I See You Philly!

This post will be about the forum thingy I briefly mentionned last time. Remember?

But don't worry, travel is included, it's still a travel blog!

So I bought this Kia Soul, and being a car guy, I was looking into... tuning. So while looking online, I came across KiaSoulForums. I looked at other Soul's, what people had done. It was relatively quiet, since the car was out for less than a year in North America. 

One thing caught my attention. One of the member was known to be the HID projector guy. I had HIDs before, and I sure loved it, so when I saw this, I contacted the member.

A side note before continuing, for those not too familiar with what I'm talking about. HID projectors are a kind of headlamps producing the best output to date, without the blinding glare of the usual kid tuner and his plug-and-play HID. The secret is the projector.

And it looks like this.

A magnifying lens with an inner shield to put the beam where you need it. you can clearly see the shield on that picture.

Back to the story. I contacted the member. He told me he had a group buy running on this other forum, SoulHamsters, and I could hop in and save some money of the normal price. So I registered and joined the group buy. 

One itch. It was about either having the kit shipped to me, or sending head lights to be fitted and back to me. With the border to cross, shipping is expensive. Too expensive. Not to mention the custom's fees once in a while...

A few messages later, an appointement was set for me to be in Pennsylvania for the fitting part.

A few months later, in September, I was on my way South, once again with my mom. I picked her up in Montreal at 1PM and we were gone. We drove for a while, so much we slept on the border between Pennsylvania and New Jersey, in Easton, just a couple of hours away from our destination.

In the morning, we cruised around town a little, then went to the Ultimate Retrofit garage. Time to strip that car! You see, the housings need to be opened to install a projector inside... It took most of the day, about five hours, including some painting. 

I previously did the wiring, so it was some time saved there. I even chose a little extra... Blue halos around the lenses!

I had the chance to take comparison pictures after we got back, to show the difference between a stock Soul and the projector upgrade. The stock one, even with the fog lights on, is far behind and, as you can see, I won't blind the other drivers any more than with the stock one. Now, I SEE the road.

I woke up my mom and we left for Philadelphia. The quest for an hotel took most of the evening, and ended up across the bridge in New Jersey.

We crossed the bridge again in the morning, and head up to the Independence Visitor Center. Then right across the street, there's the Liberty Bell Center, where the Liberty Bell is exposed since 1915, after it was put out of commission in 1846.
We then walked around the Independence district until our guided tour of the Independence Hall began. I had some fun with one of the rangers at the gate... I was wearing a shirt saying, "My parents told me I could be anything. So I became an asshole." He said, "My parents told me I could be anything too, but look, I ended up being not much more than you!" He's a funny guy for sure!

We kept on walking and visiting old buildings and museums during the day, including Betsy Ross' house, the mother of the American Flag.
Truly an interesting visit, unfortunately, not enough time to see it all in a weekend... But there is one thing I could not afford to miss while in Philadelphia.

A big piece of history...

Rocky!