with ways in your eyes, you

(33:40):
know, you need all three today because I always question, it's
like, OK, in 2025, do you even need a radar detector anymore?
You know, and I would argue and say absolutely not in the city,
but in the middle of East Jesus,absolutely.
No, you're right. And I didn't think it was that
perspective, but you're right. You see it just do those speed
drops and there's always that country bumpkin like.
Always. Country cops sitting right there

(34:01):
because he knows you're going tomiss that last and he's like,
here you go. Well, even on the highways,
right, it's going to be because some of the speed limits that we
saw were 80, right? We had 80.
We had posted speed limit 80 a couple times, OK.
And so I think even 85 in Idaho on the way back I went.
It's going to be like Texas, I think.
So I don't know, maybe that's just 85 in Texas outside of

(34:22):
Austin, but definitely 80. What happens is it goes from 80
to 65 and then back to 80. So that's when they get you too,
right, Because you're when it says 80, everyone's going 8889.
I probably have been honestly, my average speed limit, probably
my average speed probably would have been on the highway like
93, right, If I didn't have the box on top of the car.

(34:42):
I was still speeding. Yeah, sure.
Because I just, you know, going with the flow traffic.
But my Monday, we're on Monday now.
I'm a backup to your Monday. Jordan's got wet.
Tell us about that. Tell us about somebody climbing
trees. So the climbing trees part was
in the the redwoods. So when we left, we're starting

(35:06):
our journey from Napa. We stopped at the Riverwoods.
That was Mr. Tuck man. He's one with nature and he was
going trees. Got some videos of that and
pictures would not but awesome time.
Forgot how beautiful that park is.
Leaving that park we when we're going up the coast.
Skip to Monday, this is Oregon, so there's a couple lighthouses
come to find out the two lighthouses that we plan to go

(35:28):
visit the one day that the we can close was that day, of
course. So like whatever, we we just got
to watch the lighthouses from the distance.
And what we ended up doing is toget a better vantage picture.
Jay Jones, he was trying to cross this little stream so he
can kind of get a picture of thelighthouse from like the far 1,
like coastside, little ways away.

(35:49):
It's kind of hard. To and they'll set the table
here. All he wears are Air Jordans so
he probably has 50 pair. Probably more.
Probably more. He's got all the drops.
You got him in special boxes, yes.
And he's inside these Jordans and he's not.
Now we see from a distance he's negotiating the stream.
The stream is not small enough to jump across, but it's just

(36:13):
big enough that if you kind of hit a couple of stones, you'd
make it across. Yeah, like an alley or
something. Yeah, but you're in Jordan, so
you can only imagine that water rocks that are in water are
pretty smooth. So it's like we watch them
bounce for a second. The next thing you know.
Then George became completely soaked and he was like, Oh well.

(36:34):
How far down was it like ankle or like mid calf bro?
No, we're talking about submerged.
We're talking about his above. His ankles was solid, his joints
were submerged and the water line was up for like between his
knees and a calf. So they were in there.
Damn, they were in there. Damn.
All right, that was Monday. Yeah.

(36:57):
You guys sent some, some awesomephotos and I, I would love to go
to the redwoods if I had more time coming back, I may have
swung down that way right and cut over.
Didn't have that time. So Monday we left Bozeman and
Monday's drive was pretty boring.
But you're going, you know, you're in Montana, a lot of
native Indian area, a lot of nothing out of out of all sorts

(37:20):
of range. We go up through Helena, which
is funny. I think it's Helena or Helena,
but you went to a, a winery. Winery yes, with that word in
it. Helena.
So I was like when you said thatI was like that's wild but we go
and we go all the way up to northern Montana OK To enter

(37:40):
Glacier National Park OK Yep. So we went up, over, down and
then to Spokane. So we drive up there and it's
certain we're watching the weather over the mountains.
We're like, which are the Rocky Mountains?
I didn't realize that at the time, but they're massive.
Yes, beautiful, massive. I know Rocky Mountains, but I
didn't think, you know, way up there.
Yes, they are. So we're going up there and we

(38:02):
pick our route. OK, we'll go with two.
Now, I paid for us to go into Yellowstone, and The thing is,
he was going to pay for us to gothrough Glacier.
Gotcha. The weather's kind of crappy.
It's raining on us like, OK, let's we're not going to go all
the way to the peak. We're just going to take this
route and we're going to the glacier.
So it says welcome to Glacier National Park, all that kind of
stuff. Beautiful drive, dude.
I can't even explain how stunning this was, right,

(38:25):
Especially with the rain. Honestly, it just kind of set
the tone because you have the fog and the mist and the
mountain peeking through and thecolors are starting to change
with the, with some of the treesand the they were, it was so
thick and the, the pine trees, Ithink they're pine trees that
were so dense. Like if you got lost, no one
would ever find you. That's crazy.

(38:47):
You say that because that's exactly what I saw when we were
going through those little roadsin Oregon.
That's exactly how I felt. Yeah.
You see like you look to the right, you see like a row of
trees, maybe another row right behind, but it's just thick.
They're all like 150 feet tall, you know, and it's just as
massive. So anyway, we go down, we, we
stop and have lunch in this towncalled Kalispell.

(39:08):
OK, when we're get through all that kind of stuff, kind of a
cool little town. And it's funny cuz a friend of
mine hit me up on Instagram. He's like, hey, Kalispell, I
grew up like right around there.I'm like, what are the odds?
I consider that middle of nowhere.
It's kind of a cool little town though, right?
And then we go from Kalispell, we go down to Coeur d'Alene.
At this point, I kind of wanted to roam around Coeur d'Alene
because I know it's really knownfor being super cool.

(39:30):
It's kind of like the new hit place.
Everyone's moving, really. I said, JC, you want to go to
Coeur d'Alene and maybe I could tell he was just done with his
day, which is fine. Which is fine, right?
All right, we're just going to go to Spokane and that'll be the
last stop before we hoof it overthe next day to Shelton and and
Tacoma and stuff. So we stayed kind of a really

(39:50):
nice boutique Y Marriott property called Davenport, OK.
And yeah, that was our that was our Monday.
Aw man, yeah, you had a very different Monday than mine.
I did. I did.
Well, like ours, that's our Monday is once we called it a
night that Tuesday getting up, that's when we all split up.

(40:13):
So it was like. Which is crazy because you guys
were together for a couple days.You guys were going to the same
place, correct? But you got there different
times and dates. Yeah, well, Jay, Chuck, he
wanted to go visit some friends in Portland area, I believe in
Oregon. So he went that direction.

(40:33):
Jay Jones is the fiance at the time.
She was flying out the next day and they wanted to go spend some
time in downtown Seattle, so they went just.
So just so we know, it's still his fiance, they just haven't
got married yet. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did.
I say fiance. I say fiance, right?
Yeah, OK. At the time.
OK, at the time. OK, something happened in the
last week. No, no, no, nothing happened.

(40:55):
All right, don't. Put that out the bed.
That's bad use. You didn't put that out there,
but anyways, then me and I oftenwant to take advantage because
we knew it was the track day wascoming up.
So we decided to go run up to Vancouver, Canada and just stay
the night, have a couple of drinks at dinner there and then
come back the next day. How?
Was that so? That was Tuesday.
That was Tuesday, so we woke up on Wednesday and came back that
that next day on Wednesday. That was great.

(41:18):
Vancouver, I guess they said they just rains a lot up there.
But the people are really cool. And it's one thing about leaving
the country. It's funny to hear like slide
comic and jokes about Americans in other countries because you
kind of got to agree with some of the jokes, so.
It's weird that you would hear that without being there for
like 24 hours. They were real quick.
Oh, the American Oh, so you, youknow, how's the, how's

(41:40):
everything with the orange man? I'm like.
Yeah, I think we know Canada basically sucks.
Everybody, every Canadian I know.
Nice place to visit. But that's awesome though, man.
And, and because by Thursday, I know I skipped a day, but by
Thursday everyone's gathering atthe track and and Jay Jones is
the first to show up. Yep.
I'm like, all right, well, where's we're we're talking

(42:02):
Valeria. And I said, where's Dre and Leo?
Like, Oh no, you know. That was my bad.
I miscalculated driving leaving that Thursday morning.
Because then talking Valeria show up and I think Jay Jones
had already left. Yep, I go.
Where's Dre and Leo? I don't know anyone called them
And then eventually you guys showed up.
But you know my Tuesday because I skipped a day, you know, we

(42:23):
just get up and it was just straight coming from Spokane,
right? You know, we fill up with gas
and we go our separate ways. Because I met up with Chris Fry,
the guy with the Honda Z, just like mine.
I understand. Met him up in Bellevue.
We had lunch. Cool.
Great. Kind of a fusion sushi place.
Great selection of liquor, too. It was awesome.
Oh, my gosh, Yeah. Awesome.

(42:43):
Then I went over to see Alex andJen, friends of the show, dear
friends of mine, right. Hung out for a little bit.
Alex, I brought him to the trackon Wednesday, took a bunch of
photos. You weren't there?
No, but I have those on my computer.
And then, you know, Wednesday itwas, you know, oh, that was
Tuesday. And then we went to the casino
and all hung out on Tuesday night.

(43:04):
OK, so how was the casino though?
Little, I want to say it's called Little River Casino.
It was cool. None of us like really gamble
that much, right? But it was the casino was close
to the track Ridge. And then of course, Wednesday
morning I get up and I decide todrive to the ocean, take a bunch
of photos cuz I saw those, my friend Alex.
I was like, well, Alex is going to come down, but he's not going
to be down till later on. I don't really want to be at the

(43:25):
track from 7:30 or 8:00 AM untilfive.
Yeah, I might as well, you know,figure out what I want to do
with my day. So that was perfect.
And I got back and the the mediateam was like, damn, Jay, you
want to go back to the ocean before you leave?
We saw you went there. We want to take a bunch of
photos and videos. I'm like, no, I don't have time.
I would, I would because I mean,it's a great, great media team.

(43:47):
And then we're willing to do it.You know, I'm going to take a
page out of Jorge Aquino's book.Shout out, shout out to the
media team. He gets shout out to everybody.
But yeah, that was. And then, you know, there it
was. Expo happened Wednesday,
Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday and we began our
journeys. Back home, just one more thing,

(44:08):
shout out to the media team too,because I was able to see the
little snippet that they released on the on the teaser
yeah, the teaser there you go onthe Instagram page.
Man, that looked really good. I really can't wait until the
whole video's released because Iwas really excited off the
little snippets that we got. That's why we continuously bring

(44:28):
them back, OK? Because Rebecca, she understands
the vision that the club is trying to put out there and the
direction we're trying to go. That's a that's a skill set of
hers. So she knows by now this is her
third time with her team covering it.
And she's like, she replaces parts each year depending on
where they're located. She tries to find people local

(44:48):
to that region because it's morecost effective on the club.
Understood. And it's got to be people she
trusts. Correct?
Because Mason was doing the video and he's from here.
Gotcha. Yeah, in Phoenix because she's
really good and he works with her right now.
And then the other two she's worked with before.
And I think, I think they were here and they moved to Seattle
area and. They just happened to be local
and. They just have to be local and

(45:09):
they just happened to be incredibly talented and easy to
work with. Well, I mean me starting with NS
Expo in 2022. Why was her first year doing it?
You know what's crazy for us? I've watched him develop and
they've gotten better and betterand better every year.
So I am big UPS Rebecca, your whole team, everybody like you
guys have come an amazing long way and continue to just up the

(45:32):
bar and I want to just go ahead and thank you and take, you
know, great job, big UPS everything and to continue to do
what you guys are doing cuz it was awesome.
Well, I'd love to go through NS Expo, but I know you have a hard
out, so I do appreciate you coming through and I'll just do
the rest of it on my own. Oh.
Man, hey, can you handle the rest of it on your own?
I think so. All right.

(45:53):
Well, a thank you so much for Jay inviting me over, having a
little bit of time, kind of chopping up about our little
road trip up and down from what was it, Tacoma, WA say that?
Tacoma. Yep.
And to the next episode, man will be episode 4 next time,
right? To the next episode.
Thanks, Dre. Thank you.
Bye. Bye.
All right, let me take a quick break here.

(46:13):
OK, we are back. Dre had to leave an important
appointment to go to, but I still want to talk about Expo
and a little bit more stories from my journey.
So stick with me on that. Coming up next week, I sat down
with Jonathan Rivers or John Rivers as his homies call him
after NS Expo, after the banquetand I had him on last year.
He has a YouTube channel called Drive Culture.

(46:35):
He's also one of the high UPS, higher ups in Acura, a good
friend. And you know, hopefully we can
do it every year, but that will be next week.
So we'll talk a little bit more about what the brand Acura has
going on and our intersex Expo experience from the perspective
of our title sponsor, Titanium sponsor Acura.
So the event we stayed at Hotel Murano, the two day track day at

(46:58):
the Ridge which is in Shelton, WA.
So we stayed at Hotel Murano, which is in Tacoma, really nice
hotel, a little older, but at some point it was pinky out
fancy, still pretty nice. We'll just put that way, still
pretty nice property. But, you know, and I talk about
this every year and I'll talk about it again.
We have a lot of people who cameto NS Expo for the first time.

(47:20):
And what that means is, you know, going into it, they're a
little unsure and what is this event?
It's just a bunch of old people standing around talking about
their cars and all that good stuff.
But it's an entire weekend full of stuff and it's always more
like family. I had to get up on stage like
typical as the current club president talk 1015 minutes and
bore everybody. But it's the events are always

(47:42):
cool, but it's what you do in between the events, whether
you're hanging out in the lobby or hanging out in hotel rooms.
It's been kind of a thing up till two or three in the
morning, just drinking in people's rooms and talking and
having a party. I'm sure the people staying in
on the floors that we weren't orin the adjacent rooms, we're
probably pretty upset because wegot pretty loud, you know, not

(48:05):
not necessarily a lot of laughing and just crazy shit,
but just a lot of talking and drinking.
But it was an excellent event. And again, you know, next week
maybe we'll talk about it more. I haven't reviewed that,
obviously I recorded it already.But my journey home with JC was
just as interesting in a sense that in a sense as our journey

(48:26):
there. So the event concluded on
Sunday. So JC and I, we left and we were
our first night was in Twin Falls, ID.
But of course I wanted to stop by and say hi to my dear friend
Wes Tankersley of One Drink Wednesday.
You guys see us all the time on Wednesdays at 7:00 PM Pacific
Standard Time on our YouTube page.
Sorry on our on our Instagram atOne Drink Wednesday.

(48:49):
You can also get to it if you watch me.
You can also get to it if you follow Wes Tankersley.
But I met up with JC and I met up with Wes Tankersley and David
Diggs. David Diggs was on this podcast
last year. He's a musician, recorded with a
lot of people, have some albums out there.
But we met up for a nice dinner.But the the trip there was not

(49:10):
without some interesting things.So as I mentioned before, I have
the roof box, the carrier box ontop of the car, a custom rack
system that I designed with my friend Will.
Did a lot of research, had a pretty good system, didn't
really have problems with the entire trip.
It did partially collapse the back of it when we were going
through Glacier and how what happened was, and then that was

(49:31):
Jay Cena. On our way up, I picked a spot.
We're driving, it's misting outside, kind of raining, and I
go that spot. As a car person who likes photos
and likes scenery and likes nature.
The thing is I love nature. I don't do a lot of nature
things, but I just love seeing nature.
Anything natural, it's just awesome.
It's just a complete escape. I saw a spot and you get the

(49:54):
mountains in the background, thebig, you know, Glacier National
Park in the background. The leaves were changing.
It was misty. And I go, that's the spot.
We need to go back to that spot and take a photo.
And so we're driving, looking for a place to turn around.
And you're, you're going throughthese winding roads, Interstate
2 or Hwy. 2, State Highway 2, whatever the white one is with a

(50:15):
letter. That's the one we're on.
And we're driving for 3 or 4 miles.
And JC says on the radio, you know, maybe we should find
another, we'll just wait for thenext once in a lifetime photo or
the next beautiful spot. I go on the radio, I go, no, I
go no, that's the spot. I'm going to find a place to
turn around. So poor Jaycee, very patient by
the way, with me because he doesn't get or understand any of

(50:38):
this photo stuff. Usually his wife does that.
You guys already know that I'm really big into things like
that. So I find a spot for us to turn
around. So we're backtracking up this
rainy Rd. It's not pouring, but it's just
enough to get on yours, which bythe way, his wiper failed on him
too, which probably wasn't helping him too much.
So we we backtrack, we get to the spot.
And so I go to pull off the tarmac onto this huge kind of

(51:03):
gravelly, like half circle so that it's it's not a it's it's a
spot you could tell a lot of people pull off to take photos,
but it's not a paved spot. So what happens is you end up
getting a two or three inch dropfrom the surface of the road to
that little dirt area. And so when I did AU turn the
last part of my, you know, the my rear tires went off of it and

(51:23):
went down the drop and that dropwas enough to jolt the bracket
loose. And then my camper on top just
went like that. So I got out fixed.
It wasn't hard, but that's the only time that the thing came
down the entire trip. And we were going through
elevations, all sorts of temperature, all sorts of
extremely strong winds, got the car up to 90, I don't know, 90

(51:47):
miles an hour passing somebody on 80 mile an hour Rd.
But most of the trip I was in the 80s because, you know, I had
the box on top, which I'll talk about that a little bit later
about the wind noise, because that was a big question that I
got. So anyway, so we're driving up.
And so that was the, that was the only issue I had on the way
up, on the way back. We are in, I think we're, we're

(52:08):
still in Washington. It's kind of hard to tell
because we're going to Idaho andI have to look at a map, but we
were in Washington a lot longer than I thought we were.
And at one point we were in Oregon and then we were from
Oregon to Idaho, but we had pulled over in this little town
to get gas and it was kind of drizzling outside the rain.
Not a problem. I checked the pumps on the sea
suckers and everything's good. I do that every stop, check the

(52:30):
pump, check the vacuum levels, gas up.
And as we're pulling out before we get back on the highway, just
before. So we're going through town
probably 3 miles before we get back on the highway of this
little town. JC radios.
He goes, hey, your bracket came down again.
So I looked in the rearview. I go shit, OK, so I pull over.
Takes about a minute to get the bracing back up and get the

(52:51):
vacuum pumped in. So we get on the highway and
within two minutes happens again.
I'm like shit, this is going to be a problem.
I can tell JC is getting a little irritated, but he's also
patient. But what are you going to do,
right? There's really nothing you could
do. So I get out.
I tighten it. This is unusual.
It's happened now twice in the last 6 minutes.
So I tighten it down. I make sure the the suction

(53:13):
mounts are in and then we're fine.
We're fine for the next 200 miles.
Like we have another three or sohours, maybe 4 hours to get to
Boise proper, Meridian, ID to meet up with the Dave Diggs and
of course Wes. We get there, have dinner,
everything's good, and then we go from there to Twin Falls, ID.

(53:33):
One of the most beautiful overlooks I've ever seen in my
life. At the time we didn't really get
to see it cuz we got in there later at night.
We got there at 10:30 at night just before we pulled into the
hotel parking lot. You know, bumpy side roads,
thing comes down again. Now when I say it comes down,
imagine the roof of a car, not the hood, but the roof.

(53:54):
And this system has one bar across the top that's holding.
It's got a bar and it's, each bar, each side of it has a twin
suction cup system. And then I have the bar running
to the back of the box, and thenit goes down to my trunk kind of
suspended up about a foot off the back of the car so that I
can see out the rear view. So the back part is what kept

(54:14):
collapsing. And so we pulled over where it's
slated at Towneplace Suites. And I realized after doing some
troubleshooting that one of the vacuum pumps has failed.
It's completely failed. It won't hold suction or
anything. Jaycee's tired, understandably.
So he wants to have a celebratory bourbon to celebrate
how great NS Expo went because it was fantastic.
I had set up on stage. This might be the best NS Expo

(54:36):
ever, but for anyone who's attended multiple NS Expos,
people were always going to mention Seattle is either being
the best or being one of the best.
Seattle's Tacoma. It was that freaking good.
Nothing really to complain aboutand the stuff that you would
complain about is so minor from an organization standpoint.
From a event standpoint, everything was pretty much

(54:57):
perfect. But we hosted here in Arizona
and people said ours was the best.
And so all I can say is that Tacoma was arguably like someone
could someone can make an argument for that being the best
in this Expo, but I digress. So JC wanted to celebrate after
being out in the parking lot monkeying with this thing to
make to make matters worse, we parked at the wrong hotel.

(55:20):
No, you know, how do you do that?
So Marriott, as few as a few other brands.
What they do is they take two oftheir properties.
I've seen them do this a lot nowand they they butt them up
together. Just like you go to the fast
food and you see a Taco Bell that's also a Long John
Silver's, right? Kind of that A&W root beer and
Burger King, it's the same thing.
I don't know if that example really exists, but hopefully you

(55:41):
know what I mean. So we parked at the wrong one,
but it's still the same giant property.
So I decided, OK, let me let me take some of my stuff up to the
room because JC texted me what room it was in.
I knew he was waiting on taking a celebratory drink.
I know he's tired. He wants to go to sleep at this
point. It was like 10:30.
Well, actually at this point is like 1115, I had to leave half

(56:03):
my shit still out in the parkinglot with the car with my car
keys. Why is that crazy?
Well, because you can't take thekey out of the the storage box,
camper, ski rack, whatever you're we're calling it.
If the the hinges aren't clickedall the way down, you just can't
take it out. And I couldn't get the top down
because the thing was kind of like slightly twisted on top of

(56:24):
the car because of because of all the issues I was having.
So I had to think, OK, is this going to be one of those stories
where I go inside and I come outand my car's stolen or someone
stole my key. I have to.
I can't think like that. I can't be negative.
I said all right, let me just goup to the room.
So I walked to the room, which again, we're at the opposite
hotel. So it's a 5 minute walk just to

(56:45):
get to the front door. Go to the room.
JC is on the phone with his wife.
I finally, he finally gets her off the phone and I'm sitting
here the whole time thinking I don't want to be rude.
My car, my keys, everything's still out there.
I only brought half my shit here.
I got a major problem I got to deal with because if I don't get
this fucking vacuum, if I don't get this this thing fixed, I

(57:06):
might be stuck in Twin Falls ID.Where do we get the liquor?
Let me back that up. You didn't ask what I'm going to
tell you Wes, of course, great guy as he is on the trip.
JC rated up to me and he goes, hey, do you have any whiskey in
the car? And I go, well, I have this
really cool bottle that I boughtand it's still sealed.
I just bought it because it's cool.
And so he said, I don't want to make you open up a bottle.

(57:26):
And I was thinking, I started thinking, OK, he wants to drink
something. So then I called Wes.
I go, hey, can you get together some like Idaho bourbons, you
know, maybe 7 devils or something for my buddy JC, who's
driving behind me. So we show up for dinner.
Wes has these three little glasscontainers with three different
bourbons in it West of the rescue.
So when we get to the hotel, that's what we ended up drinking

(57:48):
is a celebratory. So we get the two coffee cups
and then or JC is like, which one do you want?
I go, I don't care. They're yours.
They were a gift to you. So if you want to have one with
me, fine, but you certainly don't have to.
So we we drank one of them, I think straight from the barrel
or whatever. I go OK, I can't finish my
drink, which by the way, if you ever try to drink bourbon, just
bourbon on itself out of a coffee cup.

(58:09):
You think that a glencairn get you with the whiffs try to
inhale while you drink that. I bet you can't, especially if
it's a high proof something you just can't even breathe.
So anyway, I said I I got to be back.
I got to go fix this thing. Jesus is fine.
So I leave the hotel room. I'm in the parking lot for an
hour and a half trying to figurethis thing out.
I am dead to nuts thinking I am stuck in Twin Falls, ID I get on

(58:30):
the Sea Sucker website. No distribution anywhere around
me. And this town isn't a small
town. It's small, but it's big enough
to have a Home Depot and a Walmart and all that kind of
stuff. So it's not a micro sized town.
But I'm thinking Jesus, I didn'twant to ask JC for help.
His his shoulder is busted. I talked about that with Dre
earlier. He's had multiple surgeries.

(58:51):
You can't literally lift there that high.
He's older, he's tired, he's worn out.
We had a crazy weekend. He just wants to get home.
I want to get home too. It's now Sunday, well after
midnight. I'm got to be home by Monday
evening, but I brought my laptopbecause just in case I had to
work remotely more on that in ina little bit, but I didn't have

(59:12):
to use it fortunately. So I'm out in the parking lot
and I'm just thinking like freakman, I got to figure this shit
out. How do I do this?
How do I make this trip back home?
14 hour road trip or 14 hours left on this road trip with a
busted roof box. So I take everything out of the
roof box. At this point I already taken
the cups off the back of the carbecause 1 won't stick.

(59:35):
I I took it off just to make sure and just try to stick it to
the glass. Nothing, no suction, nothing.
So I stuffed the trunk and I stuffed the passenger seat, but
I still had shit that I just couldn't fit.
That's how I thought I was goingto be stuck.
JC didn't have Ruben, his NSX. It was packed as well.
And then I thought about it. I built this bracket to be
broken down. I had a bunch of quick release

(59:57):
things on it, like I said earlier, and all I needed was
another bar, which I had. I just wasn't thinking clearly.
It's the bar that goes underneath the box because you
have a bar on the front and you have a secondary bar.
So if I had a sedan, both bars will be on top of the car.
The reason I didn't have that onthe NSX is 2 things.
Number one, it looked cool the way I had it looks, you know,
looks #2. The box's instructions said try

(01:00:20):
not to mount the bars anywhere closer to each other on top of
the car, no closer than 29 inches, so at least 29 inches.
This was right around that. And so, you know, the the
distance on the top of the car is not that big.
So I figured, OK, let me think. Let me take the existing ones
that work like crazy and move them forward about a foot, and

(01:00:44):
then I could take that other barand take the suction cup off the
legs on the quick release system, which is what I did.
So I took that whole thing apart.
I put the One Cup that actually worked on the second bar on the
roof. I took the bad cup and I put it
on the bar as well. For instance of balance.
I pumped that thing down, put that heavy ass box, put it back

(01:01:04):
on the car, got the whole thing locked in place, got the whole
thing loaded and thank God, thank God it held.
And I was really nervous in the morning.
JC came through because I neededa strap like like, I don't know,
one of those quick those those crank straps or whatever because
I had all my podcast equipment and in in a big bag and that bag

(01:01:24):
weighed about 30 lbs. I needed to keep that bag on top
of the car. So on the inside of the box
there's a couple anchor points. So I ran the strap through that
and it held that and it and withthe lid closed, it prevented
that big huge bag that I had in there from sliding back, causing
unnecessary strain on the back of the box on top of the car.
That way it all stayed centered right on top of where I was

(01:01:45):
sitting. So the next day it was, you
know, a little unnerving becausethere's a new setup, but made it
all the way home. But we're going to back up just
a little bit because that was just one problem.
So we took 93 down Hwy. 93 down from Twin Falls, and you could
take that most of the way down to Vegas.

(01:02:05):
It's the most direct route. You get off of 93 at some point
and go through some other roads,some other highways, and you
rejoin 93 right around Vegas. We have 3/4 of a tank.
We see the truck stop. OK, we'll just push to the next
one. 3/4 of a tank. That's on an NSX.
It's about 150 miles on an NC 1.I had it on EV mode or a regular

(01:02:27):
sport mode, not sport plus, which I drive around in the city
all the time. Sport plus.
You can literally see the needlemoving if you just stare at it
for a while. So we're both driving and we're
ready. OK, we'll go to the next one.
How much gas you got left? I think you know where the story
is going. We're both are doing pretty
good. We go to cause usually what you,
you look and it's like OK, 80 miles to the next turn.

(01:02:51):
And usually at every intersection there's a gas
station, like every intersectionof a on a route.
We get to the next intersection,there is an old burnt up gas
station from some other shop. I look a little trash yard and
nothing. So like, all right, I get on
like, you know, I, I get on Siriand I look the nearest gas
station from there is another 55miles up the street.

(01:03:14):
At this point, we're both staring down the barrel of an
eighth of a tank. So I raid it with JC.
I go, hey, man, I see a Love's truck stop.
It's 50 something miles away. The NSX.
The NC one says I have 30 something miles left on this
tank. Now I know what you're saying.
Car manufacturers usually bake afew extra gallons in there past

(01:03:37):
the E indicator when you're out of gas.
True enough. I know the old NSX.
When that needle touches E, you still have about 3 gallons in
the tank. The new NSX, when it touches E,
I've heard of people running outof gas.
I've got this box on top of the car.
It's no longer pitch for downforce, which is the original
setup. Now it's a little bit up.

(01:03:59):
So now it's producing a little drag and it's killing my gas
mileage. So you know, I called John
Rivers, it's coming up on the next episode.
I texted John Akada, he didn't respond.
Another people person from the Acura brand HRC, both have
plenty experience in the seat ofan NSX.
The new NSX, I'm getting a little nervous, but I don't feel

(01:04:21):
that bad because I have JC behind me.
As long as one of us doesn't runout of gas, then they can keep
going and get bring back the other person some gas.
It would have been like a reallyexpensive 2 gallons because you
have to buy the the canister, which they're going to have for
sale hopefully at a truck stop, right?
And then you have to backtrack. You have to buy the gas and
backtrack at a real time sink. So we're driving down 93 and I'm

(01:04:45):
just watching this thing go from10 miles, 6 miles, 5 miles.
By this time I've slowed all theway down to like 37 miles an
hour. Cars are coming up behind us and
passing us because I'm what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to
trick the car to go into EV mode.
So you can coast an EV mode for a little bit, but as soon as it
starts to drain, then the engineturns back on.
It starts charging it. I don't know how much gas that

(01:05:07):
uses. So I'm kind of pacing it and
then it drops to 0. Now I'm starting to get nervous
and I told JC hey man, just go up ahead of me and if you see me
up there great if not I'll call you if you need to bring me gas.
But he stayed behind me because he's a patient.
He's AGJC is AG. So he stays behind me in the
yellow NSX and I am coasting. I have to drive about 5 miles on

(01:05:33):
0 estimated miles to go. We get to this tiny little town
called McGill, Nevada. We go through McGill and you
can't really see it from a distance.
You all you see is trees. So I'm thinking, OK, McGill
hopefully has a gas station because there's no way I'm going
an extra 12 miles to the Loves, which is at the next stop.

(01:05:53):
That's the one where I'm going to when I've been coasted on E
for four miles. So we pulled in McGill and we're
talking and it's like, OK, they have a church, that's a good
sign. OK, that's a good sign.
So if they have a church, great,they might have a gas station.
So roll a little bit further andwe see what looks like a gas
station on the right side, but the signs busted like it's old,

(01:06:14):
it's shut down. I'm like, oh Dang it.
At this point I've been rolling on 0.
But here's the thing. When you're pulling into the
town, God bless McGill, God bless these small towns.
The speed limit goes from 65 to 55 to 45 to 35 and eventually
25. And I'm like, hell yes, because
25 in an NC 1 NSX, you can coaston EV mode.

(01:06:36):
You see the RPMS go boop 0 motorcompletely shuts off and you can
see your electric thing slowly draining.
But it's good for like a mile ortwo, maybe even more at 25 mile
an hour on cruise control. So I'm cruising to town on EV
mode, thank God. And then they finally, we
finally see this one gas stationwith two pumps.

(01:06:57):
You have diesel and you have 87.I said this intersex is going to
eat some 87 octane. So thank God I put 2 gallons of
87 in there. And that was just enough to get
me to the loves 12 miles down the road.
So I ran out of gas almost. And I was nervous as hell
because here's the deal. By this time I'd already asked
Siri, hey, hey, Siri, how many gallons of, you know, blah,

(01:07:21):
blah, blah, blah. Does NC 1?
I just asked it showed up on my phone.
How many gallons does the NC 1, you know, NSX hold?
And it's like well the NC 1 NSX holds like I think she said 15.3
or 15.5 or whatever. So I put the 2 gallons in and
this little inmiguel when I get to Love's I put in 12 point like
3 gallons, which means I only had like 1/2 a gallon left.

(01:07:44):
There's no way. There's no way I would have made
it. Holy shit.
But you know, once we filled up there, the rest of the trip home
was event free. The road sucked.
We went to Vegas. We ended up going to Boulder
City, NV to get lunch. We decided to pick some random
BBQ place called Fox BBQ. My guess is going into this

(01:08:04):
little town would have been a total tourist trap.
The definition of a tourist traprestaurant means that they don't
care if their food's good or notbecause there's a constant flow
of customers. It could be the worst food.
I was prepared to eat some shitty ass BBQ.
I didn't care. We go to Fox BBQ.
Ends up being one of the top BBQspots according to the employees
in the entire United States. Guy Fieri did a diners Dr.

(01:08:26):
insurance and dives there. JC recognize it from TVI didn't
recognize it but the food was great and that was it.
From that point you're 5 hours from home and the road trip no
longer seemed that no longer seemed like it was going to take
forever. We went our separate ways just
outside or just north of the Phoenix area and he got home

(01:08:50):
safely. I got home safely.
I was tired as hell. I had really only got about 3
1/2 hours of sleep the night before.
A poor 3 1/2 hours of sleep because between working on the
car, doing that box, and then ofcourse, when I got back in the
room, of course, I finished my my celebratory drink while JC
was knocked out and then I was awake.
So I was kind of fiddled around for half an hour or so.

(01:09:12):
But awesome road trip along 4200and about 7 miles on the Type S,
which is pretty crazy even with that.
I don't think I'm in the top five of Type S mileage, but I'm
probably in the top ten. I know people that have like 100
miles in their Type S and that'sa 2022 model.
So you know what, I'd do it again.
I don't know. I don't know if I'd do the roof

(01:09:33):
box again. You know, that's not mine, it's
Will's. So I took it to his house.
I gave him the bars and everything.
Those are his cups. That that was his box on top.
Of course I cleaned it. But yeah, the next day I took it
over there and gave it to him and I'm waiting for the for the
PPF. My nose keeps itching.
I'm waiting for the PPF on top of the car to completely heal
because the suction cups made like these little Marks and I

(01:09:56):
think it's going to self heal. But I told JC I go this was
really cool. It made my car more unique at
the event. It broke a lot of necks on the
highway. It was very functional because I
had that thing full of stuff, had my wife's duffel bag up
there, had the podcast equipment, had The Dirty clothes
bag, had the cleaners. At one point I had my
rollerboard up there because I packed really well, but I said I

(01:10:18):
don't know if I would ever do that again.
But then I immediately started thinking of ways that I would
reengineer and make it better. And I've already got some ideas
in my head. So, you know, next year the NS
Expo's in Orlando. Seriously, Don, I'm going to
drive there. And then we already know the
following year it's going to be in Cleveland and I will probably
fly there as well. But it all depends on what
everyone else is doing. It all depends.
Maybe Acura has a new car by then.

(01:10:38):
I don't know. But yeah, that was that was my
road trip to NS Expo and some ofmy experiences at NS Expo.
And I didn't really talk about what we did at NS Expo, but, you
know, went to the Lemay Museum. We had an awesome cruise up the
coast, up the, the country countryside of of Washington.
At one point I hit a dead baby deer.

(01:10:59):
So it was already dead. I bottomed out the the I
bottomed out on the on the car trying to turn around and make
AU turn on a sharp driveway. Let's see, I got the car almost
sideways because there's a gravel pit coming up on a blind
corner. I didn't see.
And I was leading all the other cars.
I was designated as a drive leader, which sucks when you're
in a place you've never been andpeople are riding up your ass

(01:11:21):
like Jay Tuck was the same Jay Tuck that we were talking about
earlier. But it was a great event.
It's always a great event. And you know, it's it's one of
the things that I circle on my calendar every year is the dates
of NS Expo. So yeah, that was it.
Well, another month, another closing.
If you like what you heard todayor like what you watched today,

(01:11:42):
if you're watching this on YouTube or Spotify, make sure
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(01:12:04):
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(01:12:26):
Special thanks to Mark Stoneman,Catherine Cox City Ramos for
your grains by our Jones, Bo Jong Hels Domina, Drew Buckley,
Andre Mullins questions, comments or concerns?
Leave a comment below or e-mail the show info at hard parking.
Follow the show on Instagram at hard parking pod and make sure
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watching on YouTube and I will see you guys next week.
Now it's stripping time. Ain't nobody got time for that.

(01:12:49):
Shut up.

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Acura ZDX Killed After 2 Years: Epic NSX Road Trip to NSXPO w/ Gas Drama & Winery Fails!

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