Tuesday was tech inspection. Not much to do there, pull the car out, grab the gear and go over to get teched. passed with flying colors...or at least the car did, more on that later. After, tech I hitched a ride with Doug and Angelica to go recce the mountain. They were getting their pace notes in order and I wanted to go with them to check out the mountain as well as learn from the masters! To get ready for this thing I had played a lot of the video game "Dirt". I thought it might help me with learning the course. Starting up the hill I recognized the turns. So far so good. there was a bit more dirt road on the bottom section than I thought, worries me because I do not have any special tires for this. I am using Kumho race tires that have a very low tread wear, which is good, but not too much of a groove, which is bad for dirt. They are also very large tires. This might not be a problem if I groove them tomorrow after practice. But I digress, so we are heading up the hill, no problem. We get to the tree line, this is where things begin to get a bit more "hairy". The middle section is paved, but there are no guardrails. this means that we are on switchbacks going up the side of the mountain with quite a drop off the side. Then, at about 11,000 ft it turns to all dirt. This is a new experience for me, I have never had the pleasure of racing on the dirt. I know the general philosophy of drifting, I have drifted in snow and dirt before, but I have never had the experience above 10,000 ft on a road that is much thinner than what it looks like in the video game. Anyway, we drive all the way up and back, the whole time we are telling ourselves to not look over the edge....