Return to The Ridge

yep, this is the right place...

With the Clowntown Roadshow BMW E30 out of commission indefinitely with a blown head, I’ve been catching rides as an “arrive and drive(r)” with various teams at west coast races for the past year. I drove a Humber Super Snipe (really) at Sonoma in December, a Volvo station wagon (a really fast turbo one!) at The Ridge at a “Lucky Dog racing League” event, and with The Flying Scotsmen in their expanding fleet of E30s at Buttonwillow last month. Often times these have been last-minute affairs, that have cost me very little, if nothing beyond travel costs. Right after Buttonwillow I check the 24 Hours of LeMons forums and read a plea from a new rookie team for an experienced driver willing to help them out at The Ridge. I reply, and after an email exchange with the team captain, agree to help them out. We swap lots of emails about their car, passing tech, things to bring, things I will bring, track etiquette, the paddock scene, etc. With as much wisdom imparted through ASCII and RFC2822 as possible, the day comes to drive up to Shelton, meet the team, and race.
Continue reading “Return to The Ridge”

Closed my smugmug account.

I really liked their ease of creating an online store for selling photographs, but they price-hiked their service into the stratosphere, and auto-locked me into their highest tier. Not exactly a great way to build customer loyalty. While I didn’t do much to promote it, the site always made enough to break-even for me every year when it was ~$150. But at $250 it just would not pencil out. Farewell!

Recent Time-lapse Photography

Here are some recent samples… snippets really, of my time-lapse noodling. Most are shots from my house, looking in some western direction, observing weather, sun rises and sets, some astronomical movement, and even some local fauna. One of these days I’ll have the bandwidth to edit these into something real. Until then, enjoy a slice of life in Central Oregon!

Be sure to click the “HD” option if available, and go full-screen.

I’m serving these off of Facebook rather than YouTube to spare you the ads. Please let me know if you have any issues viewing them.

Post by Chuck Goolsbee.

Post by Chuck Goolsbee.

Post by Chuck Goolsbee.

Post by Chuck Goolsbee.

Post by Chuck Goolsbee.

Post by Chuck Goolsbee.

Latest time-lapse

Post by Chuck Goolsbee.

Hoping the embed code works. If you can, view it full-screen and HD to get the whacky atmospheric effects from the long (~600mm) lens.

I shot this time lapse this morning out my living room window. I was able to predict the moonset path with an iPhone app, and then set up the tripod, camera, and intervalometer. After the moon set I did some low-tech panning and zooming…. yeah, not super-smooth, sorry.

I hope you enjoy it.

On the road again…

awakening from hiberation

I really drove the 65E today for the first time in a long time. Work. Moving. Life… it has all kept me too busy to give it (and this blog!) the attention it deserves. It fired on the first try(!), and drove really well. I always forget what an amazing machine it is if I haven’t driven it in a while. The wonderful exhaust note. The amazing view out over the bonnet. The “snick-snick” of shifts.

I had to make a run to the grocery store and figured “why not? I’ll take the Jag.” A 30 mile trip turned into 100 miles just because I could. Left the grocery and pointed the bonnet up the highway to Mt. Bachelor.. went all the way to Sparks Lake before I turned around and came home.

Mt. Bachelor from Sparks Lake.

Oregon Cascades

Of course, nothing is perfect, most of all this car. I noted a few broken things that I’ll have to fix soon. Stay tuned.