Tim's Freezer

Yes, I'm single and yes, I eat way too many frozen pizzas.

I was at the grocery store today and my favorite frozen pizza brand was on sale for about half their normal price - I've never seen them that cheap before, so I quickly did some mental arithmetic to figure out how many I could fit in my freezer and therefore maximize the savings!

So, here's a photo of the contents of my freezer after I got home - feel free to despair for my health!


I did also buy yogurt (American spelling), bananas and carrot juice, so it wasn't a total lard-fest.

History at the Dry Lake

Laguna Seca has many other activities besides its major races. Thankfully they publish these activities on their website in their calendar section. It's not always obvious (I only found out after the fact that Mercedes were having a big couple of days with Lewis Hamilton in town), but sometimes it is.

This weekend the track is rented by the Historic Motor Sports Association - not too hard to figure out what they're all about, so I headed to the track this afternoon to go check the cars out.

After signing the waiver at the paddock entrance, I was in. The caliber of car wasn't as high as at an LSR day (not quite sure what an LSR day is - I have to assume LSR stands for Laguna Seca Raceway - but you see some amazing exotic and priceless stuff hammering around the track on those days) or as you see during the official historic week.

After trawling the paddock, this Porsche 962 was my favorite car in attendance. It was done for the day though, so I didn't get to see it (or hear it) in action.


The first on track action I saw was a bunch of saloon cars featuring a bunch of Mustangs and a bunch of Alfas and a few other cars. There was an E-type Jag that was doing well for most of the race, but presumably had an off track excursion as it dropped about 10 spots. In the photo below it's on its way back up the pack, passing a Lotus going into turn 11.


The next set of cars out on the track was a set of F3 cars (with one F2 car thrown in for good measure) - they looked cool in the backlit pit lane as they were waiting their turn, so I snapped away.

The weather was really nice and warm - total t-shirt weather at the track, which nestles in a little bowl, so isn't affected by the cooler ocean breeze at the coast. It turned out to be a great way to spend a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon.

A Cold Morning In Monterey

The temperature this morning was a bit chilly for Monterey - there was a frost, so I waited until the sun came up before I went for my run (the sun, reliably, was warm). Once I got to the municipal wharf, there was still a frost on the exposed wooden planking. It's exposed underneath to the air as well as on top, which allows it to get colder and therefore becomes frosty more easily.


Further down the wharf and the sea lions were sticking their flippers out of the water (to keep warm - apparently).


And finally, there were fishermen unloading a boat load of sardines on the other side of the wharf into big ice buckets that were being loaded on to semis (aka articulated wagons) to be taken off somewhere else. I'd noticed the signs saying this area was being reserved for unloading of sardines when I was running here the other day, and today they were busy unloading.

I imagine the unloading will continue every morning for a couple of weeks or so like it did last year.

A Real Winter

After being spoiled with California winters for quite a while now, I just experienced something closer to a "real" winter when I went back to the UK for a week for Nanna's funeral.

It was cold - there was ice on the car windscreen most mornings.


Below is a typical winter UK scene, no leaves on the trees and a weak winter sun. This is Chester.


As you can see below, the Californian and the Spaniard were both suffering with the cold weather!

Enjoying the Weather While I Can

We've been having unusually warm weather (broke a few records) for this time in January - it's been getting just about into the 70's every day so far this week.

I've been in San Jose for the first two days ('cos I was at the Sharks game last night) and both lunchtimes went out for lunch and enjoyed the weather.

Today, I was working from home and as lunchtime rolled around I decided it was time to go eat lunch at the beach. I went and got a burrito from the shop on Cannery Row and headed for the beach - my first time at the beach with a burrito since the seagull incident!

I picked a different bench, one that wasn't quite as open, and kept the burrito close to my chest as I ate away.

No bird drama, and I got to see the whale watching boats follow what looked like a large pod of dolphins out in the bay - a very enjoyable lunch.

It was a shame I had to come back home and carry on working.

Holy Crap! The Perfect Winter Day??

Holy Crap! I'm pretty sure I've just experienced the perfect Winter day. The weather has been threatening to be great this weekend, and today it truly was. It's the middle of January after all, so the plan was to wait for it to warm up a bit before I headed out, but the forecast called for temps approaching the 70's.

The day started with the Man U. vs. Chelsea game (which started at 8am local time!), so I did laundry and ate breakfast whilst I watched the game. I really should clean the house, it needs a good vacuum and the bathrooms are due for a spruce up too, but the weather shot notions of domestication down.

The view across the bay was crystal clear and the temps were rising, time to get the Ducati out of the garage and go for a ride. The roads were in fantastic condition, and the wind was warm (my recent level of close to warm enough clothing ended up being one too many layers really, but was still rather comfortable).

The traffic was light and I kept catching it up at all the right spots (start of straights). I did my what is now becoming normal ride down to Lucia. I was all due to stop at the condor spot regardless, but when I got there it was packed - two different groups - some photographers, and a tour organized by the Ventana Wilderness folks. What a treat they (and I) had for the 20-30 minutes or so I was there.

Condors all over the place, flying around, flying close to us, always graceful, totally amazing display of Mother Nature. The photos below can only do justice to the occasion when you realize they were taken with my point and shoot digital camera. Yes, the big camera was home, and I had tucked the point and shoot into my jacket pocket - my little digital elph with its 3x zoom and full auto everything captured these shots - which just goes to show (a) how big the birds are and (b) how close they were.

Most of the time the birds don't flap, just soar on the air currents coming up off the cliffs, but one time one flapped as it went over me and the woosh of its wings made me jump - totally amazing!

Playing With Light

After I saw this cool blog post about Light Graffiti, I did a little bit of research and it turns out it's not that hard to do (but as with most things, it is hard to do well - as I ably demonstrate below with my first rather feeble attempts!).

So, late this afternoon (after my mountain bike ride - saw a red tailed hawk chase a golden eagle away - pretty cool - plus the weather was spring like - very nice), I had a bit of a play in the motorcycle garage ('cos it's pretty dark) - using white and red LED bicycle lights as my source of light.

It's supposed to be a flowering plant (flower in red, stem and two leaves either side in white) - but I did find the right camera settings so that the lights stand out nicely, so when I go and try this for real somewhere scenic some night, I have a better idea of what I should be doing!

Boo, I Have To Work Tomorrow

Today was the final day of my week and a half off work. I've really enjoyed my time off and am not looking forward to having to work for a living again (especially given the pre holiday lay offs and pay cuts - it'll be interesting to see how working for a living is in 2009).

It was a cold day, but sunny and very clear - from the house you could see clear across the bay and see lots of detail in the hills on the other side - I decided it was a Ducati photo shoot day.

I need to take static shots of the Ducati for Soup, so used that as an excuse for another ride down Highway 1. First though, I had to clean the bike as it got a bit mucky on its last ride in the Santa Cruz mountains, which are high enough for the road folks to salt and shaded enough (with all the Redwoods) to remain damp - resulting in the bike getting a nice coating of crud.

I bought a bucket and sponge the other day specifically for keeping the Ducati clean, so I utilized them this morning and ended up with a shining Italian steed.

There was a fair bit of traffic, and I seemed to keep catching it at all the fun bits, but even so, I had a great time - and got some cool photos for Soup - now I just need to get some "action" shots - I have a plan for those.

Here's one of the photos I shot - about 2 miles south of the Bixby Bridge - you can see highway 1 cut into the side of the cliffs in the background.

On the Condor front - I didn't see any on the way south, even though I stopped for about 15 minutes at their favorite location, chatting away with other folks looking for them too. However, on the way back up, just north of their favorite location, I spied one soaring, so stopped at the side of the road. Within a couple of minutes, there were five of them soaring overhead - very cool.

Now it's back to work - boo!

A Sunny Day With A Sad Twist

The day started sunny and cold. Given the rain we had on Friday, going for a ride in the mountains was always going to be too muddy - and just to be clear, I don't mind riding in muddy conditions, but the mud around here is extremely sticky and just accumulates on the wheels to the extent that they won't turn any more - it's not fun.

So, I decided to take advantage of the sunshine and blue skies and cycle to Pebble Beach along the coast. It was chilly, but I was well wrapped up with leggings, thick cycling gloves and lots of layers.

Once I got to Pebble Beach I sat on the sea wall behind the 18th green, where the photo below was taken.


I was enjoying the warm sun (there was no cold breeze) so I was trying to think of excuses to veg for a while - I updated my Facebook status, uploaded some photos from the phone and then decided to call Mum.

Unfortunately, Mum had sad news - Nanna passed away in the night. Not unexpected, and a relief given her recent quality of life, but still sad news.

On the ride back, I decided to try and take a photo that Nanna would have liked - a sort of little tribute given that there's not much I can do to help being 5000 miles away. I was keeping an eye on the ocean looking for a suitable location on the ride back, but still managed to notice a rather mangy coyote on the cart path of one of the golf courses. The coyote moved in a healthy way, but its fur and its tail were really mangy - I kept my distance just in case it was ill, but still managed to get the shot below.

Soon after the coyote, I came across a piece of ocean where the waves were crashing off the rocks - that seemed like a suitable shot for Nanna, so I got ready and got a few shots of the waves crashing off the rocks - the one below being the best.

Besides the mangy coyote, I also saw a whale, a sea otter, various deer and lots of tourists - so a bit of a wildlife extravaganza.

This evening, I noticed that the clouds were looking good for a potential cool sunset, so I decided to head back out to the ocean and see if I could get a cool sunset shot. This time, the clouds and the sun cooperated and I managed the shot below, which in my mind at least is a fitting end to the day that Nanna passed.

2009, Day One

Jan first, 2009 - what to do? - what resolutions to enact? (and probably fail to keep for long) - I'm lying in bed mulling the options.

Then it dawned on me it's Thursday, a day I should be exercising - so that's what I did.

December (and to be honest, the end of November) saw my typical end of year slide into eating lots of junk food etc., and the results are all too evident. So, as close as I get to a resolution, I'm going to cut out the junk in January and hope to get back to where I was before the junk food binge took off.

Back to what I did - I ran my normal 10k route, mainly in the fog, but it was burning off later in the run. The fishmongers on the municipal wharf were closed today (it is a holiday). When I was running on the wharf I noticed an offloading net that I never noticed before (but given my awareness, could have been there for years) - so I took the photo below.

By lunchtime, the fog had burned off and the sky was blue (even if it was still chilly). My normal run protocol is to go for a walk later in the day to stop my legs seizing up - and as I was walking down the hill today, I noticed one of the whale watching boats in close to shore.

Soon after, I noticed a pod of dolphins near the boat too. I carried on down on to the Monterey Plaza's deck - which was full of folks looking at the dolphins, so using my mad local knowledge skillz, I headed down the coastal access route to the lower deck that most folks don't realize exists.

Here I was hanging out with hotel employees who all wanted to see the pod too (it's rare to get that many that close in). There were hundreds of dolphins, now making their way back out towards the ocean, very cool.