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2009 USGP – MotoGP at Laguna Seca Photos

MotoGP at Laguna Seca was a blast once again this year; I have some early photos up at Flickr. Wonder if I’ll get a chance to edit them and expand the set. Who knows? Enjoy.

PoTW: The Ocean with the Girls

More to come, but we had fun today walking down to the beach and hanging out. Flickr set. We walked down, Virginia in the stroller and Magdelen in the carrier so we could get there in time to play before nap time.

Spotted in the Wild: XOF1 Solar Car

As we were driving North on CA-1 on our way back from the elephant seal rookery, KC and I saw an odd vehicle off in the distance. At first it looked like a wide-load with some sort of farm equipment in the front. As the ‘farm equipment’ got closer (it was closing fast) it started to look like a squat vehicle. At first I figured it was a Shell Solar Challenge vehicle, but once we got home we noticed that the news had a story.

It is a fellow Canadian who has made this vechicle (and driving it around North America) quite a project.

More here.

Photo by Jack Snell — I didn’t get a chance to take one as it zoomed by on a twisty section of CA-1.

PS: Damn – it was cool looking and booking along, fast.

PoTW : Elephant Seals

KC and I took a trip down near San Simeon to see the elephant seals. Managed to get a few shots and put a set up on Flickr.
These animals were really amazing. More information at Friends of the Elephant Seal .

PoTW: Local flying.

I finally managed to get out flying in the Santa Cruz area. It wasn’t how I expected — I didn’t go as pilot-in-command, but instead was invited to fly in the right seat with another local pilot. He owns a few local coffee shops, frankly one of the area’s best where I can frequently be found tasting his many fine espresso offerings.

We took a quick(ish) flight from Watsonville CA north along the coast, past Alcatraz, over the Golden Gate Bridge, then over the Bay Bridge, into SFO’s class B with radar flight following, over the west end of SFO’s runways and followed US-101 more-or-less until west of SJC. A slight right turn with a pop over Loma Prieta took us back into the Watsonville area where we joined the down wind leg of the pattern and landed just as the sun was setting. I was able to fly all but a few minutes around take-off and landing and it was really, really nice to be at the controls again.

Given that I used to fly in class-D and class-C airspace almost exclusively, it was interesting to see what it is like to fly from an non-towered field and then run into class-B airspace fairly quickly. Radio work is key if you want to fit in and leverage the system. The local pilot tells me that most folks based in Watsonville really like the fact that the airspace isn’t under positive control.

That’s all fine and well, I even understand, but it is no excuse for poor airmanship. While we were joining downwind to land, we were very confused to see someone cross in front, and slightly above us, only 100′ above pattern altitude. They did a 360 in the pattern and then ended up about 50′ above and 100′ left of us headed in the same direction. I got the sense that they didn’t see us and really didn’t appreciate that the Bonanza was trucking along at 120 KIAS vs their 80 or so. It made for very tight quarters and we managed to get a hold of them on the CTAF and sequence ourselves ahead of them, but it was a close call that didn’t need to be. They really should NOT have joined the pattern the way they did. Good thing we were both always watching for traffic and saw this coming.

More photos in my flickr stream.

Amateurs

Well. KC and I successfully completed our technician grade amateur radio exams and the paperwork from the FCC has arrived. KI6TDK and KI6TDJ respectively. Yeah. Radio time. I think it is amusing that I have a US callsign and a Canadian Aviation RO permit too. It will be interesting to see how it reconciles in the future. Perhaps it really doesn’t matter.

Photo is Saturday morning — coffee and repeaters.

Ham Licenses. Who has one?

KC and I have been considering getting a ‘real’ bike-to-bike communication system and with that comes the discovery that almost all GMRS / business radios need to be licensed. With a Technician Ham ticket being a mere weekend course and with that opening the possibility of ‘real radios’, I’m interested in hearing from any of you that have your ticket.

What portable rigs have you tried, anyone have any experience with the Kenwood TH-F6A, what about the Yaesu VX-7R, or newer. Anything from ICOM?

I have an ICOM-A23 for aviation that I’m very pleased with, but this is a new application so they may not be the incumbent that they are in the aero world.

Any comments or thoughts around portables are welcome. Since it is a bike application, I don’t have room for a mobile sized unit.

It occurs to me that I don’t even know which of my friends have a ham ticket, so feel free to educate me.

MC : Coast Loop

KC and I did a really long ride yesterday. We got a bit of a late start and nearly ran out of daylight, so we didn’t finish by taking G16 back up to Carmel and used a little more of US 101 than we wanted. In all the ride over from the PCH (Hwy 1) through the military reserve to Jolon was little more than a well paved goat trail, but it was fantastic fun. Click on the map image to see the KML file loaded in Google Maps. More photos (not many) at Flickr.

I highly recommend the ride down the coast and then up & over on Nacimiento-Fergusson Rd. Some photos at Flickr, but to be honest, we were enjoying ourselves a little too much to stop and take photos. The ride up from the coast got terribly hot in a hurry and we zipped along the base as quickly as possible to make sure we got a little ‘man-made breeze’.

We ran out of daylight — or were going to, if we took Carmel Valley Rd back to the coast, so we ended up taking CA-183 across to Castroville to save around 30 minutes. In the end we got home just as the sun set, so it was the right choice.

In all, an excellent day out. We are planning another ride north from home for Monday.

MC: Breaking in

View Larger Map
I couldn’t resist. In an effort to ferret out the midrange demons that KC’s monster seems to have I went for a fairly long ride.

CA 9 from Santa Cruz to CA-35 (Skyline). North on 35 to Alice’s Restaurant in Woodside. (drink). West on ca 84 to the CA-1. North to Half Moon Bay (at half-noon). CA-92 east to Skyline again, CA-35 south to CA-9 , CA down to Saratoga, u-turn back up to 4 corners, 35 to black road to CA-17 at bear creek road. Old San Jose to summit road to the San Jose Soquel road to Soquel Dr into Santa Cruz. Home.

Almost 150 miles of twisty bliss. Photo at Half Moon Bay.

Trekking to Hollister

Today I am headed to Hollister CA to pick up KC’s bike. I’ve decided to use public transit and my thumb to cross over the pass behind Watsonville. We’ll see how it goes. I’ll update this as I progress.

My first ride was a couple Wastonville-local workers (framers) that picked me up just opposite a large berry farm (Pickt Rite?). The driver was keen to chat but his passenger didn’t speak very much English. He just smiled and nodded a lot. These guys were great and took me all the way over CA-129, up US-101 to CA-25 (which descends into Hollister effectively passing the airport (and therefore Corbin).

Once I walked a mile or so along CA-25, a guy (Mike) in a pick-up truck pulled over. He’s a dirt bike racer who lives in Morgan Hills, and was headed to the Honda shop to pick up some parts for his CR.

He even detoured around the airport so I didn’t have to walk very far at all — a quick hole in the fence and I was right at the Corbin building.

Sadly, I took too long hitch-hiking to connect with the folks in R&D, but KC’s bike was sitting in the show room, ready to go.

The seat looks fantastic and they did a great job. I have a quick photo I snapped of the seat here, but I’ll post something a little more professional when I get a chance. Apparently Corbin will put it up on their web site once they have a chance to edit the photos they shot.