August and September from Greg and Amy

Hello family!!!

Time has flown by and I haven't posted anything on the Avacado for quite some time sooooo.......following are a few quick updates and pictures from Amy and I for August and September !

On August 14th.....Amy and I celebrated our 38th wedding anniversary.....and we are even more in love now than we were so many many years ago.

On August 26th.....Raquel and I celebrated our birthdays surrounded by our loved ones!!!!

I went elk hunting (archery) the first week of September......didn't get an elk but I did catch the largest trout I've ever caught in Colorado.....about 22 inches long and over 3.5 pounds.

view from the "elk camp" towards the Flattops Wilderness area

On September 18th Joey and Josh ran in the Buenva Vista Half marathon. Amy and I went up to Salida on Thursday....Joe, Raquel, and Josh came up Friday afternoon and joined us for dinner...and Joey and Julie arrived Friday evening.

It was great fun spending time together in Salida and Buena Vista....and especially watching the Morales boys run in the marathon.....they were AWESOME!!!!

Finally, these past few days were the last days of summer....and we had typical Colorado weather at our house......sun/hot, rain/wet, snow/cold.....all within 24 hours...but yesterday...during the rain....there was the most beautiful rainbow in our backyard....so I took some pictures which I thought were so pretty that I wanted to share a few images....I hope you like them!

Love,

Greg and Amy

Cutest Dog Competition

August 26th at Bandimere Speedway

These videos were taken at Bandemire Speedway in Morrison, CO by my friend David Simpson. This is a 1/4 mile drag strip. During the drag season, Colorado State Patrol holds a "Test and Tech" night every Wednesday. They do this so that when people want to go fast they will take it to the track rather than race on the streets. Anyone can run their car there, whether it's a daily driver or an all-out race car. It is pretty much random who you will line up with because this is just a test night and not an actual competition. The only goal on test night is to make the fastest pass possible. Adjustments are made (via laptop and tuning software in my case) between each pass in an effort to get a faster time. My 2 fastest runs were 12.72 @ 110 mph and 12.77 @ 113 mph. This means from a dead stop to over 110 mph in under 13 seconds, which is pretty insane for a street driven car (especially a 4 cylinder).

The car is a 1991 Mitsubishi Eclipse Turbo all wheel drive. I've had this car for 7 years and gone through 2 engines. This time I decided to go all out and build a super-strong engine that will be able to handle the abuse. I literally removed, rebuilt, and reinstalled this engine myself without a helping hand. This included removing the engine, disassembling and inspecting it, having the block machined, and then blue printing (checking measurements) and reassembling it with brand new forged internals, and finally reinstalling it in the vehicle. This engine is capable of supporting 650 horsepower, but with my current turbo and fuel system it's only dealing with around 375 to 400 horsepower at the moment. My goal the entire time I've had this vehicle has been to make passes faster than 12.9. Now that I've accomplished this, I am aiming for 11s and hopefully sponsors and competitions at some point. The first video is a 13.3, the second a 13.2, and the third a 12.72 @ 110 mph, my quickest run ever. In both of the first two videos I either messed up the launch, or missed a gear. Thanks for looking! Alex

Vote For Che

Familia and Friends,

I've entered Che in The Cutest Dog Contest and I'm hoping you'll vote for him. Some of you may know that I foster dogs through Colorado Furbabies and to this date have loved up, nursed back to health and fed 39 precious souls. Every week Colorado Furbabies gets a call/email from surrounding shelters, asking how many lives we can save, our volunteers offer their homes to however many they can accomodate, and the rest get euthanized. Since I can't sleep imagining the horror they go through, I take in a lot of dogs. Che and his two sibblings came in very bad shape, were hospitalized and almost died costing CFB thousands of dollars. When they came back to my home I had to give them all kinds of meds and a nebulizer treatment 3 times a day. My kids and I all fell in love with the litter, but Jessi decided to adopt Che. Che has been living with me since he was 8 weeks old and he is a lover! One afternoon I let the pups lick my paella pot clean after preparing them a nutritious soy dinner, Che climbed into the pot and took a nap. Here is the photo. If you'd like to show your support I would appreciate it. We have the opportunity to win cash prizes which will help save even more lives. You can vote once every 24 hours. Just click and register to vote at the following link: http://www.cutestdogcompetition.com/vote.cfm?h=8A4ACBDE354EFD01E6884AF3285FEE3E Please pass it on.

Thank you!

Love,

Susy

Rob Hammer Part II

Hey Guys,

More photos. Totally different look this time. We were up at 4:00 AM to get the at the right angle but still ended up racing for time..

Awesome...

http://robhammerphotography.blogspot.com/