Earth Day!

Today was Earth Day. My take on the day was a little different than most people celebrating the day - I had been invited to Laguna Seca as they were having a track day for car journalists, where they got to drive various new cars from different manufacturers. I was invited because Ducati was bringing one of their semis full of bikes.

Unfortunately, it was the Hypermotard semi, so they had lots of Hypers to ride, but I was hoping I'd get to ride an 848 or a 1098. Never mind though, I did borrow a 2009 Hypermotard with a race kit on it (plus a bunch of other Ducati performance stuff) and ride off into the surrounding hills.

I took it up Carmel Valley Road for a 50 mile blast. The wildflowers were blooming, particularly the lupins!

It's a very fun bike to ride, so I had a great time, particularly as on a Wednesday morning, there was virtually no traffic on the road, so I got to travel along at a spirited pace.

By the time I got back to Laguna, it was lunchtime and they had catered a lunch for all of us. There was a presentation to the car journos about various green initiatives that are being persued, both in the automotive industry in general and auto racing in particular, so there was some Earth Day significance to it all.

I wandered around all the cars, there were some very nice ones in there, including an Audi R8. I enquired as to whether guests such as myself could get a ride in the cars and was told that yes, we could, just sign a waiver and grab a helmet. We couldn't drive them ourselves, only the official car journos and the track day instructors who were on hand could drive, but the track day instructors were there to take other folks around.

So, after a short wait, one of the instructors took me out in R8. For those of you not familiar with the car, it's a $114,000 4 wheel drive V8 powered super car that's a very close cousin of the Lamborghini Gallardo (Audi own Lambo these days).

We did three laps and it was very apparent even from the passenger seat that the car is very fast and very capable. Being whisked around the track was a lot of fun.

The photo below is taken half way down the corkscrew.


After that great experience, I then stood in line for a passenger trip in one of the "safety" cars. One of them was being driven by ALMS racer Ben Devlin and the other, a Mazda CX 7 SUV, was being driven by another Brit, Jeremy Barnes (I think I got his name right), who works for Mazda and also races at club level.

I got to be his passenger. The CX 7 is pictured below.


The inside of the car had a roll cage, racing seats and five point harnesses. Not sure exactly what upgrades the suspension had etc., but it definitely wasn't standard!

This trip around the track was the highlight of the day for me, mainly 'cos the driver knew what he was doing, knew the car and knew the track - and he really threw the car around the track - any time we weren't on a straight (and sometimes when we were), the tires were screaming for mercy, excellent fun!

After that, I got one of the regular instructors to take me around in a WRX Sti just to see how much quicker it is than my WRX. It was obviously quicker and more composed, but as an indicator of how much the driver makes the difference, we were passed by the "safety" car I'd just been in - it was interesting to see how sideways the driver had that car as he threw it into the turns. The Sti seemed tame in comparison.

It was a shame I didn't get to drive the cars, but hey, I cannot complain in the slightest given that I'm not even vaguely associated with the journalistic organization that was running the day.

It was a fantastic day of fun. My only concession to Earth Day - at least I was carpooling around the track!

Spring Has Sprung

Not exactly sure when Spring started (a while ago I suspect), but the wildlife in and around Monterey Bay doesn't need a second opinion, their spring has definitely sprung.

The extra fencing is up along the coastal trail to protect the beaches where the Harbor Seals raise their pups. On Sunday, I took the camera along to see what I could see. The highlight was a baby seal that was hassling its mother. I originally thought it wanted milk, as did its mother, who laid on her side, but it turned out the pup wanted to go into the ocean.

The mother wasn't too keen, but when the pup headed towards the ocean, she felt the need to follow, and soon enough they were both in the water swimming around.


My week this week is messed up normal schedule wise. It all started on Sunday when I drove up to San Jose to go watch the Sharks in the NHL playoffs (they're doing really poorly - down 0-2 in their best of 7 that they should win!). That combined with a big website push going live on Tuesday allowed me to switch my days around this week - working from home today (Monday) and in the office on Tuesday (probably well into the evening for the push).

Wednesday is a vacation day (I'll hopefully have an update from Wednesday later in the week if everything comes together), so it didn't really hurt my work week.

We're in the middle of a mini heatwave, which hurt my run this morning - though before I flaked I got to see a Sea Otter with its pup on its chest as they swam around. I was getting too hot towards the end of the run and ended up walking the last 0.4 miles back up to the house. I thought I was being a wuss until I checked the temperature when I got home, it was already 80 degrees - before 9am! I don't feel so bad now.

After working all day, and it got up to 90 degrees outside, 84 here in the house, I treated myself to a cooling paddle in the ocean this evening!

An Easter Miracle - Well, Maybe Not...

Easter is all about celebrating Christ rising from the dead (I think - it's something like that, I'm pretty sure). Well, this weekend I had something in the house rise from the dead, but I don't really think it was an Easter miracle.

After I accidentally knocked it the other evening when getting something out of the freezer, the dead as a dodo ice maker in my freezer (it's never worked as long as I've had this house) came back to life and started spewing ice into the rest of the freezer on a regular, though thankfully not too frequent basis.

I personally think of it as a zombie ice make - it just will not die - though having jiggled it this way and that over the last couple of days, it seems to have stopped again - all without me having to resort to stabbing it with a wooden stake.


Thanks to us having a religious CEO at work, we got a three day weekend (we had Friday off!), so I went down the coast two times instead of my normal one. Well, once was an excuse to go ride the Ducati again (it's still so much fun) and the other was an excuse to go down to Jade Cove again and go rummaging around for bits of jade (of which I found three or four small pieces - but the fun really is rummaging around in the pebbles trying to not get soaked by the incoming waves).

I manged to see condors both days, but today's (Sunday's) photos are the better of the bunch. I didn't see any on the way down (despite grabbing a sandwich from a deli and eating it at the condor spot on the way down), but on the way up, at the 7 pines about 2 turns before the normal condor spot, I spotted a big lump in the top of a tree.

I turned around at the condor spot and drove back down to the 7 pines spot and sure enough the big lump was a condor. I got the camera out and started snapping away, though branches of the pine somewhat obscured the view, as can be seen below.


I was determined to wait it out and see it fly, and eventually (probably 20-30 mins later), it took off, but of course it flew away from me, so I had the tree in the way to start with. Once it had cleared the tree, it was too far away for a really decent shot, but it descended towards the sea lion colony and spent some time circling over the colony, presumably looking for dinner.

A Busy Saturday

Today turned out to be a busy day, but busy in a good way, and somewhat planned in advance too as there were a bunch of things I wanted to do this weekend and planning would be required if I were going to be able to do them all.

Firstly, I went mountain biking; my now regular 16 mile ride. The trails were littered with folks training for the Sea Otter Classic races that start in a couple of weeks' time. One small group looked confused at one part of the ride, and asked if I knew the course. I did, so I told them to go in the direction I was going (as my personal route intersects with the Sea Otter route at various stages).

Unfortunately for them, this small group were better cyclists than I was, so after they followed me for a while, they passed me and were disappearing off into the distance when I watched them take the wrong trail. I was too far back to do anything about it, I hope they found their way eventually!

After I got home, I showered and left the house almost immediately as I wanted to catch the Good Old Days fair in Pacific Grove. They close down about 8 blocks of downtown and have art, craft and food stalls lining the streets. The photo below shows the first of the 8 blocks.

I wandered up and down the booths, learned some stuff about polishing jade, saw some cool posters, had some lunch (shrimp combo - battered shrimp on a skewer, fried rice, chow mien and a big egg roll) and caught up with a photographer friend who had a stall at the fair.

They also had a bunch of hot rods on a side street, so I checked them out too - the most interesting was an old style Corvette that was actually an old style body on a current Corvette's running gear. The old style body was carbon fiber and upscaled a bit as modern Corvettes are physically larger than the original ones. It was really nicely done (sorry, no photos - I should have taken one!)

After I'd checked out the fair, I headed to the coast in PG and walked back along the coastal trail. They have the extra fencing up that indicates that it's Harbor Seal birthing season, but there were no seals on the bit of extra beach - I guess we're just getting into the season.

I took the coastal trail as it drops me off outside the aquarium. The aquarium is opening a new feature on Monday about sea horses - this weekend is a sneak preview for aquarium members, so I decided to go check out the new feature.

They explain the life cycle of sea horses, and have various examples of the creatures (and their closer relatives) from all over the place. The feature is quite dark (it's downstairs near the outer bay exhibit and doesn't have windows), so the photo below is a little blurry - there are two unusual looking sea horses in the photo - both about 6 to 8 inches long.


The most impressive were the sea dragons - really large sea horses that had all these extra "bits" so that they looked like plants - but they were plants that swam around. It was a cool exhibit (they were moving too much to get a decent photo in the low light).

I've no idea if there's any sort of relationship, but seeing all these different styles of sea horses reminded me of all the different styles of stick insects - both sets of creatures trying to emulate their plant like surroundings so they blend in.

After that I headed home as I was tired (16 miles of cycling, about 6 miles of walking), watched Liverpool win (I had it taped!), watched F1 qualifying (also taped!) and currently have the Sharks game on TV as I type (they're losing 5-2 with 6 minutes to go - I felt safe updating the blog).

As both the Good Old Days fair and the aquarium preview are going on tomorrow too, you might wonder why I packed it all in to today - easy - tomorrow is supposed to be another great day weather wise (t-shirt and shorts weather today), I want to go out on the Ducati!