2k16 Eat Sleep DSM Meet

The night of September 16th, 2016, was a night to remember for a lot of people. Especially Kurt Barnes and myself. The morning of, Kurt was coming up here to Athens and staying the night in a hotel. We were going to work on our DSM’s, pop into the local 570 Motorsports car meet, hang out with our girls, get drunk and have a good night. But, I was able to make some crazy last minute additions to our weekend plans.

Text by AJ Hunsinger // Photos by AJ Hunsinger, Kurt Barnes, Darrel Carpenter

Around this town, DSM’s are hardly ever seen. Athens is a small town, so everyone knows everyone for the most part. When someone gets a new car that is worth talking about, everybody is aware of it. My 1G DSM, Poison Ivy, is very well known here and is generally the only DSM around. Sure, occasionally a DSM might drift through here sometimes, but mine is the only DSM that stays here.

Kurt and I made plans weeks ago to plan for another weekend to hang out. He and I are trying to rotate back and forth. One weekend my girl friend and I will travel an hour down route 6 to his town of Tunkhannock, PA. And the next time he will come up here with his woman. When I woke up Saturday morning, I only intended on him and his girl friend coming with Kurt’s 1G, Saphire. But around noon, my brain started wondering. “I wonder if I could get some more DSM’s together, enough to where we could ‘crash’ the car meet?”, I asked myself.

So, I pulled out my Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and started messaging people. The first to come to mind was Ben Kiah, also from Tunkhannock, PA and is one of my close friends. He has a 2G GST. Next, I presented the offer to Christopher Johnston, whom has a 2G TSi AWD, and also lives near Kurt and Ben. Neither of them gave me a solid answer but said they would try and work things out as it was indeed last minute.

This wasn’t enough for me, I wanted even more DSM’s. If Kurt, Ben, and Chris came, we would have 4 DSM’s between us. I decided to toss out a text message to an old buddy, Terry Madison. Terry has a 2G TSi AWD as well. He and I hadn’t spoke in well over 6 months and the last conversation ended kind of rocky. But I figured, maybe this would work out perfectly and we could let bygones be bygones. Terry said he would love to roll with us.

Ben and Chris eventually told me they were in. They also said they were bringing another friend, Tommy Pavlichko, who has a beautiful RB swapped 240sx. The plan was for Kurt, Ben, Chris, and Tommy to meet up at the Dandy Mini Mart near Proctor and Gamble. Then, they would all cruise in a pack together to my house. Terry, said he would already be in the area of the car meet and that he would just meet us there. I was pretty disappointed that he wouldn’t be able to roll in simultaneously with the rest of us, but I was just happy he was going to be there in general.

I decided to post on the 570 Motorsports Facebook page and announce that I had a surprise for tonight’s meet. Several people commented on the post and/or PM’ed me asking me what the surprise was. But, I told them they would find out if they went to the meet.

As Kurt and the others were on their way to my crib, I hit up Ryan Wood, who drives an Evo 8 and lives in Athens. He was stoked about the whole thing and said he would meet the rest of us here at my place. As Kurt and the others were getting close to my house, Kurt and I made a last minute decision for me to wait for them at the end of my road and tag up with them on the highway after they passed by. So, Ryan and I waited for them at the end of my road.

Kurt threw me one last text and said they were about to pass by, so I got ready to turn onto the highway with my 1G Eclipse and Ryan did the same with his 2003 Evolution. Like clockwork, the others cruised by while Ryan and I were at the stop sign. Once they all passed, Ryan and I pulled out from the stop sign in pursuit of our Mitsubishi friends.

This part, may have been the most amazing part of the night. Ben, Chris, and Tommy weren’t aware of the last minute decision that Kurt suggested. They all assumed they were still meeting me at my house. Not to mention they had no idea Ryan was a part of any of this with his Evo. As Ryan and I pulled onto the highway behind them, they had no idea we were there.

It was a surprise for Chris, Ben, and Tommy, they seen this 1G DSM and Evo fly by them as the highway opened up from a regular 2 lane road to a 4 lane highway.

“It was like a movie, all of a sudden I hear this loud ass 1G fly by me followed by an Evo.”, said Ben Kiah.

It really was like a movie. That phrase was tossed around multiple times that night. But, this was merely just the beginning of our original plan. A couple of miles up on the highway, I pulled off onto the exit ramp with the rest of the crew behind me. At the end of the exit was a stop sign in which we all turned right. Immediately after was a red light, in which we all turned left. Immediately after that was the entrance to the Tops parking lot, in which is where the 570 Motorsports car meets are held.

As we pull in, all eyes were on me and my 1G. Then everyone noticed Kurt’s 1G behind me. Then a 2G. Then an Evo, then another 2G, then the 240SX. People were going nuts, pointing, yelling, just plain in awe at what they were witnessing with their eyes.

“Oh shit…..fuckin’ A, Holy FUCK!…..damn…that’s cool as hell.” said Allen Houghtalen as were funneling in one car after another.

I parked first, preparing our own full line of cars, facing directly at all of the cars that were already there. Kurt parked to my right, Ben to my left, Chris to Kurt’s right, Ryan to Ben’s left, and Tommy to Chris’s right. Again, it was like clockwork. After we were parked, it was literally like all of us vs. all of them. All of their cars were facing us while our cars were facing them.

As we stepped out of our cars, everybody was already surrounding our cars, still in shock as to what they had just witnessed. Several people had their phones out, taking pictures and recording videos, it was awesome. Terry, still wasn’t at the meet but pulled in shortly later. Everyone got along very well. Our crew met their crew, people were asking questions about eachother’s cars, shaking hands, complimenting eachother’s cars, everybody just got along really really well.

Most of the cars that usually attended these local car meets were essentially regular daily drivers. Adam Perry, the head of the 570 Motorsports operation, has a beautiful Subaru WRX. There were a few other Subaru’s there, several Honda’s, a nice boosted Miata, etc. DSM’s can be put into that category with Supra’s or Skyline’s and GTR’s. They are cars that are very well respected around here and they are seldomly spotted driving around. Most of the 570 guys have only ever seen one DSM around here and that was my 1G. Tonight, they had 5 DSM’s to gawk upon.

“This is literally the best night of my life.” said Kurt Barnes.

I was guilty of repeating that statement throughout the night as well. While we were at the meet, Adam Perry and I spoke about having one big meet. Most of these meets are last minute, although people expect them to go down every weekend.

“Imagine how many cars we could get together if we had a month to plan for.” Adam Perry said.

And he was right. If we gave everyone a date and time a month out to plan for and attend the car meet, we would pull in a very good car count. We already had a great car count this night, around 30 cars, although I did bring in nearly half of that this night, but still. I also told Adam that we need to get creative with the names of the meet. Tonight’s meet was titled “Pre-Knoedown Meet”, as the next day was the big Knoedown car meet down at Knoebel’s. This was a good, creative name. We need to continue doing things like this with the name of our meets to attract more people.

This meet had everything. The surprise entrance, DSM’s, respectable cars, fast cars, variety of cars, great car count, very close friends, reunited friendships, a very low mileage DSM as Chris’s 2G has 36K original miles, tech gossip, mod-list breakdowns, ricer Honda drove by and we all picked on his horrible attempt at a launch, some tuning, antilag, some of us had our kids with us so they had a good time seeing all the “racecars”, Facebook Live, show and tell, just so many things. It was a perfect example of why we do what we do. A perfect definition of who we are.

At the end of the night, Kurt and I talked more about this and how we should do this again. I stated that we have yet to have our annual Eat Sleep DSM meet, so maybe we should do it here. The next day, I talked to Adam Perry about this idea and he was all for it. We worked out the details and set it all up.

On October 15th, 2016, we are having the “2k16 Eat Sleep DSM Meet, Hosted by: 570 Motorsports” in the Tops/K-Mart parking lot in Athens, PA.

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We are expecting to have at least 50 cars there, several DSM’s (obviously), Evo’s, etc. plus all of the local guys with non-DSM’s. There will also be a lot of new faces coming out to the meet with their highly respectable cars, like Taylor DeLosa and his Supra.