Tom Tweed's Rennlist Home Page
Before the surfing, before the motorcycles, before the boats, before the sportscars, this was my first ride:
I can remember wildly rocking back and forth on this little wooden horse for hours, pretending I was Hopalong Cassidy or Gene Autry or some bigtime cowboy. I must have been about 3 years old in this pic, and the funny thing is, when I finally got on a real horse, many years later, they scared me to death! They were huge, strong animals, and they had a mind of their own! If they were smart enough, we humans would be working for them instead of the other way around! I found that I had a much better feeling for mechanical mounts, with no brains, where I had complete control....
The Surfing thang....
I made up this site to share some stuff related to my two most special interests- Surfing and Driving. Many thanks to John Dunkle for making this free Web space available for Rennlist members. I'm not a computer professional, but I have been messing with PC's since 1983 or so, and I can appreciate the kind of effort it has taken to develop and maintain the Rennlist site. We all owe John a great deal more than the few dollars we may have sent to become Rennlist members.
I also have another free web site through my Roadrunner service, which is devoted mostly to pics of my family, with links back to content on this site as well. It is limited to 5MB, though, so it is not very extensive.
The first access I ever had to the Internet was generously provided by my friend Joe Trotter, through a server that he was administering at the Salk Institute back in the early '80s. Joe created one of the first surfing-related websites there, to which I contributed some content, and he has maintained it to this day, long after he has left Salk for greener pastures. "Surfing the Web" has become a common phrase, but real surfers are a little upset that their sport has been co-opted to describe what is basically an inactive, sedentary pursuit. We think that "Fishing the Web" would be a more appropriate metaphor. Here's a link to Joe's "real" surfing site:
and a link to my surf club's website:
along with a link to my friend Bill Andrews' site:
http://adaywithba.com/ -- that should be enough real surfing content to keep you "fishing" for awhile!
The Boat thang....
One of
the first things I put up on the internet were my boatbuilding pages, digitized from my project scrapbook and the diary I
kept while I was building it back in 1976-1982...
It was every hard-core surfer's dream back then- sailing the south Pacific and Indian oceans finding isolated, uncrowded, perfect waves in a warm, tropical environment, carrying your whole act with you on a small sailing yacht. George Greenough and my late friend, Harry Blackwell, were my inspiration, and I started down the path the hard way, but never made it to the payoff. I learned a lot along the way, though....
The Writing thang....
I have always been interested in writing, and have been working on "The Great American Surf Novel" since I was in college in the late '60s. Over the last year, I disciplined myself to sit down and actually finish it! It's called Beep! Beyond the Frogpond and Back. My wife and I have started a publishing company as a second career for our retirement years, and we have four books being published already, including mine. The company is named Plowshare Media, and we are building a website to support our books, but it is still under construction.
I have also collected a few of the stories I have written and had published in various periodicals over the years and put them on a page here, for your entertainment, should you have a few hours to waste....
The Car thang....
Growing up in Lo Cal, the fascination with cars was inevitable for a teenage boy--they represented freedom and mobility and adulthood. I was no different, and I first learned to operate a car when I was about 12 years old--owned a bunch of different types of vehicles over the years, both two and four wheeled--but I cannot say that I ever really learned how to drive until I was nearly 50 years old, when I bought my first Porsche, joined the PCA, and took their Performance Driving School one Spring. The rest has been a long downhill slide on the slippery slope of speed....
This is a picture of my 1966 911 sunroof coupe, which I bought in 1997. It was modified with all 1967 911S running gear, plus small flares, doors and chin spoiler from '69-73, sport seats, Autopower rollbar w/ 5 pt. Simpson harnesses, 6" Fuchs w/ 205/60-15 Dunlops, etc.) It was taken during an autocross at the EVOC (Emergency Vehicle Operations Center) in Riverside, in 1998, the first time I ever won my class. Since then, I have sold this car to fellow Rennlister Terry Steer in Australia, and it has begun a new racing career Down Under.
Some of my other cars, past and present, are depicted below, with links to the stories behind them.
This was my father's 1967 911S, and I became the 3rd owner of it, after him and my brother, in 1999, driving it constantly until the end of 2007, when I sold it to a fellow in Holland, who will be using it for vintage rallies and European tours. The detailed description and history page I made up for it when I decided to sell the car is here.
A WCM Ultralite S2K (this car has been sold to a new owner in San Jose, CA, as I have exceeded the 5-car limit imposed by "my reason for living," otherwise known as my wife, Maryann (SWSBO.)
I picked up this 1973 911E in late 1999, and began modifying it towards and beyond 911RS specs. Many thousands of dollars and many track miles later, I sold it to a fellow in Sweden before I ever did the final paint work. It was mechanically perfect and fully developed as a street-legal time trial, DE, and autocross car, though, and the new owner has finished the body and paint work to his tastes, now, and it will be enjoying a new racing career in Europe this summer.
After 5 years of Porsche driving, I decided I would like to get some seat time in a different kind of vehicle, something cheap and quick and fun, so I tried a 125cc shifter kart at Amago Raceway one day. It beat me up, literally. The G-forces and pounding I took were exhausting. In 30 laps, I was toast. I decided I needed something a little more comfortable, with at least a suspension and some seatbelts, so I bought a Formula Ford.
It's a 1976 Zink Z-10C, and it hadn't raced in 10 years, but I spent a few months going through it and finally got it out on the track and it is a blast to drive. of course it is not street legal, so then I needed a trailer to transport it to events, and a tow vehicle for the trailer, and it goes on and on.... KAAACHIIINGGGG!
Eventually, I sold this car to a racer in Arizona who had just flipped his Zink several times at Firebird Raceway, and needed a replacement chassis in a hurry to continue his racing season. He contacted me through a mutual friend I had met at the SCCA Solo2 National Tour event in San Diego, drove over from Phoenix, looked at the car, and we made a deal on the spot. I delivered it to his home on the way to Texas to pick up the Ultralite S2K within a week.
My latest acquisition is as close to a supercar as I will ever get, being a retired working stiff of modest means. It is an Ultima GTR--an English built "kit car". It has a mid-mounted 350ci Corvette LSx engine driving the rear wheels thru an inverted Porsche G50 transaxle. This is a pic of it with the 2008 Porsche RS Spyder, taken by Randy Wells at a private track day at Willow Springs, CA. The Penske team was there for some testing sessions, and allowed us all to have pics taken next to the RS Spyder. Click on the pic for my photbucket album of the car.
That's all for now (and quite enough, I must say). I will try to update these pages more often in the future, but if past practices hold true, that ain't going to happen as much as it should.
Aloha,
Tom Tweed, tweedt@rennlist.net
La Jolla, CA, USA
Founding member, Porschelist and Rennlist
last update--01/12/2009
