New York Holiday 2012, Part 6 – Cars of NYC

Can’t believe its taken me this long to get the next part of my NYC photos up, but finally here it is. Since its been such a while I thought I’d be best to revise this with a bang – cars of New York City!

These guys were checking my camera out a lot after I took this photo haha!

This was stupidly loud, little Civic. And he was bombing it too, I don’t think it had any exhaust at all.

These two huge trucks were downtown near the 9/11 Memorial and the new tower complex

Little Mk1 Miata

And a Mk3

Drift damage?!

2 door Impreza, pretty rare over here! Probably an NA and/or Auto?

Nice RX8, saw this a couple times on the holiday!

This sounded incredible and was soooooo clean! No idea how it was so tidy!

Cool little Civic

Of course, the classic NYC taxi photos..

New York Holiday 2012, Part 5 – Staten Island

It seems like its taking forever to get through my NYC photos, but with so many taken and so much to write about it’s hard to put all this online whilst cracking out 10hr+ days at work!

Anyway, this will all the photos I’ve taken during our short visit over to Staten Island. Looking back I can’t believe how much we crammed into such a short time, but this was also on the same day as visiting the 9/11 Memorial, Brooklyn Bridge & China Town.

Staten Island is a few short miles south of Manhattan and a regular ferry service back & forth connects the two. The ferry is totally free and is for pedestrian’s only, and its run every half hour 24/7 which I find quite incredible. Anyway, we arrived at the Staten Island ferry port in Manhattan, just a few blocks from Wall St, jumped straight onto the ferry and we made our way to the back of it so I could snap shots of Manhattan before it disappeared into the mist & fog from this cold February morning.

Half way across and the Statue of Liberty came into shot, quite an impressive thing to see and especially since this ferry is completely free. You can get closer to it via the NYC Ferry tour, but that cost’s a fair bit of money and I didn’t think it was worth doing.

Approaching Staten Island, the other ferry going the other way passed us. Give’s you an idea of what we were on, quite a large ferry, and to think this is nearly always full up every half hour it runs!

Only took about 15 mins and we arrived in Staten Island, got off and we walked out of the ferry terminal into a very cold, wet & dull looking coastal path. Walking along however and we found this lovely memorial, again for the 9/11 attacks. This memorial was really quite special and like the garden over in Manhattan, really made an impact on both me & Soph.

All of the folk that died in the attacks that lived in Staten Island were on this, and each face profile was different as you can see – some wearing glasses, some with big hair and some bald.

Amazing way of remembering those who died, and this memorial also pointed directly to the spot of the twin towers – just a shame it wasn’t sunny.

Took the ferry back again and snapped this shot of these couple of average New Yorkers on their daily commute back to Manhattan Island.

Project 365:2012 – 11th April – 23rd April

11th April – Average day at work, but worked pretty late. Ended up eating there and everyone was treated to an Indian takeaway. Was lovely!

12th April – Sticker & decals in the office going on the glass partitions now and its all looking pretty pro now. We decided on having “The Lab” for our developer room!

13th April – Friday 13th! Went out to Portsmouth with the guys from work, had a couple of beers and a nice meal out. Didn’t stay out too late, but had a real good time.

14th April – Up early for me and went down to the alignment place again (Wheel Alignment Centre) to get my rear camber sorted after the bolt fell out a few weeks earlier. Drive’s great now!

15th April – Fairly chilled out Sunday, in the evening headed over to Ryan’s place to give him a hand with his car. Instead of helping I decided to polish my exhaust on my Almera, haha!

16th April – Back to work, another late. Ended up not eating till really late so had to settle for this bit of pie when I got home. Was really yummy though, probably because I was so starving!

17th April – Pre-birthday celebrations for Sophie, I treated her to a Chinese take-away and she got the Champagne out!

18th April – Sophie’s birthday! I had the day off work, her first present she opened was the one from my parents. A hand-made birthday cake in the same of a tea-pot. Amazing and really tasty too!

19th April – Bad day Had a small crash/dink in the Almera coming into work. Really annoyed with myself, but looking back it’s only minor damage and cost just £55 to replace the bits.

20th April – Better day – got a desk from eBay and my Dad collected it for me. Soooo much easier and nicer to use my laptop at home now, fits alright in our tiny flat too.

21st April – Went to a Dyno day with some of the guys off of 272 Heroes. Was a good day out and my car didn’t blow up, in the evening went out with friends for Soph’s bday, was a nice meal with great company

22nd April – Did odd-jobs round the flat in the morning then spent a couple hours building an Ikea wardrobe with Sophie’s brother. Wardrobe is really nice, then headed to her parents house with my parents as well for a spot of dinner & tea!

23rd April – Back to work again, average day at work but was greeted by this early this morning. Was pretty tasty but I couldn’t finish it!

First time ever on a dyno. Didn’t blow up.

Just got back from a dyno day. Initially I was disappointed with the results, but then realising that the figure they were showing was wheel-bhp, and secondly finding that I am only running at .6 bar for a very short part of the RPM range. Looks to be that I need a better boost controller!

211hp @ wheels, 251hp @ flywheel.

Was a fun day and luckily no one’s car’s blew up! I’ll be doing a write-up with more photos & videos shortly over at 272heroes.com

Project 365:2012 – March 29th – April 10th

March 29th – Nothing particularly special happened at work but we’re slowly getting ready for the big office move downstairs on Saturday. Had a nice couple of wraps for lunch and worked pretty late.

March 30th – Last day in the upstairs office until we move, treated to loads of cake today as it was someone’s birthday in the office. This cake was ridiculously nice and very rich!

March 31st – Saturday in the office, moved downstairs and got it almost all done in 1 day. Everyone was in and we had a good laugh, racing each other assembling desk’s and had a nice lunch with thanks to Billy.

April 1st – April Fools! Chilled out Sunday, was so tired from the long week I just had that only just about managed to get out of bed before me & Soph had some friends over. Mike & Danni come over early afternoon and we enjoyed dinner & a movie. I took this shot of our living room wall as Sophie put these up, looks good!

April 2nd – Monday and back to work, 1 day weekend for me! Although my new desk is absolutely amazing, really nice spot next to the window and using my Mac as a footrest!

April 3rd – Went out in the evening with some friends in the car’s. My car seemed to work pretty well even though I had my doubts about it. Took this shot after our drive in Tesco, was a fun night

April 4th – Average day at work, got myself a prezzie off eBay though, huge gaming mousemat! So, I won’t be gaming in the office, but it’s nice to use and I much prefer a larger mousemat.

April 5th – Thursday at work and my last day for the weekend, got off Good Friday & Easter Monday. They gave us all Easter eggs at work, pretty cool. And the new kitchen at work is finally getting there!

April 6th – Went to a car show up near Guildford with some friends, was a fairly unexpected & last-minute thing, but the weather was awesome and had a great time. This VW Beetle looked amazing as he scraped his way out of the field.

April 7th – After the other night driving around I found my car had developed some issues which were diff related, or so I thought. Spent most of the day at Nat’s unit fixing it, ended up being a knackered driveshaft and had it all sorted by the evening, with huge help!

April 8th – Woke up to find this given to me by my girlfriend! Amazing little easter basket she made up for me. Should last me a couple of days! Headed over to my parents in the afternoon which was nice.

April 9th – Had a bit of a lie-in and then decided to take Sophie to a pub somewhere. Also decided I’d drive my s13 there, so we drove to the New Forest and found a little pub to enjoy lunch.

April 10th – Back to work after a long 4-day break. The remains of the easter egg’s were lying around the office and Ben decided to smash one on his head, before he ate the whole thing!