So tonight is Midnight Madness at Gateway International Raceway in Granite City and I am going. I will be running my car on the 1/4^th mile, and am looking forward to seeing how it does. I am leaving all of the stereo equipment in so I can get some accurate times for my cars normal state.

I’m not expecting much, more just doing it to have fun. I will be sure to post up scans of my timeslips, and am going to ask Cassidy to bring the digital camcorder to get some video as well. I will either update this post, or add another one sometime this weekend with how it was, and the slips/videos.

For more information on midnight madness, check out the Midnight Madness page on the Gateway Raceway Website.

So Cassidy and I were on the way to Wal-mart Saturday night coming up a rather dark stretch of road when a huge raccoon ran across the road about 50 feet ahead. He made it to the middle of the second lane (I was in the one closest to the curb) as I was slowing down to avoid him, when all of a sudden, he changed his mind. He darted back towards the side of the road and right in the front of my car. I heard a loud THUMP, glass shattering, and immediately knew that the light was gone.

Once I made it to the closest gas station I got out and looked underneath the car to find the ends on each of the front light still attached, but nothing between them. Luckily all of the other lights were still attached and working fine. A bunch of the clips for the bottom half of the bumper had come undone as well, so I popped those in. There is no damage to the car, so I am thankful for that. However, I really hope that raccoon is still lying there suffering with a glass shard in his eye for busting up my light.

Welcome to Kia Tuner. My name is Ryan and I will be your host. While this blog will mainly be dedicated to talking about my car and its progression from a grocery getter to whatever it becomes, I will also be sharing my thoughts and opinions on other subjects.

A little about myself, and the car…. I am 22 years old and live in the St. Louis area working as an Engineer for a respectable IT company. I bought my “Tropical Red” 2008 Kia Rio5 SX in September of ’08 with only 7 miles on it. I had always been skeptical of Kia’s because of the things I had heard about their reliability and quality back in the early 2000′s, but after doing some research, and some pushing by my fiance (because she thought it was “cute”), I decided to take one for a test drive. I immediately fell in love with the car and within a few hours I was saying good-bye to my ’95 Ford Escort Wagon, and leaving the lot in my brand new Rio5.

This is my first blog, and also my first time working with Word Press, so be patient as I learn the in’s and out’s of this software, as well as get into the habit of blogging.