From China with Love

[Canadian Turbo]

Re: From China with Love

Great first installment Jerry! Cannon Beach is where Goonies was filmed, I spent a week there once upon a time (closer to being a Goonie than an adult, time).

[CGDoig]

Re: From China with Love

Wow very inspiring. One of my bucket list items is to fly to California to purchase a car and drive it back the same route you're taking. Looks absolutely stunning. Keep em coming.

[Danaldson]

Re: From China with Love

looks great jerry! nice pics

[kujiwara]

Re: From China with Love

Thanks guys! I'll try to update after Das Volks tmr

[witchcraftz]

Re: From China with Love

Looks like it's a great trip. Nice pictures and looking forward to the next installment!

[kujiwara]

Short Stay at San Francisco and Santa Cruz

The third day started early for us, we drove through some fast yet twisty roads and arrived at the well-known Shrine Drive Thru tree and drove the Jetta through it three times, lip and tailpipe scraped every time. There's not to much to say about it the pictures should speak for themselves.











Looking from the inside of the tree up reveals a natural sunroof.









There are also some random funky looking tree houses..








Random shot on the US101 highway on our way to San Francisco.









A few hours later we arrived in San Francisco welcomed by the the notorious Bay Area fog.











The buildings in San Francisco is a quite different style from what I imagined, the older buildings are somewhat European and South American. The hills are too steep for my likings, there is a 4 way stop at every intersection for the clutch to burn and tires to chirp.










On the fourth day we explored the waterfront and business districts on foot since the city is so cramped and expensive to park around. We didn't bring our camera for most of the time since we didn't want to get robbed and no surprise there were homeless people every corner(some were quite mean).

















Later that day we decided to drive up the hills on the other side of the bay since the 4th of July fireworks are displayed from the waterfront piers in San Francisco. However, the fog appeared minutes before the fireworks and most of the fireworks became colourful fog. Towards the end of the fireworks the fog dissipated and I managed to capture a few somewhat decent shots.
















San Francisco is a fast paced city with high accommodation costs, and our stay there quickly came to an end. On the last day we took a tour around the bay for a close look at alcatraz. This place stinks from a mile away!














After lunch on the last day we headed down to Santa Cruz where we met an awesome fellow Jetta fanatic(has a mk4,5 and 6.5!) who goes by the name of skellington on instagram, he drove two hours from Stockton with his girlfriend to meet us(and the car) and showed us around the beaches and Santa Cruz boardwalk. I didn't bring my camera to the boardwalk since there were many rides, but it was basically an amusement park by the beach with outdoor movie at night on the beach, it was a great time. We were also told by our friends that the roller coaster appeared in many famous movies such as Final Destination.









There weren't too much to see at Santa Cruz and we didn't take as many photos during these past few days because we were too busy with all the fun. However on the next part where we head to LA the Jetta really got enjoy itself along with lots of car photos.

[Ur0Drivr]

Re: From China with Love

Looks like it's been a great trip Jerry!!!

[kujiwara]

California Dream

After meeting our friends at Santa Cruz we headed straight to LA, but staying at Santa Cruz was not just for the beaches, it is because we wanted to checkout the famous Mazda Laguna Seca Raceway an hour south of Santa Cruz. The raceway was being prepped for a world class super bike race for the week and we sneaked into the pits and watched the teams and track maintenance crew prep. It was a very serious environment unlike the casual amateur track days and autocross events I'm used to.




The straight by the start/finish line





The Mazda sponsored vehicles.

















The hill leading to the corkscrew





After the corkscrew there was a huge Seat banner I had to take a photo by it.






After a quick visit to Laguna Seca we kept driving on US101 and during a quick pitstop by the ocean I thought that it would be really cool if drive on sand, and to our surprise there are only 4 beaches in California that allow road vehicles to drive on, and we've passed 3 of them already, however the fourth one is right on the way. Three hours later after driving past countless Mexican farms through the desert, the route took us by the ocean again, and there we stopped by our second destination of the day, Pismo beach. After convincing the guard that my "low to the ground vehicle" won't get stuck on the beach and paying $7.50 we are driving on the beach! It was a great time cruising down the 10mile or so beach with various jeeps and trucks, it is probably the most relaxing drive I've ever had. And as I parked the car next to the waters I took some "stancenation" style photos then enjoyed a short walk down the beach.



























We didn't have too much time to spend at the beach, but it was an awesome experience nonetheless, we drove down the US101 and arrived near Malibu California for dinner at a not so ordinary restaurant. It was the Neptune's nest, where numerous movies scenes were shot at, including the shrimp scene, AKA where Brian confronted Dom about his source of income after racing the Ferrari 355(more than you can afford pal) in Fast and Furious 1. It was a very casual place with very good seafood, after talking to the owner of the restaurant about our trip he let us sit at the exact table where Dom and Brian sat at 17 years ago! I was super happy about it, under the gorgeous California sunset we watched the shrimp scene while eating the same food the two legends had back in the day, it couldn't get any better.








We decided to stay the night at Thousand Oaks CA which is 40min away from Malibu and requires us to drive straight through the Mulholland Canyon and that means Mulholland Highway! The drive amazing, it was very twisty and technical like and reminded of of NFS Carbon Canyon (i guess that's where the game took place?). When we got close to Thousand Oaks we had to take Canyon freeway CA23, and it was basically a roller coaster ride, the speed limit was 30mph and that was more than enough, the 12.7 miles of continuous corners were so tight, they were definitely tighter than most touge routes in Japan!

This photo was shot the morning after when we drove the entire Mulholland highway to get to Universal Studios in Hollywood.







All of this happened in one day, three destinations in 600 adventurous miles, a car guy's dream is fulfilled, i guess it was my California dream!



We rented a place near Venice beach for a week and explored LA including the ubertourist spots such as Universal, Disneyland, California adventures, Petersen auto museum, shopping centres, and of course lots of cheap and expensive yummy food and beautiful beaches. We didn't take any proper photos while we were at LA, it was too busy, too busy of a good time, sometimes it's nice to leave the camera behind and just enjoy.


Next up, the road to hell, Route 66.

[witchcraftz]

Re: From China with Love

Looks like so much fun. You might need a vacation from your vacation when you get back!

[kujiwara]

Re: From China with Love

Looks like so much fun. You might need a vacation from your vacation when you get back!

Haha thanks! I guess it's called going back to school and doing assignments

[Ponto]

Re: From China with Love

Loving the road trip pictures, man I miss doing that every few months to Van lol.

[kujiwara]

From the Desert to the Salt Flats

After spending quite some time in LA we decide to take the good old Route 66 to Vegas. The we would take the deserted single lane highway thru the desert then cross through the Mojave desert. The roads were empty, but the scenery was constantly changing and we had lots to see. The 8 hour journey took much longer than the normal interstate highway, but there were much more to experience. The car also overheated 3 times as we got closer to the Mojave desert and Vegas, 47*c ambient temperature is simply too much for the cooling system.






Just outside of Barstow we decided to try to go to AREA 51 which didn't happen since the washing boardlike dirt road was way too painful to drive on after just 5 of 13 miles.










Back on to the deserted Route 66.







Any photo in the desert looks like a professional photo.












A lot of the road signs were painted on the ground to prevent theft.








Through the Mojave reserve.











One photo in Vegas.







After spending a two nights in sin city we headed towards the Bonneville Salt Flats 7 hours away and took some awesome photo in this crazy huge dried lake. The background is so simple yet gorgeous.








VW Canada also posted this photo of my trip on their social media.

















And of course there were lots of drifting on the lake.









We spent the night at SLC then went to West Yellowstone where we would spend a night in a tent for the price of a set of used 1552s... It was a great camping like experience, we talked to tourists from around the world while eating smores and playing games by the camp fire as one of the most beautiful sunsets I've seen appeared.























The next day we drove through Yellowstone national park, and spent some time looking around while slowly making our way to Helena MT where we would spend our last night in the states before heading back to Calgary.



















Road trips are full of surprises, if you ever have the time to go on a long trip to anywhere, take a car and drive to wherever, you don't have to take the shortest route, take the route that you think will be the most fun and take very many stops, because thats one of the best ways to discover and enjoy.

The 17 day trip passed by quickly, we visited all kinds of awesome natural and manmade attractions, there were so much to see out there and we could only capture so much with the camera, but we would never forget what we've seen and experienced during this trip. We would love to go back again to see more places that we didn't have time to in the future, and perhaps even a transamerica trip!

[Ur0Drivr]

Re: From China with Love

Awesome buddy!

[CGDoig]

Re: From China with Love

Awesome, simply awesome.

[kujiwara]

2016-2017 Mods Summary

Apart from making the car durable for the road trip, for the past year or so a lot of detail mods happened, also made the car more track happy with new race tires etc. The car is currently doing low 1:21s(with street pads that almost killed me) at mission raceway's road course which is very fast for the car, NA FRS' and turbo MR2s on same tires run 1-2s slower, a professional driven race prepped civic EK with type R swap typically runs this time, 370hp B5 S5 on hoosiers slicks run 1:24, stripped E92 M3 on hoosier slicks run 1:17, my friend's new M3 with $8k race suspension and $6k wheel setup runs 1:20(before mods was 1:23). The plan is getting more camber up front and proper race pads hopefully I can beat his M3.



Here's a list of the stuff I put in and future mods that will happen over the coming winter.



Exterior:

Custom Kuji/GLI32 headlights
Shaved antenna and wrapped roof
Kujiline headlight shroud



Suspension:

S3 strut brace
Installing R32 control arms and spindles over winter
Spun the coils to the very last perch with camber drop plates
New Hawk HPS pads all around, Spec 37 curved vane rotors, extra set of DTC60 pads for race track, Motul 600 fluid


Engine:

Repainted everything in the bay properly
Usual maintenance stuff
Akrapovic exhaust coming soon



Interior:

Custom Kujiline GLI32 seats in Mk7 Gte plaid
Kuji/32 Mk7 R/ Mk4 GLi shifter
Carbon many things if I have time
New steering wheel going in hopefully




Wheels & tires:

Street: BBS Japan center caps in Blue, replaced RE11s with CSC5P and now it rides much more comfy and quieter
Track: Sparco terra 16x7 with 245/45R16 Nitto NT01




Pictures:







And a few more of my favourite photos from the past year: