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Automotive Motorcycles Ramblings Road Trips

Early Summer Road Trips Photo-Gallery: SBK at Miller and Historics at Sears Point

As usual I’m completely behind on my personal blog, but the last few weeks have been epic! We were very lucky to be able to part sponsor the Veloce Racing team at the Miller Motorsports World SuperBike weekend a couple weeks ago, and then my wonderful wife treated me to a long weekend at Sears Point (it still doesn’t seem natural to call it Infineon) for the Wine Country Classic, which they now call the Historic Car Festival.

Each event deserves, and will receive, it’s own blog entry. But for now I thought I would at least share pictures that have been posted elsewhere with some captions. Stay tuned,

dc

World SuperBike Weekend at Miller Motorsports Park, Salt Lake City, Utah

Our Moto Forza Veloce Racing Aprilia 250 Gallery from Rare SportBikes For Sale:

A giant gallery of the Miller SuperBike 2010 event:

Sonoma Historic Motorsports Festival

And here are a few shots from the recent “1st Annual” (20th Wine Country Classic) Historic Motorsports Festival. As you can tell, I’ve been fooling around with alot of Photoshop and wide-screen-like formatting:

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Sonoma Historic Motorsports Festival 2010

Sonoma Historic Motorsports Festival 2010

Sonoma Historic Motorsports Festival 2010

Sonoma Historic Motorsports Festival 2010

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More to come!

dc

Categories
Ramblings Road Trips

Road Trip to SBK at Miller Motorsports Park

13 hours 20 minutes later, we have arrived in Salt Lake City for the SBK racing at Miller Motorsports Park this weekend. I have to say that this is one of the longest road trips I’ve taken in some time, but the XC70 was a really comfortable and capable car for this journey.

Paul and I are here to enjoy the races as RareSportBikesForSale.com is now an official supporter of the Moto Forza Veloce Racing Aprilia team! Keep an eye on the RSBFS Facebook page for some live blogging and pictures from the pits.

Here are some snapshots from our long day on the road:

Decals applied the night before (new logo coming soon!)

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Freaking cold over the pass!

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A stop for lunch in the middle of nowhere

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Lunch done right on the road

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We were treated to beautiful vistas like this all day long

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Lame self portrait in progress

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Arrival at the hotel! If I was a little dumber I would’ve waited for 9:16 😉

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A proper unwinding after a long drive: Pokerstars, Heineken, and deli plate

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And ready for tomorrow’s action

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The Moto Forza Veloce Racing team heads out early for qualifying tomorrow morning at 8:30 and we’re going to make a serious effort to be there — and hopefully see them positioned in the top 10 in a field of 45 (17/45 today).

Good night all!

dc

Categories
Automotive Photography Ramblings Road Trips

Our Visit to the 2010 Portland Auto Show

Nearly two weeks ago now, Shana and I made a day of the Portland Auto Show. We used to go every year to fantasize about new cars, but have missed the event in recent years. It’s fun to check out everything up close and personal without the hassle of a salesman crawling down you neck.

We started our day by hitting up the S2ki Forum Hillsboro Honda meetup for S2000 owners. I only got a couple of quick pictures but it was fun to finally meet some forum members I had met online numerous times but never connected with in person. Great job getting 30 cars to come out in the middle of winter Ira! Check out all the pictures on S2ki.

We were fairly rushed at the meet because we had an appointment after that to check out a used Infinity QX4 for the missus. Looked promising in the pictures, but was a little too rough for us. We’re actually having a pretty tough time finding a suitable car for Shana because we’re so used to enthusiast vehicle shopping, which usually results in clean and documented cars to shop for. We were thinking of going with a more dependable Japanese variant, but they’re just not cared for like the European rides we’re used to looking at. Now we’re thinking of going back to European shopping in the form of a Land Rover Discovery. We’re back in Portland this weekend, so we’ll probably stop and look a few then.

Then it was on to check into our downtown Portland hotel, Hotel Lucia. What a beautiful place and fantastic service! Not to mention it was in the center of everything we had planned and easy Max trip to the Convention Center for the show. Can’t wait to stay there again!

After freshening up, it was on to the Portland Auto Show. Tickets were reasonably priced at $10 and at the ticket window we were reminded that many major manufacturers were not there due to cutbacks and slow sales. This was a bummer as BMW, Saab, Mercedes, and many others were definitely cars we were looking forward to jumping into.

{warning: really crappy images ahead. I’ve been too busy to post-process these but wanted to put up what I had.}

Ron Tonkin brought out a few new cars and a couple older ones from his collection. These were all front and center outside the main conference areas:

Ferrari Daytona Spyder Ferrari Enzo Maserati Ferrari F430

MotoCorsa was also in attendance with the latest Lotus and Ducati offerings. The black Sport 1000 was exactly like the demo bike I rode a couple years back.

Lotus Evora Silver Lotus Elise Ducati Sport 1000 Aprilia RSV4

Then it was on to the Audi and Porsche areas. I have to admit, I wanted to check out the Panamera because it looks so bad in pictures. It didn’t disappoint, it’s ugly and HUGE! First the blasphemy that is the Cayenne and now this abomination. So sad that a more true to spirit business model couldn’t have been used to get them into the 21st century.

Audi Rings

Audi Q7

Porsche Panamera

Porsche 997 Turbo

The local SCCA chapter also had a nice area set up. There were several car corral areas that usually aren’t present, likely due to so many manufacturers pulling out this year.

Porsche 996 race car VW Beetle Race Car Porsche Moby Dick 935 Race Car

And here are few more random snaps. You’ll notice how crowded Saturday afternoon was. I think every Dad in town got babysitting duty as there were lots of kids running around. Reminds me that we prefer going on Thursday mid-day when it’s super quiet!

After the show we met up with our good friends Danno, his wife Angie, and our close friend Julie who also happened to be in Portland that day. We had a fantastic dinner at Mother’s Bistro just a few blocks from the hotel. What a meal! Plan on leftovers no matter how big your appetite is!

And by chance, another friend of ours was in town for a whirlwind 48 hour tour, my close friend Ed. He lives in Atlanta now, but amazingly we’ve managed to meet up several times in the past few years. We met for a nightcap at Pazzo and then stumbled upstairs to crash after a very long day.

We’re heading back up to Portland for a wedding at Edgefield this weekend. That makes about 4 trips up there in 5 weeks. Maybe we should get a condo!

dc

Categories
Automotive Motorcycles On The Job Photography Road Trips

A Few Pictures from the Seattle Motorcycle Show

Just back from the Seattle motorcycle show. I’ll get a full gallery together soon, but for now enjoy these 1680px wallpapers!

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CBR600RR-Lela-Edition-Wallpaper

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Ducati-Stunt-Team-at-Seattle-International-Auto-Show

Yamaha-Racebike-Wallpaper

I put together some thoughts over at RareSportBikesForSale.com as well. Good night all,

dc

Categories
Automotive On The Job Photography Road Trips

Day 1 in Scottsdale Prepping for the 2009 Brighton Rally

After a very long day of travel (3 hours fly time, 7 hours airport time), we arrived late last night in Scottsdale. Our hosts, Shane and Karen from Brighton Motorsport, were very patient with our ever changing travel plans and were good enough to pick us up, even at 11:30pm. Thank you guys!

Today we went with Shane to pick up their 1972 Ferrari 365GTC/4. It has been getting the once over by their Ferrari specialist to make sure it’s ready for the rally on Sunday. It’s getting a little special attention because it’s being guest driven by none other than two time Indy 500 champion, Arie Luyendyk (wikipedia entry)! Here is a picture when we picked it up:

ferrari_365gtc-4

Then we were on to Brighton Motorsports. I followed Shane in his Tahoe while he gave the 365 it’s first drive in some time. It was purchased earlier this year, but he confesses it hasn’t been driven as much as he would’ve liked. Not to worry, he as he made up for lost time and treated us to some wonderful music from that big V12 motor. A short while later, he handed us the keys to give it some more test time. It runs fantastic and is very easy to drive once out of congestion. Here is a picture of me with a huge grin on my face behind the wheel:

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And here is a short video of our time behind the wheel:

We got back home just in time for Shana to catch the sunset as I downloaded images. Check this out:

Scottsdale-Sunset

As you can tell, we’re having an awesome time! If you’d like to follow our updates on the Brighton Rally, you can become a fan of the Official Brighton Facebook page or follow our Twitter page.

dc