Before any of us left for Tour, we were worried. The oncoming threat and aftermath of an already devastating hurricane, an ever-increasing cost of gas, and that feeling of being unprepared loomed over our heads. You could compare our nervousness to that of visiting your dentist for a check-up; get there, take the pain and get the hell out. As long as the Tour ran smoothly until we reached Atlanta, we would be cool. We could relax. We would party. Funny, shaky situations always have a funny way of working themselves out.
For the North leg regulars, Nads and Jonny, our flight in was a typical way to get started. Leave LA before the sun rises and land when the sun's already set. Running on fumes is second nature for us and we had little time to spare before making our way over to the kick-off party, which was originally to be hosted at Wheel Pros in Jessup, Maryland, then relocated to a bigger venue, thanks to George Makris from Hook-It-Up Performance (www.teamhookitup.com), at the Joppatown Plaza just a couple miles down the road. Our small gathering grew quickly as the lot filled with faces we've grown to love and some we'd like to get to know more the next time around. NOS High Performance Energy Drink, which decided to join this year's madness as the official drink of the 2005 Tour, not only delivered liquid shazam! to the masses, but also debuted its WRX giveaway car (see page 90 for the full feature and visit www.drinkNOS.com for details on how you can get in it to win it), a fully stocked NOS drink carrier and high performance machine that took no shame in lighting up the roads all the way down to Hotlanta. EA Games, also part of Tour '05's support team, set up its latest Need for Speed venture, Most Wanted, on the brand new Xbox, where you not only had a chance to play the game prior to its street release, but anyone who could beat eurotuner's Greg "No, I don't speak American" Emmerson's laptime could cash in for a free tank of gas; it would be just one of many free giveaways we'd be up for all week. Wheel Pros co-hosted a car show with Enkei, then awarded Ernie Manansala a free set of wheels for his show-winning efforts, a fully decked-out Hyundai Tiburon. We closed out the night by making our way over to the local college hot spots in Towson where we suddenly felt like really old, perverted guys who had nothing better to do than stare at and harass unsuspecting young lasses (we're talking to you, Nads - staff).
Day 1
We awoke to the sounds of a gentle pitter patter, an almost calming alarm that was quite the opposite of the previous night's hijinx. And then we noticed a third person in our party. Who was this Jack Tripper to our Janet and Chrissy, and more importantly, how long did it take him to grow his afro? Ah, the stranger we found ourselves spooning with uncomfortably was Matt Kelly, one of our Tour homies, but not in "that" way. You see, Matt gave us this great sob story about how he was going to sleep in his car, so we took pity and let him crash with us. This excuse will most likely not work for you in the future unless you are Matt (and Matt, please keep the spooning part to yourself) or are a very attractive young lass who likes to be harassed by really old and perverted guys.