Braille Rally

Posted on June 8, 2013 by dhill

Today I participated in the Braille Rally for the benefit of the American Council of the Blind and Visually Impaired of Colorado. I’ve never done a rally before. The idea is you drive from point A to point B following a set of directions. The object is to get to the destination having driven the closest number of miles to the control. It doesn’t matter how long it takes you, it’s not a race. Typically, the clues can be quite tricky. But for this rally it was simply following the directions as only the driver could be looking for clues.

There where three ‘classes’ based on the navigator: Braille, large print, and sighted. The sighted navigators had to wear glasses that simulate visual impairment. I didn’t get a good car count. I was told we had about a dozen cars but there might be a late registration. They were hoping to get more people to participate, so it’s disappointing the turnout was so low. There were five LoCo members, not including Skip, who was the rally master. Two Elises, an Evora, an Esprit, and an Elan. We also had a Hyundai Veloster, a Subaru, a classic Chevy Nova and a Corvette ZR-1 as well as a couple Miatas.

We met in the parking lot of what used to be a Walgreen’s. For some reason, I was thinking it would be on the north side of Colfax, so I drove around lost for a while. I finally got my act together and found the place, to be told that everybody was watching me drive around aimlessly. We got checked in, and chatted over coffee and muffins. Drivers got souvenir bags and were assigned numbers on nice magnetic signs. By my count, half the cars were fiberglass, so the magnetic signs weren’t much help.

I never use the trip odometer on the car, so I don’t know how to reset it. Somebody showed me once, back on the Mine Tour drive, but I’ve forgotten and didn’t manage to press the magic button this morning. No problem, I’ve been using a speedometer app on my smart phone for the last several weeks. Works great, has a nice trip odometer, trip clock, altimeter, compass. And it’s a speedometer.

Rebecca was my navigator. We were in the large print class. Very nice lady, very educated and accomplished. She told me a bit about her family, where they’ve lived, and about her vision impairment. She has some permanent loss, but through the miracle of modern technology she shouldn’t lose any more.

So we hit the road. Skip sent us off one at a time, based on the light crossing Colfax. That way, nobody would be able to follow the leader, we’d all have to do our own navigating. The route was pretty simple, taking us through Golden Gate Canyon, Blackhawk and Central City, Evergreen. We missed one turn, because it wasn’t signed very well, but I had the impression everybody else missed it too. We caught up to Ross here; he figured it out before we did.

It was when we got on to 285 that things went south. The speedometer app went a bit haywire, showing a speed that was clearly wrong. It also quit counting the miles. I tried to remember what the trip odometer read when we were trying to reset it. So I wasn’t sure I had the right number, and without the right number, we wouldn’t stand a chance of winning.

The rally ended at Ferrari of Denver, one of the many sponsors of the rally. There we had a light lunch of fruit and small sandwiches. When we checked in with Skip, he gave us a trivia quiz to use in case we needed to break a tie. I think we got two or three of the fifteen questions correct. As a Lotus owner, I should have gotten another one – what does ACBC stand for. I didn’t know the A.

After we ate, we had a little award ceremony. Top three finishers in each class got trophies. Ross suggested it was like t-ball – everybody gets a trophy. But in fairness, they were clearly expecting more than a dozen participants. I heard somebody say they had magnetic signs for fifty cars.

Second Place, Large Print

In the end, we got second place in large print. I was surprised. But it turns out several people didn’t manage to find Golden Gate Canyon and ended up nearly in Boulder, so even without a good odometer we did okay.

Tomorrow is the big CP Colorado show. It’s my first time entering the car in a show, and I put it in for judging. I’ve been joking that I’ll get last place. Somebody has to be last. I understand the judging is based almost entirely on how clean the car is. I’ve been too busy to get the car detailed. It has some black marks around the rear wheels, and there’s a big blob of adhesive on the dash where the previous owner mounted his radar detector. I washed it this afternoon, got it as clean as I’ve ever gotten it before. But it’s not a show winning car. It’ll be fun anyway.

Oh, and I decided to put the hardtop on for the show. Can’t recall the last time I had the hard top on.

Ready for the show

Emerald Lake

Posted on May 29, 2013 by dhill

I called Jerry last week and suggested a hike. He reminded me that Memorial Day was coming up and said we should hike to Emerald Lake. I’ve already hiked there once this year, but of course Jerry was correct: it was Memorial Day weekend.

Something like thirty years ago, Jerry and I first hiked to Emerald Lake on Memorial Day weekend. That was probably the first time I’d hiked on snow. We had a good time and repeated it the next year, and the year after that. By then it started to feel like a tradition so we kept going to Emerald Lake on Memorial Day weekend every year, unless we did it the week before or the week after. We started taking other friends along. We had a different group each year.

We lost track of how many years we went. No, that’s not true – we never kept track. We didn’t know how many times we opened the season with Emerald Lake, but it was certainly in the teens. One year I considered making t-shirts: “The Umpteenth Annual Emerald Lake Hike”. When Jerry moved to Albuquerque, I continued the hike with other friends for a while. Then, of course, we moved to Phoenix and I went years without visiting Emerald Lake.

The hike this time of year has always been a snow hike, and the lake has always been frozen over. I had never heard of microspikes before recently, so all those years it was just hiking boots without traction. I always had difficulties with two places on the trail. One just above Nymph Lake where we traverse steep snow and one at Dream Lake that’s not so steep but is along the water. I’m much more comfortable now with the microspikes.

At Emerald Lake, the ice breaks up around the edges near the outlet first. Sometimes, it’s still a few inches thick but won’t support any weight – it’s in hexagonal pieces as long and thick as your finger. If you toss a rock near the edge of the ice, a bunch of these pieces break off, tinkling a bit like wind chimes as they float. One year smaller rocks weren’t busting the ice, so Chris tried to throw a bigger one in. He lost his footing and went into the drink with the rock.

We generally had good weather. Once it was calm and cloudy, with the ceiling just above our heads when we arrived at the parking lot. When we got to Dream Lake, we couldn’t see the other end of the lake; we’d hiked into the clouds.

Saturday was a fine day, with a deep blue nearly cloudless sky. We sometimes take these blue skies for granted here in Colorado, but we really shouldn’t. You don’t see skies this blue in L.A. or Ohio, and not really that often in Phoenix. On a clear day, as you climb to higher elevations the blue just gets deeper and deeper. It’s almost purple when you look straight up when standing on the summit of a high peak. Anyway, a fine day: car thermometer read 64 at the parking lot, only the barest wisp of a cloud visible, and no wind.

As usual, there were quite a few people on the trail. Just a few yards from Bear Lake we passed a couple hikers who said they were surprised to find snow there. I had to laugh a little to myself. The mountains are at perhaps their most beautiful right now; I seldom see Longs Peak with more snow on it. Didn’t they look at the mountains as they drove to Estes Park?

We were never out of sight or earshot of other hikers. I only saw one other person wearing spikes – most were in sneakers, and most of those wore socks that didn’t cover their ankles. Most were also empty handed – not carrying food or water. But it’s a short hike, and I should applaud them getting that far, as something like 99% of visitors to the park don’t get more than a hundred yards from their cars.

At Dream Lake we scouted the route to Haiyaha. Not too many tracks along the summer route to the lake and as I was the only one with spikes we stuck with the original plan to lunch at Emerald. We took a short break for a snack before continuing.

Before long, we were at the lake and found a nice vantage point to watch the world go by. Most people tend to congregate where the trail dumps hikers at the lake’s edge; we went clockwise a short way around the lake from there, climbing the rocky slope to the shade of some trees.

Almost immediately, somebody saw a group of skiers near the top of one of the couloirs above the lake. I shot a couple of pictures before setting the camera up for the time lapse. Click on the picture to enlarge it; the skiers are plainly visible not far from the top.

We were there for about an hour. The skiers took their time getting down; they hiked past us as we were packing up. They told us they put boots on the trail at eight and hiked to the top of Flattop. There was another group of skiers above them, but they were taking much longer to descend.

I was hoping the skiers would show up in the time lapse. Maybe not so much the skiers themselves, as at best they’d just be specks, but the tracks they left were plainly visible to the eye. There were already a couple of bright white tracks through the dusty snow and these guys crossed them to make a couple of double helixes. But the snow is too white, the dust plainly visible to the human eye washed out on the camera image.

I shot time laps with both the GoPro and the SLR. Although it was cloudless when we hit the trail, I figured that by noon we’d likely see some clouds. Starting about the time we got to the lake the thin wisps of cloud built up, never getting very thick, but by mid afternoon filled the whole sky with overcast. This time I prefer the footage from the GoPro as the canyon is so narrow the wider angle works better. I made this video longer than the usual time lapse. It’s about two thirds of the total footage shot, so you’ll sometimes notice the same clouds twice.

Timetable

	Out	Back
Trailhead	10:00 AM	01:25 PM
Emerald Lake	11:35 AM	12:35 PM

Colorado Good: Four to the 4

Posted on May 22, 2013 by dhill

The Colorado Grand is an annual charity tour for older cars that covers about a thousand miles in five days, attracting entrants from around the world. Lotus Colorado started doing a smaller version of this for group members. It’s not restricted to pre-1960 cars. It’s not even restricted to Lotuses. Here’s how Ross described it last month:

Many of you have been with us on our Colorado Good, where we do a bit less than the Colorado Grand; three days instead of four, about 800 miles instead of over a thousand miles; stay at good hotels instead of grand hotels and dine at good small yet really cool specialty restaurants with reasonable prices. This will be our fourth trip and will go to the Four Corners via Telluride and Pagosa Springs.

For one reason or another, we haven’t been able to join on the earlier trips. Everything worked out for this one though, so we signed up.

Saturday: Denver to Telluride

We met at The Fort restaurant near Morrison for a 9:00am departure. Actually, everybody else met closer to 8:30 but we were running a bit late and managed to show up a minute or two before everybody hit the road. We started with just the Denver area contingent and picked up folks from other locations as we went.

When I was a kid, we parked the Airstream in a trailer park called Chateau Chaparral near Nathrop, where Chalk Creek flows into the Arkansas River. They had their own suspension bridge over the Arkansas and we rode horses or dirt bikes in the national forest on the east side of the river. We made the drive there from Denver almost every week those summers. So I’ve probably been up and down that section of 285 a hundred times, maybe half as a passenger and half as a driver. So the first part of the drive was old hat for me.

Just after the junction with Colorado Hwy 9, we passed an orange Elise, the first of the Colorado Springs folks. We met the rest at Johnson’s Village, three red cars: a Corvette, a Porsche Boxster, and an Elise. After gassing up and a short break, we continued on to Gunnison for lunch at the Palisades Restaurant, meeting the final member of the group. We were now thirteen cars: 5 Elises, 2 Esprits, an Evora, an Elan, a Birkin, a Corvette, a Boxster, and a Honda S2000.

After lunch the route led us through Montrose and to Ridgway where we took another short break. We intended to stop at a gas station on the corner of US 550 and Colorado 62, but a tractor trailer rig had just run over a sign and was stopped to try and put it back up. The road was under construction a few yards up 62 and between the two traffic was getting pretty snarled up. We pulled over a couple blocks farther up.

Here we met a police officer who was a bit upset with us. He had a report that at 3:48 a red car in our group ran somebody off the road. We had been driving in a spirited way, shall we say, and running near the back of the group I saw a few aggressive passes, but didn’t see anybody get run off the road. In any event, we expected to be under scrutiny for the rest of the day.

I had been over the road between the junction of 285 and 50 a handful of times, even once in the Elise, but from Ridgway to Telluride was new to me. Climbing out of Ridgway the road sweeps in great arcs, giving us great views of the mountain range to the south. The weather was dramatic, clouds dropping veils of snow and rain. Very beautiful. I had mounted the GoPro camera while we were stopped, but the precipitation compromised the footage. Perhaps I’ll be able to salvage some short highlights.

The town of Telluride is at the end of a short spur road at the eastern end of a dead-end valley. Prominently in view climbing the steep end of the valley is a four-wheel drive road, its zig-zag filled with snow. As we arrived, a bit of a storm was descending on the village. We gathered for margaritas and conversation while thunder clapped just before the snow started to fall.

Two guys were walking down the street and saw the red Elise parked second from the end (next to the ‘Vette, but out of the picture above). “Cool! A Lotus! I want one of these!” They continued to the corner, where I heard “Another Lotus!” I really wanted to yell at them “Not two Lotuses – ten!”

Somebody once told me the name Telluride was shortened from “To hell you ride” but this turns out to be a tall tale. It’s actually named for compounds of the element tellurium. The place was founded in 1878 as Columbia, but the post office changed the name in 1887 to avoid confusion with Columbia, California. I had guessed it must have been founded around 1880 judging by the street names. One street is Galena, which is Ulysses S. Grant’s home town.

We crossed three notable passes on Saturday.

Kenosha Pass (10,000′)

There’s not much to Kenosha Pass. In the mining days, it was called Kenosha Hill or Kenosha Summit, named for Kenosha, Wisconsin, the home of Clark Herbert, a Kenosha Pass stage driver. It crosses from the South Platte drainage into South Park and tops out at around 10,000 feet. Major Long’s party didn’t go up the canyon in 1820, deeming it too rugged. Kenosha pass was first crossed by the Bean-Sinclair party in 1830. In May of 1879 the railroad made it to the summit and US 285 follows that old route, which is in indication of it’s fairly shallow grade and lack of sharp turns.

Trout Creek Pass (9,346′)

This is the passage from Antero Junction at the west edge of South Park to the Arkansas valley. Zebulon Pike crossed the pass in 1806 when it was an ancient trail. He was correct in thinking the next drainage north was the South Platte, but mistaken when calculating that the next drainage beyond that was the Yellowstone. The Denver and South Park and Colorado Midland railroads were built over it in the 1880’s. The South Park side isn’t much, just a straight climb of a few hundred feet but the Arkansas side is a nice twisty road with excellent views of the Collegiate range: Princeton, Yale, and Harvard, all 14er’s.

Monarch Pass (11,312′ CD)

Crossing the continental divide at the southern end of the Sawatch Range, the summit affords views many consider the finest in the area. The current route was devised by Charles D. Vail and the road opened in November of 1939. The first highway department signs bore the words “Vail Pass” but unknown persons slopped the signs with black paint overnight. On oil companies’ maps it was called Agate-Monarch Pass and before long the “Agate” was dropped.

Sunday: Telluride to Pagosa Springs

After breakfast in the hotel, we saddled up and headed to the Four Corners. There was a bit of drama at first, as one of the Elises had battery problems. That was quickly solved, though, and we were soon on the road. The drive south on 145 gives nice views of the peaks to the east before flattening out in drier climes and passing through Delores and Cortez.

Before long we were in the desert of the Four Corners monument. It’s really not much of a place, but it was recently improved. I had understood it was recently moved, but this seems not to be the case. It is, in fact, 1807 feet east of where modern surveyors would locate it, but the Supreme Court has established that the location of the monument is the legal corner of the four states. We stopped here for photos and a break before heading to Farmington for lunch.

On the way to Farmington, we were passed by a crazy Indian in a Ford pickup. Imagine coming up behind 13 sports cars and deciding they are going too slow. We weren’t in danger of being arrested for our speed, but we were moving at a pretty good clip. This guy couldn’t wait to get by us, passing whenever and wherever he felt like it, generally across the double yellow line. He finally got past our lead cars when we entered Shiprock, NM. In a school zone.

The drive from Cortez to Farmington (with our detour to the Four Corners) is a pretty dull drive. Lots of straight lines and four lane roads. Some of the rock formations are interesting, but again this is an area I’ve driven through many times. After lunch at the Three Rivers Brewery, we stayed on US 64 until the junction with US 84. This junction is a T, with 64 to the right and 84 to the left. A herd of cattle was grazing in the field at the top of the T. When we accelerated away from the stop sign, one of the Elises was loud enough to cause the cattle to stampede.

The drive from here to Pagosa is quite pretty. The landscape quickly transitions from desert to mountain pine forest and the road sweeps left and right while climbing and descending. US 64 meets US 160 at another T intersection on the east side of Pagosa Springs.

We stayed at the Springs Resort, a very nice place. After checking in, we went out for dinner then back to the resort to relax in the 23 pools along the banks of the San Juan River. The pools vary in distance from the main spring, so each is a different temperature, varying from 83 to 114 degrees. If you’re daring, you can step from the pools into the river, which we were told was 44 degrees. A few of us did, but not me!

Sunday’s drive crossed only one notable pass.

Lizard Head Pass (10,222′)

The pass marks the headwaters of two tributaries of the Colorado: the Delores River and the San Miguel River. A trail crossed the pass as early as 1833, a wagon road in the 1870’s, and the Rio Grande Southern Railroad in 1891. The railroad was laid to connect Silverton and Ouray. The distance between the two was 26 miles by wagon road while the rail was 217 miles and was described as “the futile, transcendently triumphant Rio Grande Southern … a masterpiece of evasion.” The railroad was bankrupt in two years.

Monday: Pagosa Springs to Denver

After breakfast we headed east along US 160, stopping for a group photo on Wolf Creek Pass before crossing to the San Luis valley.

I’ve made the drove over Wolf Creek many times. It’s not the frightening trip it used to be, back when C. W. McCall wrote a song about it:

Well, from there on down it just wasn’t real purdy: it was hairpin county and switchback city. One of ’em looked like a can full’a worms; another one looked like malaria germs. Right in the middle of the whole damn show was a real nice tunnel, now wouldn’t you know?

It’s much straighter now, and two lanes up on each side, two lanes down most of the western side. The only dicey spot is the avalanche shed on the eastern side. It often has water flowing across the road, and because it’s in the shade all the time it can get icy. But it was nice to hear the song of the engines reverberate off the walls.

Lunch was planned for Buena Vista, but we decided to eat in Salida so we split from the group. We didn’t want to retrace our route back to Denver, so rather than staying on 285 we headed up Colorado 9 from Fairplay to Breckenridge over Hoosier Pass. The weather forecast indicated it might be snowing on the high peaks of northern Colorado. I wanted to go over Loveland Pass rather than through the Eisenhower Tunnel. We encountered a small flurry on Hoosier and decided it wasn’t bad enough to dissuade us from the more interesting route.

By the time we reached A Basin it was snowing fairly heavily. The ski area is still open but there wasn’t much traffic on the pass. Luckily, it also wasn’t that cold so the snow melted as it hit the road. A snow plow was out dropping sand but we managed to pass him easily and ran into no other traffic until we reached the interstate. It looked like a few inches of snow had fallen and was blowing off the drifts along the road. But all was clear not long after the summit. I had the GoPro running for the pass, but when we stopped to take the camera off the car I saw that it was iced over. Checking the video, it began to ice up right away, near A Basin.

The remainder of the drive was down I-70, with more traffic than I expected. They are working on widening the road through the twin tunnels east of Idaho Springs. They set up a detour there with the eastbound lanes running on the south side of the river.

We crossed five notable passes, three across the Continental Divide. (Trout Creek Pass is the fifth, already described above.)

Wolf Creek Pass (10,850′ CD)

Separating the San Juan and Rio Grande drainages, Wolf Creek Pass runs 52 miles. The west side is particularly beautiful. The pass had no noticeable use before 1913, when the road was built. Before then, travelers from San Luis Valley had no choice but to take the narrow guage railroad from Alamosa over Cumbres Pass to get to Durango.

Poncha Pass (9,011′)

Poncha (Spanish for “mild”) separates the Rio Grande drainage from the Upper Arkansas. Its first notable crossing was in 1779 by Governor Juan Bautista De Anza when he was pursuing a band of terrorist Comanche. In 1853, a man in Captain John W. Gunnison’s survey party crossed the pass and called it “Gunnison Pass”. I find it a more entertaining drive than Wolf Creek. The southern side isn’t much, as the San Luis Valley is much higher than the Upper Arkansas Valley. The descent down the northern side features long sweeping curves and a pretty view of Mt. Shavano.

Hoosier Pass (11,541′ CD)

There are two passes named Hoosier. This one is the division point between the Sawatch and Front ranges. John Charles Fremont crossed it on June 22, 1844 and homesick Indiana prospectors named it about 1860. It is surrounded by dramatic peaks – a number of 14er’s including Lincoln, Bross, Cameron, Democrat, and Quandary. The pass became a road in May of 1861 when nine wagons crossed it.

Loveland Pass (11,992′ CD)

This road doesn’t get nearly as much traffic as it used to. It has been bypassed by the Eisenhower Tunnel, which was originally to be named the Straight Creek Tunnel. William A. H. Loveland was wounded in the Mexican American War, mined for gold in California, and worked futilely to put a canal across Panama for Commodore Vanderbilt. He arrived in Golden in 1859 where he used his profits from selling axes and mousetraps to build railroads. In 1879 he hired 100 men and ordered them up Clear Creek with dynamite, scoops and chuck wagons. The road was across the pass by mid-May and on June 4, fifty wagons were counted going over.

Pueblo Motorsports Park

Posted on May 11, 2013 by dhill

I went to Pueblo Motorsports Park with CECA today. I was hoping for a better turnout. Only about forty cars registered, and a couple of cars ran only a lap or two. Even so, it seemed like traffic was heavy. There were a lot of very fast cars there, and cars are split up by driver experience rather than speed. There were Viper race cars, high horsepower Mustangs, and Nissan GT-R’s in every group. Passing was allowed in only two places, and I’m sure it was frustrating for the fast cars to be stuck behind us lower hp cars.

The red car turned only a single lap

I ran in the Red (experienced) group. My top speed, at the end of the straight before turn 1, was 107mph. The Viper race cars were hitting 140. I ran on inexpensive street tires while many were on racing slicks. The slowest car in our group was a classic Mustang. I was probably ten seconds a lap quicker. I ran with a couple of Porsches that were doing very similar times. I let one by on the straight but he never managed to pull away from me. I enjoyed those couple laps immensely. I get faster laps running alone, but there’s a certain joy in matching speeds with a car that is on better tires and has more horsepower.

There were four Lotuses, all Elises. Fellow LOCO member Judd drove his blue one. There was a black one, turbocharged. And Joe’s red one. I first met Joe last year at this event. He is quite the hot shoe, turning very quick times I will probably never match. His car was there today, but he wasn’t. I was sorry to learn he’s been diagnosed with ALS and can no longer drive.

There were five Vipers there. One was a CECA regular – Alan’s pretty maroon car. Also a silver one, a shiny black one, and two matte black. The matte ones were race cars, owned by guys in Estes Park. Carriage Hills, my old neighborhood. They previously ran the cars in the Viper Cup and a GT series. They’re not running in either series this year, so will exercise the cars at the CECA events. These are monster cars. They ran several very fast laps at the end of the day, by themselves on the track. It was the only time all day they could really run at speed – they were that much faster than anything else there.

Judd and I were working turn 4 for the final session. All the fast cars were out, and the GT-R’s were fastest. One of the Mustangs was quite quick as well. The two Vipers ran nose to tail for several laps. They talked to each other by radio, one teaching the other the track. When all the other cars left the track, they opened it up. They had only been cruising until then. Now you could hear the V-10 clearly from the opposite end of the track. Still nose to tail, but now at real racing speed. I thought it was a lot of fun to watch, particularly from such a nice vantage point.

In addition to the Elises and Vipers, there were three Nissan GT-R’s. These are also quite fast cars. All wheel drive, putting out something like 500hp, with all sorts of computers that help the driver keep it on the track. Filling out the group were the usual assortment of Corvettes, Mustangs, and Porches with a Sunbeam Tiger, Mazda Miata, Hyundai Tiburon, a Cobra replica and a few other miscellaneous.

One of the miscellaneous

Some time ago, I was using a smart phone app to do my lap timing. I had some trouble with it and quit using it, then upgraded phones. Since then, I’ve been getting lap times from the video, which is not ideal. I finally got around to getting a new timer a few days ago. It’s called RaceChrono. Very simple to use, much easier than the last one. It doesn’t have as many features as others I’ve looked at, but it fits my needs.

I ran only three sessions, as Judd and I volunteered to work a corner in the afternoon. The first session was 10 laps, 8 laps in the second, and 7 in the third. There were some kids volunteering on the corners. Their only compensation for the day was getting rides. I gave rides in the second and third sessions. Both passengers really got a kick out of their rides, which made me happy. The second guy said “Aside from combat, this is the most adrenalized I’ve ever been!”

I recorded my fastest lap of the day in that third session. I told Judd after the second session that my goal was to get a time under two minutes. I didn’t make it, but it was close: 2:00.61. That’s about six seconds a lap faster than last year. Same set of tires, but last year it was much hotter.

I’m thinking that I won’t run the CECA days at HPR this year. Not a final decision, but under consideration. In a half day of open lapping at HPR I can get about as many hot laps in for about two-thirds the price. And those sessions are more or less split by the speed of the cars, which I find more comfortable, even offsetting the restricted passing of club days. I am still looking forward to the CECA days at Pikes Peak International and the State Patrol track.

And, finally, here’s today’s highlight reel. I get passed a lot, I only pass one car and the camera is on the wrong side to see it. And the lap behind the Porsche, one of my better laps:

Mills Lake

Posted on May 8, 2013 by dhill

Many people consider Mills Lake to be the prettiest lake in the park. It sits at the northern end of Glacier Gorge and has nice views of the peaks to the south. It’s an easy two and a half mile hike, climbing only about 750 feet to an elevation of 9,940. Its beauty and ease of access mean it is generally quite crowded. Yesterday, though, I spent an hour or so watching the world and saw nobody else at the lake or on the trail.

Mills Lake is named for Enos Abijah Mills (1870-1922), who was instrumental in the creation of Rocky Mountain National Park. Mills purchased Longs Peak House in 1901 and turned it into the famous Long’s Peak Inn and acted as a climbing guide on Long’s Peak. He summitted the peak 304 times.

It was somewhat windy at the trailhead, and maybe a bit cooler than I was hoping for. The forecast for Denver was a high in the mid-60’s, but at 10am at Glacier Gorge Junction the outlook didn’t seem so warm. Once on the trail, the wind wasn’t an issue. There were only a dozen or so cars in the parking lot and the only people I saw on the trail all day were two couples within a few hundred yards of the trailhead.

I took the Fire Trail shortcut to the Mills/Loch/Haiyaha trail junction. The snow on the “beaten path” was well packed, and my microspikes were sufficient. It was obvious, though, that stepping off the path meant postholing in deep snow. Just below the lake, the trail crosses the outlet stream. In the depths of winter, rather than hiking up the summer trail it’s easier just to follow the stream. By now, though, the stream was thawing enough that I stayed on the summer trail.

I arrived at the lake just in time to see the peaks to the south disappear in a cloud of snow. By the time I got the camera set up for the time lapse, the little squall had come down the valley and a light snow was blowing in my face. You never know how long these little storms last, though, so I let the camera roll and had my lunch.

I had picked a spot mostly out of the wind, which can be extreme on these alpine lakes, but I didn’t really have a comfortable place to sit. So I stood, taking a few bites of my sandwich and setting it back in my pack to grab a few chips or a sip from my soda. Before long I heard some noises. I thought perhaps some hikers had arrived but when I turned to look, I saw it was a small bird sitting on a tree branch about a foot and a half from my shoulder. It sat there nicely, as if posing for a photo. The camera was busy doing the time lapse, so I reached into my pocket for the phone. I had taken my eyes off the bird to do this and when I turned back to face him, he was gone.

He didn’t go far. He was now perched on my pack and managed to peck at my sandwich, the corner of which was poking out of its plastic bag.

The storm cleared after a short while, revealing a dramatic view of Pagoda, Chief’s Head, and Keyboard of the Winds. Had I managed to get the camera rolling ten minutes earlier, I’d have captured the whole thing. With the “storm” over and lunch consumed, I headed back. While the weather at Mills was wintery, the view to the north was much more spring-like.

In summer, I like to take longer hikes to get away from the crowds. But the rest of the year, it’s possible to get away from everybody and enjoy the scenery without taking the whole day. This hike was less than three hours start to finish, including an hour at the lake.

Here’s the time lapse:

HPR

Posted on May 5, 2013 by dhill

I went to the track Friday afternoon. I generally only go to the track with one of the clubs but do manage to get to HPR occasionally on my own. One of the reasons is that it makes me eligible to do the customer appreciation days.

Club days are different in a few key ways from open lapping days. With the clubs, it’s an all-day event where I generally get three or four sessions. Passing is restricted to two or three places. On club days, drivers often have to work corners. On open lapping days I can get three or four sessions in an afternoon, passing is unlimited, and drivers don’t have to work corners. Sure, for club days, you do a lot more waiting around, but that’s okay. It’s good to visit with other participants. And getting out on the corners is a good way to see how other drivers take the turns.

Passing is the big difference. We drivers of the slower cars have to be much more careful to watch our mirrors. Sometimes the speed differences can be immense. Friday, they divided us in two groups – street cars and race cars. There were three kinds of sessions – street cars only, race cars only, and open sessions. In the open sessions, the formula cars catch me quite quickly. They’re sometimes difficult to see. A lot of folks I talk to express some discomfort at being passed anywhere and everywhere on track. I have the feeling, sometimes, when I catch slower traffic that they don’t see me. I just don’t take chances passing people.

Most track days, there are quite a few Corvettes, Miatas, and Minis. Friday there were none of the above, at least running in the street car group. I think there were more BMWs than anything else. Three or four M models. They all sort of look alike to me unless I pay particular attention, so I don’t know the mix of 5 series versus 3 series. Scott was there with his Porsche and his friend driving a turbo Saab. There was a guy there with his Laser Blue Elise and his friends, one of whom was driving a Mercedes CL 65 AMG V-12 twin turbo.

I keep meaning to get a lap timer working on my phone, but I never seem to think of it before I get to the track. So I’m left figuring my lap times based on the video tape. Not the most accurate method, but close enough for my purposes. I haven’t broken down the tape yet, but I did manage to put together a little highlight reel. I understand YouTube is “short attention span theater” and try to keep my videos under three minutes or so. This one is more like five and a half.

I chatted quite a bit with the other Elise driver. He’s owned the car three and a half years. When he bought it, it had something like 3,700 miles on it. He has about 5,000 on it now. I don’t understand folks who buy these cars and don’t drive them. This was his first time at HPR. He was quite a bit slower than me. When he first came over to chat, he was wanting to know what kind of tires I was running. I was on my street tires, which are not well suited to the track. He was running decent tires but complaining about lack of grip. Those tires shouldn’t be exposed to cold temps and asked if it got cold in his garage. I suggested this might be the problem with his tires.

I gave him a ride for a few laps so he could learn the line. Then he got back in his car and promptly spun out. I was surprised to find out that the spin tripped the inertia switch that shuts off the fuel pump. He had to be towed back to the paddock to reset the switch. I was afraid he’d had a more serious mishap but was glad to see he was right back out on track.

Next Saturday is a day with CECA down in Pueblo. I’m really looking forward to it.

Pinball Showdown

Posted on April 27, 2013 by dhill

The Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown is this weekend at the Sheraton down in DTC. Chris and I went Friday afternoon.

Twenty bucks at the door, play all the games you want. There was a pretty good crowd. We never had to wait to play, but almost every machine was in use all the time. All the machines were in pretty good condition. A couple were being worked on, but I’d say this was the best maintained bunch of pinball machines I’ve ever seen. The event filled the large ballroom and two large meeting rooms. Something like 125 pinball machines, perhaps 80 unique games.

It was a bit nostalgic. I played many of these machines many times and for many hours. I first played pinball when I was ten or eleven. We kept the trailer at Chateau Chaparral on the Arkansas River at Nathrop. Spent a lot of unsupervised time there, some of it in the clubhouse. The teenagers played CCR on the jukebox and shot pool. They had half a dozen pinball machines there. I played one of them Friday.

One of the first machines I ever played

Jerry’s parents bowled at Celebrity Fun Center and Jerry and I used to play pinball there. Then my misspent youth, first at Mines and then a lot of hours at Malibu Grand Prix before video games took over. Lots of sessions with Wes over the years. Hundreds of hours of pinball, on all sorts of machines produced over the last fifty years or so. This show didn’t have all the machines I played so often, but they did have a real nice mix.
But play lacked in intensity. There was nothing to play for. No matter how badly you did, you could play again.

Because the machines were in top shape, I was disappointed that they didn’t take more care in setting them up. Most were not quite level, some quite a bit off. I guess it would just take too long to get them all properly set up.

Years ago I went to an event like this with Wes in Phoenix. That one had fewer machines, but had some fun twists. Back at Mines we used to do things like throw a jacket over the top half of the table, or cross our arms and flip with the opposite hands. There they had a machine that was wired that way and one with the glass obscured. Another had a platform with flippers you operated with your feet. But nothing like that at this one.

There were vendors there. Show t-shirts, of course, but booths by machine makers and hawkers of supplies. There were cameras mounted over two machines and the video displayed on large monitors with pinball table aspect ratios.

Preparations

Posted on April 20, 2013 by dhill

Three car related items today. Plans for events, rather than events themselves.

First, I just registered for the 30th Annual Colorado Concours. This is my first time entering the car in any sort of show. At this one, I had my choice of being judged or just being on display. I have no illusions that this is a winning show car, but what the heck. I’m going to be judged. Here’s how the organizers describe it:

Now in its 30th year, the Annual Colorado Concours – Exotic Sports Car Show & Concours d’Elegance is large-scale, highly-visible and well-attended. Local and regional car clubs showcase nearly 500 rare sports and exotic cars. Come take a look at these beautiful high-end, high performance vehicles. Meet the owners and exchange your favorite car stories. And, don’t forget to bring the kids as this day is filled with activities for the entire family! Mark your calendars now for a car event that has established itself as the premier auto show in its class. All proceeds from the event benefit CP of Colorado’s Children’s Programs. The featured marque for this special anniversary edition of the car show is Porsche!

If you’re in the Denver area, come on out and see the cars. This is happening on Sunday June 9 at Arapahoe Community College in Littleton. Gates open at 9am. I believe it’s $10 to get in, and it supports a fine charity.

Second, every year Lotus Colorado puts together a long weekend drive. We haven’t gone on any of these yet, but I just made reservations at the hotels for this year’s trip. They’re calling it “The LOCO Four to the 4”. We leave Denver Saturday morning, May 18, and head down toward the four corners. One night in Telluride, one night in Pagosa Springs, then back home Monday, May 20. Ross describes it thusly:

Many of you have been with us on our Colorado Good, where we do a bit less than the Colorado Grand; three days instead of four, about 800 miles instead of over a thousand miles; stay at good hotels instead of grand hotels and dine at good small yet really cool specialty restaurants with reasonable prices. This will be our fourth trip and will go to the Four Corners via Telluride and Pagosa Springs.

Finally, CECA is having their first track day of the season at Pueblo Motorsports Park on May 11 and I just sent in my registration.

CECA 2013 EVENT SCHEDULE (Tentative):

May 11                            Pueblo Motorsports Park

June 29                           High Plains Raceway

August 24                       Colorado State Patrol Track

September 28                 High Plains Raceway

October 12                      Pikes Peak International Raceway

I’m not sure how many of these I’ll attend. Last year I managed all except PPIR. I’d like to do them all, but if I miss any it will likely be one of the HPR dates.

Saturday in the Park

Posted on April 15, 2013 by dhill

Saturday I thought I’d hike to Mill’s Lake. Frankly, I wasn’t exactly sure where I wanted to go, but Mills seemed like the right sort of distance for me that day. I didn’t want to get up at the crack of dawn, and I’m a bit lazy when it comes to hiking through snow. A couple of miles each way seemed just about right.

The forecast high for Denver was 62 or 64, depending on who you listened to. I guessed it might be a bit breezy at Mills, but what the heck. It’s always windy at these lakes in winter, right? But generally it’s not bad in the forest. I arrived at the Glacier Gorge parking lot a bit after ten. I was thinking with such nice weather I might not get a parking spot there, but it was only about half full. As soon as I stepped out of the car it was obvious why – the wind was quite fierce. Took me about 30 seconds to decide not to hike. I exaggerate only slightly when I say the wind nearly knocked me down. I do this for fun, not as some sort of test.
I got back in the car and drove up to Bear Lake just to check it out. Not many hardy souls there, either. I was only in the parking lot for a few minutes but still managed to see three or four cars pass through without stopping.

I headed back to Moraine park for a while; it’s the first time I’ve bothered to check it out since the Fern Lake fire burned the area back in October. I sat there for maybe an hour, watching the world go by. Took a few pictures but nothing very interesting. The grass will be back in a few weeks, the shrubs might take a while longer. Maybe they’re not all dead but we won’t know for a few more weeks.

Then I headed back toward Deer Mtn. to watch the clouds fly over the mountains and set up the cameras. Eating my picnic lunch in the car isn’t as nice as at some alpine lake, but there are worse places to eat. I didn’t bring the GoPro mounts for the car, so I had to use the little gorilla pod instead of the suction cup. The suction cup does okay up to about 80mph and would have handled the wind. The lesson here is to always carry all the mounts with me whenever I take the camera. Oh well. I set the SLR up on a tripod, as low as it will go, on the leeward side of the car. Unfortunately, the wind here was still quite bad. Both cameras got moved around quite a bit.

When I looked at the raw footage I was a bit disappointed. I knew the cameras were moving quite a bit but hoped there was something I could do with the shots. I decided to make use of the “old film advanced” video effect. It makes the video look like an old film that’s been run over by a tractor. I figured the jitters in the footage looked a bit like film jumping a sprocket.

But it wasn’t a total loss. This was the first outing with the new battery grip for the EOS 20D. Worked like a charm. Shot over 1,100 photos without a snag. The grip supports either 6 AA batteries or two of the Canon battery packs. The grip shipped with two, so now I have three, even after tossing the original which no longer holds a charge. The only sub-optimal issue is that even with a full charge, the meter only reads a partial charge. I’m looking forward to trying it when it’s not so windy.

Cars & Coffee & Pinball

Posted on April 6, 2013 by dhill

The first Saturday of every month a bunch of car lovers get together at 95th and Arapahoe in Lafayette. I try to show up every few months to see what sort of vehicles show up. Today was the biggest turnout I’ve seen there. A lot of these types of events are dominated by hot rods or muscle cars. This one gets a great turnout of exotics. I’ve never seen fewer than a half dozen Ferraris and, a wide variety of Porsches from different eras, a sampling of Corvettes, Jags, Astins, and so on.

I ordered a battery grip for the SLR, but it hasn’t arrived yet. So all these pics from the cell phone.

There always seems to be a Morgan or two. Not sure that I’ve seen the same one twice. Today it was a three wheeler.This was another surprise. Don’t see too many of these.Walked by a Tesla S twice without giving it a second glance. At first, I thought it was a Porsche Panamera. Then somebody said “both trunks are empty.” Ah, yes. Something’s missing!

Boulder is full of Audis, but I don’t think I’ve seen an A7 before. I’m not a big fan of matte paints, but I like the lines.These things start pretty early with the first people arriving about 7am. I’m not sure how long people are there, but people are coming and going all morning. Every now and then, somebody will make a rather noisy arrival or departure. About an hour after I arrived, this pulled into a spot:

It didn’t take long to see this isn’t really a Corvette. Usually, they put the engines in the front.He left at the same time I did. Or, he tried. Got it out of this spot and into everybody’s way before stalling it. And unable to get it going again. A bunch of people had to push him back into the spot. That’s gotta be embarrassing, with dozens of people watching.

No Ford GT’s today, but this pretty Noble showed up. I’ve seen a couple of these but I think this had the best paint – a bright, pearlescent yellow.

I don’t think we’ve had Lamborghinis every time, but today I saw three or four. All driven by young guys, which I find surprising. Usually it’s the older guys who have the kind of coin it takes to own and operate one. I find them a bit over the top. But you don’t see too many purple ones, so I couldn’t resist. That was this morning. This afternoon, Chris came over and we drove up to Lyons to play some pinball. I’ve been meaning to do this for quite a while but somehow never got around to inviting him.

He showed up here at 1pm and we headed north. They were closed when we got there – I didn’t bother to check first, but they don’t open until 3. So we went next door to Oskar Blues for beer and chat. It was not long after three when we finished our beers and the place was already pretty busy. At least half the machines were in play.

Joust

We played Banzai Run, Black Knight, Captain Fantastic, Joust, Space Time, Strikes and Spares, and Wizard. I had played Banzai Run before in Lyons and enjoyed it. Joust I’d never seen before, and the others I’ve played many times at other places. Joust is an odd one. Although it can be played solo, the idea is two players compete. The players stand facing each other and the table is peaked in the middle – balls can pass from one side to the other. The idea is to hit your targets but not the other player’s. It’s loosely based on the video game of the same name. One annoying feature is that every time you press a flipper button, it makes a little dragon noise from the video game.

Nobody is Listening

Road Trip, Track Day, and Hiking Adventures

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