It was Friday night May 2, 2008 and the excitement of events that were going be happening the next day was keeping him awake. He tried to fall asleep but all he could think of were the people he was going to see. Easily you would have thought it was Christmas or a trip to Disneyland by how he went online and looked at the pictures from the past. Seeing all the people and cars in photographs didn’t help his situation any as he needed to get some sleep before his long drive.

The following day was met with great anticipation. It was here, May 3, the day of Freakmont IX, the Nissan Community event he’s been waiting for, for two months since the announcing of it. The wait is finally over. He then gets up and packs everything he needs in the car and heads out to the caravan spot. There he meets up with others that are going to Fremont as well. They share in each others excitement and briefly look at each others cars before hitting the road to LeMans Karting where this years Freakmont is taking place.

On the way down, he’s trying to hear what the others are saying on the two-way radio’s but someone is attempting to play distorted music over the air. He is hoping it isn’t Rick Astley’s hit song.

When he pulls in to LeMans Karting facility, he is greeted by one of the organizers and directed where to park according to the model of his car. Noticing the parking lots filling up he begins to meet more and more people. He develops a number of new friendships as some of the people he has met were only a screen name and an avatar on the internet forums he regularly visits.

He met quite a few people while standing in line for food. He noticed that all the food was provided by all the people that came to the event. Like a potluck only bigger. There were two or three grills cooking all kinds of meat from burgers and dogs to chicken and steak. He was eyeing the giant burrito that was going fast as soon it was brought. Also he had more than enough desserts and sweets to choose from as well as more bottled water to keep a small army hydrated for a day.

As he is going around meeting new people and seeing the various models of Nissan, Infiniti and Datsun cars he comes up to a few booths promoting services and items for the Nissan Enthusiasts. In the middle of everything was a Mobile Dynamometer from Cox Performance testing cars throughout the day for discount rates. It seemed to draw the majority of the crowd as it printed out numbers of what each tested car was producing. Then turned and saw a table full of sport bottles that said NISSAN on them and sign with the Nissan Logo. He thinks to himself, “Is this a Nissan booth, here? Wow!” He proceeded over to the booth and met a couple representatives from Nissan North America. He finds out about a few new things that Nissan has to offer and looked over the display car from Superior Nissan of Fremont. As he was eyeing the convertible 350z, he met someone from the Superior Nissan dealership and talked about maybe getting some parts for his car in the future. He also met a Robbie from TPR Magazine and found out that TPR helped sponsor this event. Then he saw a setup there from Motoskin, and learned they do clear-bra application for a variety of cars. Continuing to see all the different Nissans he ventured to the front of the facility and noticed a sea of Z cars and G35s. Among them was Rob from Z Car Garage of which they brought a handful of cars to display.

Throughout the day he liked the music being mixed by DJ Shift from the NoS Energy Drink booth. Periodically Dave from Team-Driven, the main organizers, would call out names of individuals who had won donated items from the various sponsors of the event. There were mugs, keyschains, books, model cars and apparel from Nissan. Z Car Garage donated a handful of gift certificates. Motoskin provided free headlight clear-bras for the drawings. LeMans Karting gave away free karting practice sessions as well as some play-off tickets for the San Jose Stealth Lacrosse team. TPR Magazine gave away a few cases of Mobil 1 oil for the drawing and Cox Performance had an Elephant Bar Gift Card that got raffled off.


Toward the end of the event there was a karting competition that was held. He was going to enter but realized he spent most of the $50 for the competition entry fee on filling up his car to get to Freakmont. Though he did watch the competition and wish he did have the cash to get in the action, because he thought it seemed like he would enjoy it and maybe even beat the guys that were out there. He was excited to see that Roddy came out as the winner of the competition and was presented with an entire case of Mobil 1 Oil.

After the competition he noticed that most of the people that came had already begun to leave. He ventured over to the Mobile Dyno again and watched a few more cars put some numbers down and chatted with a few more people he had not met yet. He hooked up with a few of the other that he caravanned to Fremont with and headed back home. He downloaded his pictures to PhotoBucket and began posting them on the internet forums soon as he could and commented how much fun he had and posted that he can’t wait for next year.