Magic Moment in the Shop

Magic Moment in the shop.

Magic Moment in the shop.

Frequently the magic happens when you get two parts to mate effortlessly, or you save yourself from screwing up and breaking something. Other times it is when you look up and see an amazing sunset.

This happened last fall as I was swapping a gearbox between two engines, and the only camera I had handy was my cell phone. I looked up and snapped this pic. Ran inside the house to grab my “real camera” and the moment was gone.

First Snow!

First Snow of the 2015-16 season

It snowed.

I got up this morning after a long week on the road, in California and Texas, by car and plane and car again… to find that as the clouds parted, there was fresh snow on the Cascades. The first snowfall of the season always makes me happy. It means winter is coming. Skiing is near. Chuck is happy.

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.