#rcgypsy | THEQuagraine

Jun 02 2019

#rcgypsy, JQ Europe Tour, RC Tracks, RCGP

THEBlog is BACK, for 10 days – RCGP Prep Day 1

Today Max and I left for Austria. The RCGP of Europe, rounds 3 and 4 of RCGP, and the first of two rounds of RC2 Euro Series is at the awesome WMW Fehring facility. After moving back to Finland having lived in the Philippines for 8 months, it has been a busy couple of weeks getting situated, and organising the last things for the race. A nutty sleeping schedule this last week, going to bed at 7:30am, 4:30am, 4am and 2:30am, and getting up at 10am. I even managed to build a new car for myself! About time.

At the airport, thanks to my Finnair Bonus card we got priority access and treatment. Interestingly the priority security actually means they make it a priority to check all of your belongings with a “random priority wiping test”. The logistics and travel manager, yours truly, was able to save almost 300€ on the unicorn budget, buy booking a Sunday early morning flight, instead of a Monday flight as originally planned. This was not awesome for Max, who had his graduation the day before, and spent the night getting drunk and not having sexual intercourse with anyone. He made it home in one piece at around 5am, and after a quick shower and a power-nap on the living room chair, headed to the airport.

Max’s priority treatment begins….

In this state, the priority check was also not awesome for Max. His vacuum packed hand luggage exploded in the security officer lady’s face during this priority check. It took Max at least 20 minutes to re-pack the complete mess. He basically shut down the whole security check unit.

Max 15min later.

After finally getting on the plane, it was smooth sailing, as the packing expert promptly fell asleep and I listened to a good podcast by Steve Matthes where he interviewed Marc de Reuver. The smoothest part of the journey.

Car rental. The perpetual bane of my existence. This time I had managed to book a car, on an already over the limit credit card, which was interesting, but I’ll take it. Next they wanted a 1000€ security deposit, which was decidedly out of the question. After trying the remaining 2 cards I own in order to pay for the full coverage scam payment, we were forced to implement plan B. Max’s father’s card, for use in emergencies where I get killed in a freak accident and Max has to make his way home. This was close enough.

Then something amazing happened. We had a quick prayer sesh, and God himself made our last credit card work.

About a 2h drive later we arrived in Fehring. The Wendler brothers and their families were there, and we checked out the facility and unpacked the shipment from the Philippines. Everything is in order, in true Austrian style, and tomorrow we start hanging banners and putting up tents. It will be 3 days of preparation, and then Thursday is a media day! RCGP drivers and teams in attendance for the press. Time for bed. Need to catch up on sleep.

Here we go, heading south.

Media Room

RCGP Pits will be here. RC2 pits is under the black roof.

This infamous shipment made it

Can’t go to Austria and not have some Weaner Shitsnell

Time to relax. Fun fact. In 2012 I painted a Team Durango 2wd buggy bodyshell in that pool.

Oct 09 2018

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#Inspiration, #rcgypsy, #TBT, Other Stories, Thoughts on Work

THEQuagraine NOW

jq-mx

It’s been a while! I haven’t posted all year. For two years I posted something every single day, and got 300k views or so for the 2nd year. Not bad I thought, for only word of mouth “Have you read the blog?” marketing. Somehow it is still getting hits! People are still reading through 2 years worth of blogs!

I stopped the blog because I had “better” things to do. Back then I just made mention of the fact that you will see what I’m working on in the future. Well some things you can see now. Others you still don’t know about, maybe never will.

I still write some blogs, you can read them on RCMXONLINE

I’m planning to create a podcast, a much better guide, and setup app. Support that here.

As you may know, I am involved in creating RCGP. Check that out here.

And finally, I am doing Facebook Live’s now instead of the blog, add a notification so you know when I go live, or check the archive on Facebook here, or on youtube here. (They improve in the later episodes)

Finally finally about to release JQThreads this month! Already put a roof on one school in Mozambique, and supporting 10 students there each month. And we don’t even have a webshop yet. A lot going on, and closer than ever for it all paying off.

May God beLess!

Jan 04 2018

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#Inspiration, #rcgypsy, Thoughts on Work

I Have Made It Big Time – About Time

I can now quit my side gig!

It has finally happened. I made the New York Times Best Seller list. I am now a journalist, an author. I am a bloody George Orwell, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, I am William Shakespeare, I am Malcolm Gladwell. After writing billions of words I have been contacted by an RC website, and asked to write for them, on a weekly basis, and I of course said “it’s about time”!

So there you have it, professional author from now on. I have no idea what will happen to this blog. Maybe, eventually when they start censoring me, I post the uncensored versions here. Advertiser dollars rule, right? Let’s see how it goes. I’ll do my best.

You need to check it out tomorrow. I’ll post a link tomorrow.

GOD BeLESS!

Nov 26 2017

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#rcgypsy, #THETourist, JQ South America Tour, Race Reports

Bolivia – Where Chickens Make You Gay

I said I was going to post a blog every Wednesday. Well I fucked that all up didn’t I. One blog down and then I miss a week. Well two, because today is Thursday. (and it finally went up Saturday night, this isn’t easy) You see it’s hard to find the time and energy to create these masterpieces while exploring 5 new countries in 3 weeks, and running a company. Add to that 3rd world internet. How I managed to write a blog every single day for over a year beats me. That’s completely insane!

Anyway, Bolivia. First a trivia question. What’s the capital of Bolivia? (This question is for the non-Americans reading this obviously, as the American readers are still coming to terms with the fact that Bolivia is a country that actually exists.)

La Paz right? WRONG! It’s Sucre. How this is possible I do not know. How do you make the whole world (well except America) believe that La Paz is your capital when it’s actually some other place no one has ever heard of? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that half the population is constantly high? Really high! I mean 12 000ft high, 3600m. That’s so high that our JQRacing driver Jorge Zamora who is a commercial airline pilot told us sometimes he likes to mess around and land in La Paz by reducing altitude too much before La Paz, and then having to actually fly up to be able to land. What worries me is these commercial airline pilots that like to “play around”.

Anyway, the super high altitude has a couple of major flaws:

Now I could have swore that our hotel room didn’t have any gym equipment in it when I went to bed, but in the morning I woke up to Keenan K White working out on a treadmill. That’s what it sounded like. Heavy breathing, swearing, shuffling around. Turns out all he was doing was walking to the bathroom and back, packing his suitcase, and trying not to die. Apparently it’s almost impossible to breath at this ridiculous altitude.
It is also impossible for our engines to breath. There is almost no power at this altitude. It’s ridiculous. The power is severely limited, the motor’s don’t rev high at all. You have to experience it to believe it. The things I did to at least make my car driveable:

Removed the venturi completely.
Removed 0.1mm head shims.
Ran a 50 main gear, I would have run a 12t clutchbell, but didn’t have one.
Ran an aggressive setting on a REDS clutch.
Ran a very short low end needle to increase low end power.
I would have needed fuel with higher nitro content also.

The reason for me and Keenan being in Bolivia, was our Latin America Tour, spanning Bolivia, Peru, Argentina, Chile and Colombia. We would end the tour with the roughest and most dangerous country of them all, South Carolina, for the Fall Brawl. So Bolivia was step 1.

Basically our visit lasted 5 days, landed in La Paz, tried not to die, drove for 6 hours or so to Cochabamba, traveled back in time and checked into our hotel from the late 1800s, raced for 2 days, then drove back, checked into a hotel close to the bus terminal in order to take a 11h bus ride to Chile the following morning. Below you can see and read about the highlights of our journey.

As we set off from Miami, Keenan was immediately racially profiled. Hilarious.

The journey then began with a seatbelt extension.

LaPaz airport. BE in there.

BLACK Edition Promotion everywhere

Ok, this is definitely not Miami anymore.

Look at THAT. Cable car ride from Alto to LaPaz. Something else. I want to see Danny MacAskill navigate Alto roofs.

God Bless Bolivia – Team JQ has arrived.

Our Bolivian Distributor took us to their home track up in the mountains!

Very nice track, only problem, lack of power!

A bunch of drivers showed up with JQ BLACK Editions, and JQ RTRs!

Next morning we woke up early, and drove 6 hours or more to Cochabamba with the power of cocaine tea.

Cochabamba was a bit lower than LaPaz, so a bit better power, but still terrible

After a long drive through the mountains we arrived at the track for the race.

Bit of an evening snack at the race! Goddamn!

Team shirts were handed out. We need all our teams to look good!

Andres Claros had a cool ride. Back to the future

The driver stand was a bit small. Needed an extension 🙂

This huge double proved to be my downfall in the main. I landed on a crashed car and my engine started running really weird, and died 2 corners later. Then it wouldn’t run. To this day I don’t know what happened.

Winner winner chicken dinner. On the left Jorge Chacon who took the win, and on the right Carlos Guerra who finished 3rd. Jorge is an up and coming racer who took his first win with a JQ, and Carlos is a veteran RC racer. A multiple Bolivian mountain bike champion, he runs a MBK store, and works as a mechanic on bikes. Great job to these guys!

Our Bolvian team is on point! Left to Right, Javier “Captain Slow” Rivera, nickname from real car driving. Jorge “Winner” Chacon, Javier “Rocky” Barros, JQ, Carlos “MTB” Guerra, Bryan “THEBoss” Bohrt, Keenan “K(unt)” White, Jorge “THEPilot” Zamora.

Preparing to go home, Bolivian style. TRANQUILOOOO!

The look of death. Our Team Last Resort driver who drove us back home was on another level. He clearly had no fucks left to give, and we almost died multiple times. I tried to explain to him why there were so many crosses on the side of the road, but he didn’t speak any ingles.

Back in LaPaz we stayed in a hotel where they shot a SAW movie. It was close to the bus station and it was Keenans first serious bad choice of the trip. Here I’m charging my phone. So awesome.

As if that wasn’t enough, this is the electrocution kit add on to the shower. Did it work, fuck no. Only cold water, well except for 3 seconds of luke warm water about 3 minutes in.

This breakfast hot pocket made things a lot better. So good. Saltenas I think they are called.

Finally on the bus with this lazy git, and on to Peru, via Chile.

And as for Chickens making you gay, I asked for an interesting fact about Bolivia for my blog, and the best story we heard was about Bolivia’s nutty president Evo Morales who said that eating chicken makes you gay. As a result chicken sales plummeted.

Jul 16 2017

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#Inspiration, #rcgypsy, #WeAreAE, 10th Scale Stuff

#WeAreAE #IamJQ

From a B3 back in the early 2000s to a B6D in 2017!

When I first started racing there were a few brands that stood out thanks to their great products and race success. Team Associated was one of them. The first 1:10th scale buggy I owned was an AE B3, and I have actually always really enjoyed 1:10th scale offroad, but it has just never been my focus.

However, as I only have a few years left in racing, I wanted to take full advantage of them, and have fun, and hopefully some success, racing the best 10th scales on the market. Naturally I contacted Brent Thielke, the Team Manager at AE. I announced that I am available and willing to join the AE team for 10th scale, and sent him my bank info for my paychecks. Brent responded by sending me a Richard Saxton “How To” dvd, and a link to amain.com. He also told me that if I do run AE I should under no circumstances ever wear an AE shirt. He said something about that being bad for AE’s image. I didn’t quite understand what he meant. Strange guy.

Richard Saxton has become a living meme in Finland. A term was coined after him, a translation being “Saxtoning”, or “to Saxton”. It basically means leaning forward in an approximately 30 degree angle, and clapping slowly with exaggerated hand movements, as a car goes by. It also includes towel waving. After discovering this dvd, it is clear that Saxton has been a living meme for a long time.

Anyway, I got myself some AE cars, and was so stoked. Now I would be just as fast as my heroes Ryan Cavalieri and Neil Cragg. Actually one other reason I wanted to run AE was that I wanted to be team mates with the Craggs, as they are good people. The only way to do that is to run AE, as that’s all Neil has ever, and will ever run.

After watching Saxton’s how to video I was quite confident going into my first race with my AE buggies, the Euros warm up. Both cars were fresh, never been run. In the end I managed to make both mains, and actually finished top Associated in 2wd! How you like them apples Brent?

All joking aside, I’m looking forward to the Euros that start tomorrow, and I’ll be keeping you up to date with daily reports of some sort. Let’s see how inspired I feel, and if we can figure out the wifi.

Brent didn’t say anything about stickers! Btw Brent, paypal works too.

May 25 2017

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#rcgypsy, #THETourist

The $4 Haircut

Keenan K White has been saying I need to get a DR style haircut. It was the last thing that needed to be done, it was to be the final piece of the real Dominican experience.

Keenan went first. He went for a way too bald look. Things were getting tense.

After Keenan gave instructions in Spanish and we started, I immediately sensed that this may end badly.

After a while things began looking more promising.

The end result was perfect.

I will definitely take this hairstyle back to Europe, and work hard to make it a hit in Sweden, Germany, Austria and Italy, during my road trip.

I forgot this guys name, but he ran the barber shop, a 1x2meter small shop on the side of the road in the village that I forgot to take a picture of. Lowkey to say the least, and $4. Perfect for my budget. Keenan you are the best. If you are ever in that village, go and see him.

Keenan sending me back to Santo Domingo. He may look like he is just sitting there posing, but in reality his battery went flat in his truck and he was stuck.

Just kidding, it died at the barber shop.

May 22 2017

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#rcgypsy, #THETourist, JQ THE World Tour, Race Reports, Travel Stories

Flamethrowers, Guitar Solos & Fat Whips

Yes we had flames and live guitar solos during the main…..

“It’s already 12 o’clock!” -David Infante

I threw some fat whips and then this happened.

The LosCocos team was back together. No coconuts this time!

In 2WD truck, I had to race the last main with one hand, and drink a 1 liter beer during the race. I obviously accepted the challenge, and won the race!

Dominican Ogio Bag

Finally, if you ever wondered what would happen if you hit a can of paint at full speed. This is what would happen. #yellowedition

Now it’s time to have my Dominican Birthday Party. I always miss my birthday because I am racing. I told the guys, that I’ll do the race, as my birthday present :-). More of a race report tomorrow. I’m out.

May 19 2017

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#Inspiration, #rcgypsy, #THETourist, JQ THE World Tour, Thoughts on Work

Mobile Office

At times I feel like I totally Forrest Gump my way through life, at other times I feel like I have a few solid ideas, set in stone, that I made up my mind about, and I have just figured out everything around them. As it turns out, I somehow figured out the modern business style, flexible, super low overhead, outsourcing what isn’t vital, and that has lead to a mobile office. I can be wherever I want, whenever I want, and I can run my business. The only requirement I have, is the need to get online. I can go wherever I want for a year, and as long as they have wifi, I can run the business. It might not be as easy, or as comfortable, but it’s possible. I like the freedom. So when the invitation to the Dominican Republic came in, I didn’t need to organise a holiday, or figure out work, I just said “I’ll be there.”