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.
Last night we had the 2nd meeting up of the Nor Cal Ducati Club this evening in at Cibo, in Monterey CA.. It was a nice evening, warm, sunny and the food was quite enjoyable, but the company made it all worth the ride. And a bit of a challenging ride it was!
I met up with Dimitri on his cool Monster900 (a deal may be in the works soon!), at the Vista Point on Highway 1, for the ride to Monterey.
We waited a little while to try and catch a couple of riders coming down from the North Bay, but by 5:30 PM we decided it was time to head south. We didn’t make it far before we were caught in a massive traffic jam on Hwy 1. It was a virtual parking lot, we were going nowhere.
Fortunately we both knew of an alternate route and turned around on Hwy1. By the time we reached Castroville, the traffic heading north was also backed up for miles. A check of the local news sources didn’t reveal the cause of all this chaos, but I heard that at least one person was life-flighted from and accident scene on the highway.
We arrived in Monterey a little later than planned but it was no matter, there were two parking spots for us in front of Cibo, so we pulled in, popped off the helmets and met up with the southern contingent of the Nor Cal Ducati Club. It was nice little array of fine Italian machines on display:
Thanks to The Bear for setting this all up. Looking forward to the next Ducati Bike Night.
Sunday afternoon, I mounted my new $25 dash cam (purchased 2 of them from Amazon, $25 each to my door, I figured why not!) inside the windshield of my 2002 BMW ///M3 Convertible, and drove from Santa Cruz to San Jose (SJC airport) California.
Highway 17, has earned this dubious distinction as the most dangerous highway in California. With it’s steep decent from it’s 1800′ Santa Cruz Mountains summit to the Santa Clara Valley Floor below, it’s often this site of injury and fatality crashes.
Audio in the clip is horrible, and unedited. Wind noise due to the top on car being down, plus the fact I was wasting no time on “The Hill“.
While growing up in “The Valley”, heading over the hill to Santa Cruz always seemed like such a journey. Families would pack up food and drink to make it over the mountain. In reality, it’s a fairly short dive (about 20 miles) but back in the 70’s when I grew up, summer time temps well into the 90’s, combined with the fairly steep ascent to the summit (at 1800′) meant there was a pretty good chance you’d be taking a break in one of the turnouts while the car’s radiator cooled off enough to continue the drive. Using A/C on the hill was basically an impossibility, unless you enjoyed being temporarily stranded on the side of the highway while possibly awaiting a tow hook.
As I grew older, cars were built better, and I was able to afford these better cars, the drive to the beach became less and less an practice of gambling upon one’s luck, and simply being able to afford a 1/2 tank of gas on a high school or college student’s budget.
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:
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.
M 5.2 — Negros – Cebu region, Philippines
M 5.8 — Negros – Cebu region, Philippines
M 6.0 — Negros – Cebu region, Philippines
M 5.6 — Negros – Cebu region, Philippines
M 6.7 — Negros – Cebu region, Philippines
M 5.1 — Fiji region
M 5.2 — Mindanao, Philippines
M 6.0 — Vanuatu
M 5.2 — Kyrgyzstan
M 5.0 — southern Iran
M 5.0 — Vanuatu
M 6.1 — Vanuatu
M 5.2 — Kepulauan Kai, Indonesia
M 5.3 — Owen Fracture Zone region
M 5.7 — Vancouver Island, Canada region
M 5.4 — Samar, Philippines
M 5.1 — central Mid-Atlantic Ridge
M 5.2 — Vanuatu
M 5.6 — Samar, Philippines
M 5.8 — Tonga
M 5.4 — central Mongolia
M 5.1 — Taiwan region
M 5.1 — New Britain region, Papua New Guinea
M 5.7 — Vanuatu
M 5.4 — Vanuatu
M 6.0 — Vanuatu
M 5.1 — Vanuatu
M 5.1 — Vanuatu
M 5.2 — Vanuatu
M 5.5 — Vanuatu
M 5.0 — Vanuatu
M 5.3 — Vanuatu
M 7.1 — Vanuatu
M 5.5 — New Britain region, Papua New Guinea
M 5.0 — New Ireland region, Papua New Guinea
M 5.4 — New Britain region, Papua New Guinea
M 5.0 — near the coast of southern Peru
M 5.0 — west of Macquarie Island
M 5.3 — Easter Island region
M 5.6 — southern Sumatra, Indonesia
M 5.2 — Samar, Philippines
M 5.1 — Vanuatu
