Friday morning arrived early, and we set about stocking the trailer and getting ready to tow back to Laguna Seca.
Having secured an overflow camping site (one of the last handful as it turned out), the evening before, we embarked on the first campout at Laguna Seca for us; despite attending motorcycle racing there since the 1980’s.
It did not disappoint! Everyone has seen a trailer, so there are not many pictures of the expedition equipment itself, but Friday’s small crowd allowed for a leisurely day of exploring the vendors and taking some more snap-shots.
Day -1 at the U.S. Red Bull MotoGP in Monterey CA was quiet, but attended more heavily than expected. The day before the official start of the event is always interesting.
I meet the vendors while they are setting up, and for those that are already selling, I start relationship building with them. This always pays off in many ways, not the least of which is simply meeting new people, and often old “friends” from events past.
Here are some photos of the wanderings around we did on Day -1.
Steamer’s Lane has a rich surfing history. It is just off a point on the side of cliffs in the West Cliff residential area near downtown Santa Cruz, providing a good opportunity to view the surfing. The Santa Cruz Surfing Museum is in the lighthouse there. “Steamer Lane” is the preferred form of the name used by the locals. It was at Steamer Jack O’Neil invented the modern surfing wetsuit, “Just because he wanted to surf longer”.
I went out to capture some of the Saturday action:
Following almost a week of non-stop unsettled weather, Mother Nature decided to give us a little reminder of how insignificant and inconsequential we are in the grand scheme of things.
Obviously, this is nothing like the horrid disaster of Hurricane Sandy, but and angry sea, is, an angry see.
Here are some photos takes along West Cliff Drive in Santa Cruz on the 2nd of December. The sunlight was a horrible blue from the deep clouds and reflection out of the ocean. I did the best I could do on the color correction:
Granted, it’s been a couple of weeks since the pros packed up and headed off to Pipeline for the last event on their years tour. I’m not always the quickest to get photos uploaded, with clients to service, mouths to feed, cars and bikes to work on and in there somewhere I try to have a little fun for myself.
So this morning I’m pulling up some pics from a few weeks ago that I’ve wanted to post up. One of these days I’ll get my watermarking done, but for now.. I’ll just have to trust that nobody finds these compelling enough to steal (here’s hoping).
Today was a great day for space nerds (and to live in CA in general, but for space nerds especially).
It was the last flight of Endeavor, aboard it’s carrier 747 en route to L.A., where it will be installed in the science museum located downtown.
I was not sure I could make it to Moffet Field for the fly-over, so when we heard it was also going to make a low pass over the Monterey Bay and the Aquarium, it was all systems go and a road trim in the new (to us) ML was quickly underway.
The crowds were impressive! Thousands of people lined the beaches along the south end of the bay to catch a look at this historic event. The fog, though, seemed like it was going to conspire against us and send everyone home a little sadder than the day started.
However our luck broke, and so did the fog. Some of use were watching the live NASA feed as it crossed over Moffet Field on it’s way. Less than 15 minutes later we were treated to the sound of jet engines and this emerging over the beach. It was… FANTASTIC!!!
I captured a total of 26 photos, basically of the same aspect. Here are the three I liked the best:
Space Shuttle Endeavor on it’s last flight. Flying over Monterey Bay on it’s way to it’s final home in Southern California.Space Shuttle Endeavor on it’s last flight. Flying over Monterey Bay on it’s way to it’s final home in Southern California.Space Shuttle Endeavor on it’s last flight. Flying over Monterey Bay on it’s way to it’s final home in Southern California.
End of an era is before us. I recall the first Shuttle flight, and the last. And of course the two terrible accidents in between. There is but one shuttle left at Kennedy’s preparation center. Soon it will be towed across the Space Center to it’s new home there, on display at the visitor’s center.
You won’t see this any time soon, and possibly never again. 7 US Super Carriers in port together, in one photograph.
This is a stitch of 4 photos taken on 3-March-2012 of Naval Base Kitsap, showing 7 of the world’s largest warships in port at the same time.
On the left, are some of the last 4 diesel (oil) powered Super Carriers. On the right side of the image is the most unusual aspect of this photograph, 3 Nimitz class nuclear Super Carriers in port together, including the classes namesake ship, the USS Nimitz (CVN-68), just days prior to her re-locating to hew new home port of Everett Washington.
Ships are labeled in the photo, left to right.
CV-62 – USS Independence – The fifth USS Independence (CV/CVA-62) is a Forrestal-class aircraft carrier of the United States Navy. It was the fourth and final member of the Forrestal-class conventional-powered Supercarrier. It entered service in 1959, with much of its early years spent in the Mediterranean Fleet.
CV-63 – USS Kitty Hawk – formerly CVA-63, was the second naval ship named after Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the site of the Wright brothers’ first powered airplane flight. Kitty Hawk was both the first and last active ship of her class, and the last conventionally-fuelled aircraft carrier in service with the US Navy.
CV-64 – USS Constellation – a Kitty Hawk-class supercarrier, was the third ship of the United States Navy to be named in honor of the “new constellation of stars” on the flag of the United States and the only naval vessel ever authorized to display red, white, and blue designation numbers.
CV-61 – USS Ranger – The seventh USS Ranger (CV/CVA-61) is one of four Forrestal-class supercarriers built for the US Navy in the 1950s. Commissioned in 1957, she served extensively in the Pacific, especially the Vietnam War, for which she earned 13 battle stars.
CVN-68 – USS Nimitz – is a supercarrier in the United States Navy, the lead ship of her class. She is one of the largest warships in the world. She was laid down, launched and commissioned as CVAN-68 but was redesignated CVN 68 (nuclear-powered multimission aircraft carrier) on 30 June 1975 as part of the fleet realignment of that year.
CVN-74 – USS John C. Stennis – is the seventh Nimitz-class nuclear-powered supercarrier in the United States Navy, named for Senator John C. Stennis of Mississippi. She was commissioned on 9 December 1995. Her home port is Bremerton, Washington.
CVN-76 – USS Ronald Reagan – is a Nimitz-class nuclear-powered supercarrier in the service of the United States Navy. The ninth ship of her class,[2] she is named in honor of former President Ronald Reagan, President of the United States from 1981 to 1989. Upon her christening in 2001, she was the first ship to be named for a former president still living at the time.
It was a warm and sunny day along the California Coast for the last day of the California International Air Show, in Salinas CA. Only 45 minutes south of my friend’s hose in Santa Cruz, CA. it was easy to plug this event into the last day of my vacation.
After 2 weeks in the sun, I needed some shade. Another full day in the sun and I’d likely return home with a burn, so I lobbied to purchase the VIP Flight Deck tickets. It was an easy sell. The flight demonstration teams always work in a couple of extra tricks right in front of the VIP seating areas, and we’re at an air show after all. Accommodations where good. Food, snacks, soft drinks and a fully bar were all at our disposal, and the first round of drinks were included in the price.
The performances were great. Plenty of jet action in the air.
One of the highlights of the show was the TORA TORA TORA performance. It’s a 10 minute show using aircraft from the original 1970 movie TORA TORA TORA. It’s a sight to see, so I’ve uploaded video shot with my little Canon camera set on the fence (it get’s bumped a few times so the framing missed the final WALL of FIRE, which I found unfortunate).
When the SnowCones took to the air, we decided to move onto the static displays. I’ve seen the very polite and nearly silent (and I’m sure very environmentally conscious) SnowCones enough times to fall asleep during their show. I had a 900 mile drive ahead of me that night, and I needed to remain alert. Oddly the couple of times I looked up into the sky, they always seemed to be speedily (albiet quietly) flying away… hm… I wonder if they are all French Canadians…).
So off to more interesting things likes Cessnas and Piper Cubs.
Saturday’s ALMS 6-hour endurance race at Monterey’s famous Laguna Secs was fantastic. The GT class was the most closely contested race I’ve seen in a long time, where the lead changed between the last turn and and the start finish, right in front of the main grandstands! Talk about excitement!
Watching, and photographing racing at night was a first for me. A learning experience, and despite this being my first attempt, I’m still happy with some of the images I was able to capture. Most of that I need to attribute to Canon’s fantastic 200mm f2.8 L glass (which I obtained from the L.A. Times a few years back).
So.. without further yammering, here are just a few of the shots that I’ve processed so far, that I like. Keep in mind that Word Press re-compresses the images so you lose clarity… when I get unlazy enough to replace Word Press with a better CRM (when.. maybe never…) this sort of thing will not be such an irritation to me.
In the mean time, it is what it is, and these are the results:
Astin Martin 007 - The name is Bond, James Bond.Class champion M3 passing an LMP car entering Turn 2Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid - it completely dominated GT.One of two Patron Ferraris, this one entering turn 2LMP entering Turn 2 under the lights///M3 between turns 1 and 2Corvette attempting an honorable mention finish, enters turn 2
