Wrapping up a bittersweet trip to Reno for the last of the Air Races, we made a stop in Atwater to visit Castle Air Museum. They have an extensive collection of aircraft at the location of former Castle Air Force Base.
Castle Air Museum – main collection
Castle Air Memorial Brick Park.
Museum Restoration Center
Castle Air Museum is located at 5050 Santa Fe Drive, Atwater, California, 95301
It’s been a very active month of wildlife visitors. Occasionally I get lucky enough to grab the camera and snap off some shots before they see me and scamper off.
Here are a few of the last pics:
Fleet Week is always one of (if not THE) best Air Show on the West Coast. A large aerobatic box over the San Francisco Bay means a lot more latitude with the types of maneuvers that can be performed.
Here are some of the highlight pics from yesterdays performances.
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#wearefleetweek #USNAVY #NAVY #breitlingjetteam #blueangels #f22raptor #heritageflight #UnitedAirlines #PatriotsJetTeam #FleetWeekSF
What can I say, McLaren knows how to build a car, put on a show and a party. In the past it’s been the 650S and P1 car launches, special events etc; but few things are as fantastic as test driving a McLaren!
Having spent a few days in the amazing MP4-12c (I even rented one for my 50th birthday), then test driving the then brand new 650S around Pebble Beach in 2014, I of course leapt at the chance to get behind the wheel of their latest car, the Sport Series (aka 570).
With an amazing test route loop on the infamous Laurels Grade before me, with great excitement I slipped behind the wheel of the above beauty!
After a quick overview of the vehicle operation, I was off! The first thing I noticed was the steering felt a little more connected to the ground than the MP4-12c, the car was really feeding back information on what was going on. Lucky for me traffic was mostly non-existent as the car rapidly announced that I’d exceeded the road’s speed limit (interesting feature… could really come in handy for those times you sort of get lost in the throttle and didn’t notice a change in the speed limit… for those that care about such things).
It was a spirited ride for certain. On the return leg of the test, I popped the car into auto-mode, and mashed the throttle. I was surprised to watch the tac blast past 8000 RPM as the twin-turbo V8 snarled behind me.. tires complaining… traffic rapidly disappearing behind… I LOVE IT!!
Although the entry-level McLaren.. the 570 is a satisfying drive. And dare I say it.. I think it looks better than it’s “bigger” MP4-12c and 650S family members. I wish I’d had a GoPro with me to capture the experience… but it’s one I won’t soon forget!
If you’re in the market for quarter-million dollar sports cars, give the McLaren Sport Series a drive. With two models (GT and S), you should be able to find what you’re looking for.
Here are 2 more Sport Series, waiting for the next test drivers to take the wheel. I think you can see a little more of an Italian flare in the front design, and I like it!
Quite a lineup here… almost the full family was represented here (I did find an F1 the next day at Laguna Seca).
I’m not much for white cars (which you might get looking at my fleet).. but I think the Sport Series looks pretty good in white. Now.. if one could only graft the GT front end onto the now (relatively) inexpensive MP4-12cs.. it would be a match made in heaven!!
Now.. no experience is complete without the fully off-hook full-tilt boogey P1. Here is one showing off it’s full carbon fiber construction. Just an amazing looking and sounding car. For the limited and fortunate few that were able to purchase one… I can only guess how getting behind the wheel must be akin to driving at ’11’.
The test-drive mule I got to flog.. even in that color I LOVE IT.
Another really interesting color on a 570. Here the nose clip looks vaguely La Ferrarish; which is what make me feel like this model has a little bit of an Italian flare.
Again, the P1. All carbon, all the time.
“The Crew” (most missing Beth, she was busying being part of a documentary McLaren was making that day). Carsten, Shawn, me, Moh. Yeap, we were all having fun driving cars and enjoying the hospitality.
One of Emerson Fittipaldi’s M23A/9 F1 car from the 1980s. Despite being 30 years old.. it still looks the business, and more car than my basic skills could manage.
This M80/4 CanAm car looked like a beast! The velocity stacks on that V8 look like they could swallow a small dog. What a rush it must be to drive something like that… open cockpit, raging V8 right behind you.. mega down force and all the balls you can manage to jam in your driving suit.
Here is “The Gang” again (Beth decided to take a break from being a film star to say hello) in front of Niki Lauda’s MP4-2/2 F1 machine. His teammate that year was Alain Prost, whom lost the championship to Lauda by mere points that year; which of secured McLaren a solid manufactures title as well.
For me, there is just something about a 60’s era open-wheeled car like this M28. It’s like a work of art. 🙂
Unobstructed view of Lauda’s MP4-2/2 F1 machine.
And one more look at the 570. I would be thrilled to put one of these in my garage.
HUGE Thanks to McLaren and Bernardus Lodge and Spa for hosting us for this event during Car Week 2016!!!
During the US Round of World SuperBike (SBK) Ducati Owners Club, arranged a preview of the Talbot Motorcycle Museum for club members. It was a great, warm and sunny evening in Carmel Valley, amongst some amazing motorcycles!
Here are some photos from the event:
Where you can view these wonderful machines:
Snapped these three pics outside our home off Branciforte, at 10:45 AM.
Over the last couple of days we’ve had some daytime visitors along the hillside above us.
We know there are a number of predator cats in the area. I don’t often see bobcats so it was a rare treat to get a glimpse of one outside my office window:
Coyotes are much more commonly sighted around here. I often catch them on the infrared wildlife camera. Seeing them during the daytime is a little less common but it does happen, as it did this morning:
The wildlife camera experiment continues.
A few nights ago it captured a coyote walking right up to our front door.
The camera only fired a few times that night, and unfortunately none of the still were usable.
Below are photographs of the Air Force’s latest superiority fighter, the F-22 Raptor. In addition, there are also photos of the USAF Heritage Fly-by with the F-22 and P-51 Mustang in tight formation.
Photos taken at the 2015 California International Air Show – Salinas California.
Wow.. what a great time we had! First off, big thanks to Isaac G. for setting up this kick-ass outing. As usual, it was a cast of crazy characters; and also keeping with tradition.. we bought the photos!
For this trip, we went with American Whitewater Expeditions. 
AWE is locate in Coloma, CA, deep in the Sierra foothills.
Starting at Zero-Dark-Thirty in Santa Cruz, we headed over to Fit for Speed, located in Club Autosport to meet up with the group of yahoos we’d be rafting (and swimming) with today.
After fueling up on carbs and caffeine we made the 3+ hour journey out past Sacramento. Everything was going smooth, until we tried to stop for lunch. Someone had the brilliant idea of meeting at Inn-N-Out burger in Rancho Cordova to re-assemble our convey. This part of the plan worked great!
Kevin and Beth 
were traveling with us. It didn’t take for them to start looking up all the awesome ways to order burgers. We had A PLAN!
Once we arrived on location however, things started to go sideways. Someone suggested we go somewhere that had salads. Using the trusty (right…) interwebs, a Mediterranean place about 1/2 miles away was located with GREAT Yelp reviews and we were on our way. We had about 20 min. to eat or we’d be late for our trip, which advised us to have a HEARTY lunch as we’d be on the river for about 5 hours (paddling at least 1/2 that time I might add). I won’t go into all the details but I’ll say that Amore in Rancho Cordova is CRAP! Took us 45 min. to get what food we could (I had to cancel my order) and what we received was over-priced pig slop. Deb and I split a hideous omelet was we raced into the mountains, already very late for a very mandatory on-time trip orientation. Isaac was able to smooth things over with AWE and despite arriving very late, we managed to make it onto the river!
I think a great time was had by all. Our boat didn’t require a safe-word… nuff said about that.
So here my words end, and I offer up the photos purchased from the entertaining, and I think you’ll agree great photographer that captured the fun. Thanks to Kevin at KBar photo for taking the great pics shown here.
This will HAVE to be done again!!
