Hi everyone. My name is Joe (hi Joe). I grew up in Southern NH and moved to the San Francisco/Bay area over 7 years ago and I've now returned and I'm bringing my business with me. If any of you are getting married and need a photographer give me a shout. http://www.symphonyphoto.com

I used to be active on the Bay Area forum although I haven't spent much time on the forums for the past year. Anyhow I just wanted to stop in, say hi and ask a few questions.

The AutoX scene - do you need to be an SCCA member in the New England region to participate? In the San Francisco region we eventually had to require it because the events routinely attracted more than 300 people.

How many people show up at the typical New England event and how many runs do you get? How many participants generally show up for the STX class? From looking at a few of the results lists I'm guessing that the schedule is a little more relaxed in the New England area than it is int he SF/Bay Area. I've chaired a few of the events in the SF/Bay Area and the best way I can describe it is as organized chaos.

Mechanics... can anyone recommend a good independant mechanic (ideally in the Manchester/Salem area but I figure I'm probably going to have to head down to the Boston area on that one)? I have the cold fuel leak problem. I could probably fix it myself but I need to have an up pipe swapped out as well. I've done that once before and it's a royal PITA. I figure I'll kill two birds with one stone seeing as I understand fixing the cold fuel leak requires the disassembly of the turbo anyway. Ideally I'd like to find a shop that specializes in Scoobies and I figured you folks will know who's hot and who's not.

Alignment - I have some MRT caster/camber plates installed on the front end. If there's anyone experienced in race setups I'd love to hear about them. Even better if the shop owner likes to autocross themself.

93 - WTF is up with 93 just south of the NH border? FIX IT DAMNIT!!! I figure they ran out of money digging that big hole in Boston and don't have anymore to go around. My suspension doesn't like it. GRRRRRrrrrrr

Why is my handle "veloLexus" you ask? Well, before I bought the WRX I had a Lexus SC300 (manual transmission of course). It was a nice car (although a tad porky) and I REALLY loved it (gorgeous transmission, the stick was like butter). I learned to drive in the snowy winters of NH driving my mom's Chevy Caprice station wagon. You know... weighs about a billion pounds, rear wheel drive, handles like a brick. I figured "the Lexus couldn't POSSIBLY be worse than my mom's station wagon in the snow". Big mistake. I like to ski and the place to ski in the SF/Bay Area is a 4 hour trip to Tahoe. It snows quite a bit in Tahoe (one of my favorite ski areas gets an average anual snowfall of about 570 inches and no that's not a typo) but the do a good job clearing the roads so I honestly didn't think it was that bad. Derrrrrrr. The Lexus handled like a bar of soap. After one season of driving to Tahoe with that car I decided that it had to go. I bought my WRX in June of 2001.

Well that's it. Hello, and I hope to meet some of ya at an autox.

Cheers, Joe