A Couple of Firsts

I had a couple of firsts today - the first one was a cruise ship docked in the bay. I know it happens occasionally, but this is the first time I'd seen it. It was moored offshore and then smaller boats were being used to ferry passengers in to take their Monterey excursion.

If you look at the photo below, you see the cruise ship in the background and then two of the smaller boats (on the right, with the orange tops) docked at Fisherman's Wharf, dropping off and picking up cruise passengers.


After that, I went and checked out the local cove where you find harbor seal pups at this time of year. It's right next to the recreational trail, but they fence it off so you don't disturb the seals. Even so, the fence is low and you're above and close to the seals, so you get a good view.

This time, I got a great view - a seal went into labor while I was there and gave birth to a pup all in around 20 mins! Amazing thing to witness. I only had the point and shoot camera with me, so photos are pretty poor quality, but the first one below shows the mother seal during birth and the second one shows the baby seal (pointed to by an arrow) a minute or two after it was born with its mother looking back at it.

The seagulls were around to try and get the afterbirth, apparently seagulls find seal afterbirth tasty!

More Whale Watching (from the comfort of my couch)

It was very windy today - white caps a plenty out on the bay, but this evening, I noticed some white on blue that didn't look like a white cap, so got the binoculars out and sure enough, more whales close in to shore.

I saw them on and off for a couple of hours and then later saw a big splash and got the bins out again.

This time, it was a young humpback trying to breach - getting about half its body out of the water before splashing back in again. There were two or three adults nearby, so it was obviously juvenile, but it did its breaching about 10 times before it moved out of view from the couch.

I know, I'm showing off - I'll stop now.

My First Mountain Bike Race

Yes, after years of mountain bike riding, I entered my first race. I had no aspirations of winning, or even placing, my goal was to actually finish.

The Sea Otter Classic is an annual bicycle festival held over 4 days at Laguna Seca and surrounding land. I entered the beginner's mountain bike cross country race - just over 19 miles, right around 3000' of climbing, and given the Sea Otter's popularity, lots of people.

They group folks by gender and age - I was in the male 40-44 class - there were 87 of us in that class alone. In the photo below you can see the mass of people in front of our group (see the guy holding the 40-44 sign - that was our group) as the younger folks get to go first.


Behind us on the grid were the older folks groups and the female groups (who do a different, shorter course).

Groups set off at either 5 or 10 minute intervals, and you have a chip transponder type thing attached to your ankle that registers your time as you cross the line.

When our group's time arrived, we all set off and I deliberately set off slow and dropped to the back of our group as I didn't want to get over excited and peak too early. We started on the track between turns 4 and 5 and headed the wrong way, so did turns 4, 3, 2, 1 then down the start finish straight the wrong way, around 11, up through 10 to 9 where we turned off the track and headed out on to the trails.

I'd ridden the trails before so knew what was coming, but even so, riding in the proximity of so many people, all trying to go fast was intimidating. I was trying to pace myself, but soon realized I was getting caught up in the speed of it all and was pushing harder than I had planned.

I was being overtaken by faster folks and I was overtaking slower folks the whole ride long - I found that I was probably above average going up hill and definitely one of the slower folks going downhill (even if I did hit nearly 40mph at one stage!).

As the race wore on, I got better about pacing myself, though I think I did overdo it early on and I was hurting towards the end.

In the end, the official timing had me coming 64th out of 87 in my group and completing the course in 2 hours 10 minutes and 31 seconds - which exceeded my goals, so I was happy.

I was also coated in dust and grime (so many riders all around all the time kicked up the dust something chronic) and thoroughly worn out.

I (of course, I'm a geek) wore my GPS - I started it 30 seconds before the start so that I wouldn't forget to start it when the flag dropped, so the trace is around 30 seconds longer than the official time - trace is here.

I had one small burton in a very sandy downhill (where I got passed by these two guys who flew past me in this deep sand at least twice as fast as I'd ever try it).

It was a very cool experience, but I'm not sure I'd do it again - I'm just not that competitive - of course, I reserve the right to change my mind next year!

A Hot Day on the Bay

Yes, it was rather warm today. My day started with a Mountain Bike ride around most of the race course at Fort Ord for my preparation for next week's Sea Otter race, which will be my first ever mountain bike race.

It was so warm I had to stop, have a rest and strip down to the minimum set of clothing I could get away with.

After that, I realized that Pacific Grove was holding its Good Old Days festival - which promised to be a rather large Art and Craft festival - definitely worth checking out, so I did!

Besides a whole tonne of your typical art/craft booths, there were various stages with different kinds of music, plus a small hot rod car show and various other "side" events.


After that, I walked home again along the coast - the bay was very calm, though if you look closely in the photo below, you'll see some sort of wildfire throwing smoke into the sky in the background.


Although it pains me to write this, given this was the first really warm weekend of the year, thankfully it's supposed to cool down during the week, so my MTB race on Friday should be in good conditions!

More Whales

After last Thursday's post, I saw more whales on Saturday too (complete with tail slapping) and this morning when I went for my run, saw more again.

No idea if it's the same whale or whales, but I've now seen humpback whales three times in less than a week - coincidence?

Traffic Jam, Monterey Style

I went wandering today, and on the way back home came across this traffic jam in Monterey Harbor.


A harbor seal had decided to rest on the boat ramp, and as they're a protected species, no-one could lower their boat trailers into the harbor to retrieve their boats after a day on the bay.

When I got there, the coastguard was there (the guy in the blue overalls), making sure no-one broke the law and touched the seal, but at the same time, was trying to persuade the seal to get back into the water so that the three boats sitting their waiting could finally get out of the bay and back on to their trailers.

After 10 minutes or so, the seal was back in the water, never having been touched and boat trailers were being backed into the water.

Whales Will Play

I awoke this morning to see that the bay was flat calm - it's been that way for a few days now.

I went cycling along the coast this morning and made my turning back point a little bit further on than normal so that there was a chance to see any whales that might be going past. I saw nothing.

This afternoon though, sitting at my desk (which is carefully positioned so that I can see the bay), I caught sight of a blow or two out in the bay. After I got the binoculars on the show, there were two humpbacks, one of which was tail slapping.

This went on all afternoon and into the evening as the sun went down - two sets of whales, and once of them tail slapping every 30-40 minutes or so.

I don't think office window views get any better than that.

Five Go Mad At Northstar

Corn, Mashed Potatoes - all gravy!

This last weekend I took part in the (warning, US phrasing coming up) second annual Shutterfly Web Development Ski Trip. Although I've not been working for Shutterfly for either trip, I receive special dispensation to attend and now I've now made my second trip - aren't the folks still there nice to allow it!

This year, five of us made the journey - Amy, Nancy, Mike, Jim and myself - Roo, Gary and Allison all failed to make the second year for various reasons, regardless, the five of us that went had a grand old time.


Just as last year, we stayed at Nancy's in-laws house on the north shore of Lake Tahoe. The house puts us in the middle of a bunch of different ski resorts - this year we hit Northstar. I'd never been to Northstar before, but Mike's been a semi-regular there and took us to the best bits.

It's getting towards the end of the season, so it was a bit warm, but we went high up the mountain and stuck to the backside, where the snow was pretty decent and the runs were a lot of fun.

Jim likes to head off on his own and explore all the runs, so that left the other four of us to stick together. The lifts were high speed quads, so we got to ride on the lifts as a group of four all day long.

Below, you can see Mike's photo of (left to right) Nancy, Amy and me as we rode up the Backside Express after one of our runs.


This time, I didn't take the GPS, so no geeky data - but we were all worn out by the end of the day.

We ate at a local, very family run Italian restaurant nearby and the drive up and down was a lot less dramatic than last year's epic drive, all in all a very enjoyable weekend.

As it was a Shutterfly trip, lots of photos were taken - see them all here.

It's a fun bunch of people and I had a great time catching up with all of them and finding out the latest Shutterfly gossip and news.