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Last week, Canadian Tire invited me to drive on an ice rink to test tires; winter VS all-season ones.

Winter dominated.

What had the most impact on me, though, was this:

50% of Canadians are driving without winter tires

I was shocked.  That’s way too low, and not okay. I felt so strongly about it, I used this week’s column to say as much.

(read it online here)

Favourite line:

For sure I’m a bit lippy this week, but I feel strongly about this because apparently half of you are irresponsibly driving beside me in icy conditions while wearing roller-skates, thinking they’re good for all four seasons.

At 7ºC, the rubber in a non-winter tire hardens, and loses elasticity, and therefore adhesiveness.

The rubber in a winter tire is designed to stay flexible in low temperatures, so it sticks better to the road.

Driving with me is Graham Jeffery, Tire Business Manager with Canadian Tire, hi hi!

Deep grooves that expel snow, that’s what to look for.

How can one thing perform five functions?  Show me one outfit that can be worn to work, a cocktail party, a club, a movie night in, then yoga.  It can’t.

Here’s a post about my new camera setup, seen above.  And I’ll leave you, with the Final Cut file.

This is what the video above, actually looks like.

Spotted in Georgia.

I’ll lead with my best, latest one.

(Click to enlarge, or, read it on Autonet.ca)

Favourite line:

It’s easy to forget about the human manning the machine, when really, that’s the only thing we should be paying attention to.

Read it on Autonet.ca.

This one was not bad, I found a source, put quotes.  I’m going to find more sources, for more articles, I liked that part.

Favourite line: 

If you’re hiring a car for a night, take a cue from the celebrities and choose a black sedan. An airport-limo style Town Car works well for price and availability, and everyone looks good stepping out of a classic, black sedan.

It may seem redundant that I re-post articles, but it’s not; this is so weird: they are published on paper, and then are gone forever.  Total opposite of a blog.  So I cut them out, and put them on my fridge.

Look at the size of the photo, top right:

My biggest ever, that’s for sure!  That was neat, to open the paper and find that.  I never know exactly what will print when and how.

(here’s that karting post, there’s a video of me driving, too)

Lastly, 24 Hours got a make-over!

They’re holding a contest until October 14, win 1/5 trips to an all-inclusive.

You have to tell them what you like best about the re-vamped paper. You could copy paste this: I like the new car column, ‘Keri on Driving’ the best.

Hiding from the sun. Always.

I wear 60SPF in the winter.

TTYL, have a great Monday and start to your week!

Honda Canada invited me to Niagara Falls to test drive their new Civic Si HFP - their “tuned out of the box” Civic.

They put me at the cutest country inn (see this blog post), and Thursday morning I walked outside to 6 of their HFPs.  There’s only 400 in Canada.

HFP -Honda Factory Performance.

Non-car nerds: the Honda Civic has, for years, been a “Top 5 cars to modify” because of its good, strong base.   

Their HFP package provides a ton of modifications direct from the factory, at half of what it would cost you to do it.

In the morning we toured through the country.

It was very scenic, and more nature than I’m used to.

That’s good photo-staging there; my driving partner Kanishka set it up.

We were a good team; neither of us turned on the radio (let’s listen to the engine), and he also hides from the sun (no sunroof never).

The afternoon was spent on the track.  

Which turned out to be an airport COME ON.

See the airplane top left? It was a yellow bi-plane from the 20s that starred in the Amelia Earhart movie.  Hello from shangri-la.  Needless to say, I was out of my head all day.

I’m certain the automotive journalists of Canada think I’m this loud and hyper girl… opposite, guys!  That was a dream-come-true day for me, so there was no containing that amount of joy.

I like to think that was one of the fastest times of the day.

I’m not competitive :|

The engine makes that good grrrRRR sound, which I like.  Yes I want the car to move when I hit it, but I also want to hear it.  When I had that red Civic two weeks ago, I was superfluously revving everywhere I went.

My instructor Daniel Morad, the first North American to win a heat race at the Formula BMW World Final in 2007 YES dude.

There’s Zach Spencer (white shirt), who travelled all the way from Vancouver, and is the host of Driving Television.

Welcome to my blog, Clare!  Read Clare’s National Post column here.

Now meet Shea Holbrook, 22 year old racing professional who races a Civic Si in the True Car racing series.  She’s doing amazing this season.

Just yesterday Shea climbed the podium TWICE in the Pirelli World Challenge Touring Car division.  YES missy!

This is her mom Erin, and her dad was there too.  They’re the cutest family you ever met.

One of my favourite parts of the Civic, and

top 3 hazard buttons I’ve ever seen.

Big big fan of the hazard button. I used it three times during a 40 km highway drive yesterday.

I’ll make a video soon, to show you my technique.

Bottom line: I’m a fan of the Civic because it’s fun to drive.  It reminds you why you fell in love with driving in the first place.

Plus, it sticks to the road both in performance, and mechanically.

Then a trolley took us home.

Someone yelled, how fast have you got this thing up to? The driver yelled back, one time 90kmh! We cheered.

Thank you Honda, for one of the most fun driving experiences I’ve ever had.

UPDATE – July 31

Honda Canada just released their official video of the above day.  It’s well edited, and they had helicopters :O !

Since Saturday.  Sometimes I just like to, sometimes I don’t feel like putting things online, so I don’t.

It always passes and I love it again, which is now.

So Hi!

Some things you missed… I dressed quietly like this, and randomly, was driven a lot.

One of My Top 5 Things to Do Ever – Sit cross-legged eating red candy while being driven around looking at stuff

A fancy BFF dinner.

I could have ordered pasta with squid ink. And look at that top menu item under “Chef’s Play”… sorry for the grainy photo, yes I did.

Went to another Hacks & Hackers event.  There was some ScribbleLive which is sick, that’s a great chat by Allison Martell about statistical data analysis, and remember that photo-incident in the Metro, and how well they handled it? This is Chris telling that story.

I remember that well, it was kinda like a “thing” on Twitter. Twitter was different back then.

There’s a huge conference coming up if you’re into online marketing anything… The Art of Marketing… March 7 at the MTCC.  I’ll tell ya more about it soon, but Guy Kawasaki, Gary Vee, it’s gonna be great.

Found that sword, put in car.

From February 2011

Pretty things from Valentine’s Day.

Which I still think is dumb…………. it just makes a lot of people feel bad.

Next video is likely, “The Trash Couture Photoshoot at an Airbase” (working title), TTYS!