I hooked up with HiFLyin (Terry) over the weekend, he took me out on Lake Washington, very nice lake but it got crowded quickly. His boat (01 SX) is very nice and meticulously maintained. His throttle movement is silky smooth, and his boat handles very well with the internal ballasts full. Gobs of power, you can hardly tell that there is weight in the boat.
We went by Bill Gates's pad, not too shabby. I was thinkin' of jumping onto his dock and running inside and surprising him, but Terry reminded me that it wouldn't be wise to taunt the richest man in the world. I have a coupla pix of the place that I'd post except for the fact that he'd probably have guys with raybans and little earpieces hiding in the bushes monitoring me. He may already.
Terry guided me over to SkiMasters, a former Toyota dealer that still has a couple of new Toyotas left. I spoke to Rich, a sales guy, pretty good guy. He took me to see the new SX they have, it is a tiny bit shopworn but is a bonafide new Toyota with new warrantee. They want 40K+ for it, but it is the real deal. It has the later tower, like on the 2002's but I think it is an 01. I forgot to look at the HIN, dammit.
They have quite a few parts sitting around, several new factory towers, other parts. I saw the petcocks on the shelf labeled 9$. I told them that they were welcome to use the classifieds to post boat and part sales, they have some interesting stuff like Toyota Marine Sports director style chairs (pretty beat) and banners and stuff.
