Car Photo of the Day: Prestigious Porker Pilot

This 911 is being driven by a famous person, made famous partially for his prowess in piloting Porsches. Do you know who he is?

I didn’t take the photo because of it… I just like this particular style of photo, as many of you know. I call it “the hero shot” as it makes any car look heroic. It is easier to look at than it is to take however, as it involves some derring-do out the side of a fast-moving car, risking life, limb, and camera gear in the process. In this case I tripped the shutter just a tad too late, but it’s still a good shot.

Shaun Redmond is ineligible as he was with me on this event.

Last thing I’ll post about the recent weather…

I love the Internet. The fact that data about anything you might even be slightly interested in is just out there just warms the cockles of my heart. My friend Dan sent me a link to this satellite image. It was taken on the morning of December 17th, 2008. While it is focussed on Oregon, and is cropped about 60 miles south of my house, it shows the nature of the snowfall that blanketed the Northwest before Christmas. This was the morning after the snow first fell. We were expecting a dusting of an inch or two, and instead received a dump of 12 to 14 inches. I drove the boys down to Seattle that day to fly to Colorado, and this high-pressure and clear skies vanished quickly. Thankfully I had already started my timelapse gear and captured the brilliant sunrise and clear morning before those clouds you see on the western edge of the photo barreled in and delivered another foot of snow that night. I struggled home the next evening, and then got stuck in my driveway. The following week of being snowbound was sort of fun, but as it stretched into three weeks our patience ran thin.

It appears the weather has settled back to rain and in fact has now cleared – perhaps a bit of sunshine and dry weather will bring the Jaguar out of it’s hibernation?

The Big Snow of 2008-9, start to finish.

I finally had a chance last night to edit together all my time-lapse footage from the big snowfall over the holidays. Our snowfall events here in the Pacific Northwest generally are short-lived. I set up my time lapse gear to capture the rapid snowmelt that USUALLY happens, but instead it ended up continuing to fall and then staying around for over 3 weeks! So I varied the shots and continued to capture until the very end. I’ve compiled it all into a ~7 minute video. See the snow accumulate and then melt, icicles grow and shrink. Trees shake off their mantles of snow. At this latitude (>48°N) at this time of year days are short and nights long, hence the darkness. Enjoy!

Car Photo of the Day: Name that car!

Name That Car!

I ran into a friend and occasional c.g.o commentator Sandro Menzel at an industry event last week. I introduced him to Shaun Redmond, and they both had iPhones with car pictures on them. Shaun’s with his Volvo P1800es restoration, and Sandro’s with his Jensen-Healey and many, many shots of various cars. He showed me this pic and asked if I could “name that car”… I stared at it for about five minutes and just as I was about to hand the phone back to him and give up I pulled a name out of thin air… and nailed it. Sandro must think I’m some sort of genius… but honestly it was just a damn good guess. 😉

So with Sandro’s permission here is the photo in question. Can you Name That Car?

(Since Shaun Redmond was present when I guessed it, he is disqualified. Sorry Shaun!)

Years in the making, and passing.

I was looking for a set of photos from an event in 1999 earlier today and stumbled upon this image from May of 1998. It was taken at the end of the New England 1000, where my Dad & I won our class in our first outing together in the 65E. The car was pretty fresh from it’s initial restoration and my Dad was freshly retired. I was living in the UK back then, but flew over to the east coast for the week. We had a blast!

While it was not really the start of either of our “car guy” lives, it certainly was the start of a very important era for the two of us. It has been over 10 years since that photo was taken. We’re both older, and a bit wiser. We’ve been on many many rallies since. From cost-to-coast “Vanishing Point” high-speed adventures, to weekend evil puzzlers. We still do our best to get out and have a blast. 😉

I hope to do at least two rallies with my Dad again this year, so stay tuned.

If you are terminally curious, I can dig up the URL for my very first rally report. Let me know.