Living the dream baby!

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

First Grade

Summer's Over

Karsyn started teh 1st grade last Thursday. Summer is over, and it's back to school. I'm not sure who was more sad that summer was over between Karsyn and Sonya. Mom decided to end the summer with a whirlwind binge of events. She took the kids to the beach twice, Great America, and to numerous Mom's group events the week before school started.

Karsyn is exceited to be a BGOC (Big Girl on Campus). No more of that kiddy kindergarten stuff. She gets to play on the big play ground now!

Meeting Ms. Lucas
Karsyn meeting Ms. Lucas for the first time


Karsyn's Desk
Karsyn's desk

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Monterey Historics

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Spent the weekend flagging for SCCA at the Monterey Historics, which was held at Laguna Seca. Some of the most valuable cars in the world were on display in a racing environment.

The featured marque was Jim Hall’s stable of Chaparral race cars. Hall was a Texas oilman who had an engineering background and a passion for racing. He made the decision in 1962 that he needed to build his own racecar to compete with the Scarab, which was the roadster to beat at that time.

Hall ventured into the racecar R&D business and developed a stable of cars that he dubbed his “Chaparrals”. These are some of the most beautiful racecars in the world. I remember seeing a few of these when I was a kid, including his “Sucker Car” or the Chaparral 2J.

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This state of the art car had two lawnmower engines affixed to the rear end of the car, that turned two fans. The fans would generate air flow or suction that would force the tail end of the car closer to the ground. This turbine induced down-force would help the car stick to the road, which also resulted in higher speeds around the race track. It was an engineering marvel.

Hall was at Laguna over the weekend to showcase his cars, which included several parade laps around the course.

There were other cars that I remember from my childhood, including 30+ Trans Am cars from the early 70’s and 20+ Can-Am cars from the late 60’s. These were the cars that I was exposed to by my dad when I first started going to races as a kid. It was a blast down memory lane.

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The great Stirling Moss was also in attendance, to run laps in the Mercedes 300SLR, that he drove to win the Mille Miglia in Italy in 1955. Mille Miglia literally translate to “1000 Miles”, which was the length of the race. Moss did hot laps in the car, with Tonight Show host Jay Leno by his side. What makes this car really interesting is that it’s valued at over $25 million today, because of its history. It is a one of a kind.

Checkout out some of the photos I took of the event:

[General event photos]

[Chaparral photos]

Sunday, August 14, 2005

More Quick Hits

Cousins


We went to go visit Connor & Emma this weekend. Emma is chunking out, and has cheeks typical Lee cheeks. We were also introduced to this new Karioke game you can play on your XBox or PS2. Very amusing stuff given that nobody in the room could hold a tune.

Here's a pic of Sonya & Karsyn rockin out:

Karioke Twins


Some [photos of Emma]

Some [photos of Connor]

...and then there is one of the more amusing events of our weekend. Sonya was warming up the shower and left the shower door open. While her back was turned, somebody decided that the water was perfect:

Unauthorized Shower II


as always, click on any photo for a larger image.

Thursday, August 11, 2005

Quick Hits

A couple of quick hits...

Ryan asleep at the wheel


A photo share of Ryan falling asleep in his high chair. I guess you had to be there to truly recognize the entertainment value. his big sister definately got a kick out of it.

I also dug up this video that I shot on my digital camera of Karsyn catching her first fist during our trip to Yosemite earlier this summer.

Video 1 - Karsyn showing off her first catch



Video 2 - Karsyn reeling in her second fish

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Huntington Lake

Ahoy!


Sonya took the kids up to Huntington Lake with Dafna, Nathan and Ben last week for a little camping and sailing. Dafna was cmpeting in the Huntington Regatta, so Karsyn got to get in a little catamaran time. Sounds like it was a blast.

Here are some [photos from their trip]

I got to play at Laguna Seca on Saturday and Sunday. I flagged for SCCA, at the National / Regional Road Racing event. Lots of cool cars. No photos though, as cameras are a no no for flaggers. It's pretty intense stuff. You really have to be on your toes. I had a great time nonetheless. I'm going back for more in two weeks as the Monterey Historics return to the Monteey Peninsula.

Thursday, August 04, 2005

SJGP Video

I just found this online video hosting website called Vimeo. It's like Flickr, but let's you save video instead of photos. You can tag vidoe clips just like Flickr. Here are two video clips I took at the San Jose Grand Prix:

[Sebastien Bourdais doing donuts]

[Drifting exhibition]

Vimeo only allows 8MB of upload space per week, which blows. They better expand that if they want people to use this service.

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Race Weekend in San Jose

Paul Tracy chasing Oriol Servia

The sound of roaring engines filled the streets of downtown San Jose last weekend, as the city played host to the inaugural San Jose Grand Prix. I took Friday off and volunteered for the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) as a course marshal. I’ve been interested in auto racing since I was a kid, when my dad would take me to races at Laguna Seca in Monterey and Sears Point (now Infineon Raceway) in Sonoma. I finally did something about it and joined the San Francisco Region of the SCCA earlier this summer.

I got in touch with the chief marshal for SCCA SFR a month or so ago and he was gracious enough to include me in one of the biggest motor sports events of the year here in the Bay Area. As a course marshal, I was responsible for helping setup the course prior to the day’s events. This included distributing fire extinguishers, oil dry and brooms to the numerous flagging stations around the 1.6 mile race course.

The marshaling crew is also responsible for cleaning up the race course if an accident occurs. So they have a truck that hauls seven course marshals out to the accident. Four ride in the cab, while three are tethered to the tailgate by lap harnesses. Ridding around the track while sitting on that tailgate is quite the experience.

Saleen Wheel

When I signed up for marshaling, I thought I was signing up for flagging duty. Flagging requires a set of volunteers to message the car drivers of certain race conditions using colored flags. Yellow means “caution” as an example. A blue flag with a yellow stripe means “heed to the faster car that’s trying to pass you”.

As it turns out, marshaling and flagging are two different things, so I didn’t end up volunteering for the job I had intended. Given that mix up, I still had a blast marshaling. The marshaling had more than enough volunteers for the weekend, so I bowed out on Saturday.

The marshaling crew was stationed in one of the paddocks, which allowed me to checkout many of the cars that were participating during the weekend. The Trans Am series (and eventual race winner), featured Boris Said, who serves as a road racing specialist on the NASCAR tour. Boris spent most of Friday morning sitting next to all the marshals in the paddock while the race organizers tried to figure out how to make the Light Rail tracks that crossed the track n two places smoother for the cars.

One of the benefits of volunteering is that you receive a race credential as well as a guest credential for the weekend. Since I wasn’t working on the rig any longer, I called my dad to see if he wanted to check out the race.

It just so happened that he was heading back into town specifically to see the race, so we hooked up and were able to catch much of the action.

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The event itself was hailed as a major success for the City of San Jose, but from my perspective, the viewing locations for spectators were lousy. I’d prefer to see a race at Laguna Seca. The promoters did a great job of luring fans to the event, but I’m curious to see how the attendance fares next year.

Dad and I staked out a spot on the corner of Park and Market, which served as the race track’s 6th turn. The course itself was very tight, and as a result we saw a few cars fly into the tire barrier that covered the concrete wall exiting turn 6.

The only passing that occurred in the main event took place on pit row, because the track itself offered few places to overtake other cars. So in the end the pole winner, Sebastian Bourdais, led for a majority of the race, and was never really challenged by his next closest competitor.

After all the smoke cleared, I give the event a B-. The city was decked out and handled the crowds very well, but the racing itself was mediocre. Hopefully they gets those kinks worked out next year. Until then, I’ll be watching my racing down on the Monterey Peninsula.

Checkout my [Race Photos] on Flickr