ChumpCar Road America – Part 1

Posted on April 22, 2015 by Dave

A couple years ago I started asking people if they knew of anybody who needed another driver for a race. I was asking specifically about Lemons races; I didn’t know about ChumpCar or WRL. I had no idea what would be expected of me should it happen, no idea what it would cost or how much time I’d need to devote.

I just knew I wanted to drive in a race.

One day at HPR I talked to a guy with Petty Cash Racing. He said I could drive with them for something like $1200 a race. I suspect this would have been an “arrive and drive” deal. I would be there as a client rather than as a member of the team. I didn’t want to spend that much, so I kept asking.

At last year’s Eiskhana, I chatted with Ed and mentioned I was interested in driving Lemons. He connected me with Dennis. I wanted to drive in a race last year but I just couldn’t make it work. I had ruled it out by mid-April, but had a pang when he tried to line up a Road America trip later in the year. I was delighted when he made another attempt this year.

ChumpCar

“Real Racing. Real Tracks. Real Cheap Cars.” ChumpCar operates dozens of events across the country each year. The rules make it prohibitive to have nice cars. This keeps costs down. That doesn’t make it cheap, though.

I’d put it on a par with owning a hot air balloon. I crewed on a balloon twice, ages ago. Back then, the balloons (envelope and gondola) went for about ten grand. Add a truck, maybe a small trailer. Get a bunch of folks to help out by giving rides, maybe four at a time. For the hot air balloon you need more people – somebody has to drive the recovery truck to where ever you land – but in the grand scheme they look similar to me.

For ChumpCar (and Lemons and WRL because many cars run in all three series) the car is going to be twenty or twenty five years old. Add a roll cage and fire suppression, a trailer and truck to tow it, and all the supplies and spares to keep it running (particularly tires and brakes), and even with a “real cheap car” it adds up.

The races are generally held over two days, with six or more hours of racing each day. A six hour race on Saturday and another six hours on Sunday is a Double 6. Seven each day with parc ferme rules for a 14, or twelve each day for a 24.

The Track

Road America has been hosting events since the fifties. It’s arguably the premier track in North America. Its 4.048 miles of track are draped over the terrain of Kettle Morraine near Elkhart Lake in Wisconsin. It’s a fast track, with three long straights: Road America Straight, Morraine Sweep, and Kettle Bottoms.

It is one of the few circuits in the world that is still in its original configuration. For years I watched ChampCar run there, and it was always a favorite in the various racing sims I’ve played over the years. I was quite excited about the opportunity to actually drive there.

Our event was a Double 7. For our race, we’d be using the chicane after the Carousel. Not only are there three long straights, there isn’t anything like a hairpin. That means the track is better suited to high horsepower cars. We wouldn’t be driving a high horsepower car, though.

MX-7

ChumpCar works on a points scheme with anything over 500 causing penalties. Dennis has a 1988 Mazda RX-7, which starts at 350 pts. He’s swapped a 1.6 liter Miata motor in place of the rotary. That’s another 75. Add an oil cooler and a suspension upgrade and we’re at 525 points. This resulted in a 3 lap penalty. We weren’t too happy, but some people had it much worse. There was a BMW there with a 45 lap penalty.

Being an RX-7 with an MX-5 motor, Dennis calls the car an MX-7. It weighs something like 2400 pounds and the motor puts out perhaps 115hp. It’s not going to win any drag races, but with Dunlop DZII tires she handles pretty well. They’re turning low 2:20’s at HPR. Lower horsepower than the Elise, but handles very similarly.

The team was Dennis, Phil, Lauren, and myself. Dennis is the “team owner”. It’s his car, truck, trailer, and gear. Phil is a hot shoe driver and ace mechanic. He’s only raced once before, but he’s logged quite a few track miles. Lauren and I are race rookies. Lauren has raced karts and bikes (both bicycles and motorcycles, I believe) but never cars. Although she has only tracked cars a couple of days she did attend an SCCA course. I, of course, have never raced and never taken a racing class.

With seven hours of racing each day, we’d get 1:45 each. Pit stops would be a minimum of five minutes (by rule), so we’re really get more like a hundred minutes of seat time each day. At the pit stops, we’d have to switch drivers, fuel the car, and do whatever minimal maintenance we’d need to deal with – topping off fluids, washing the windshield, checking the tires and brakes, that sort of thing. We weren’t allowed to touch or inspect the car while fueling was going.

The driver change is perhaps the most complicated part of the pit stop. The exiting driver takes the wheel off, hangs it on a hook, then loosens and unbuckles the harness. The incoming driver opens the window net, disconnects the exiting driver’s radio and helps the exiting driver out of the car. Incoming driver adds or removes seat cushions as necessary, gets in the car, and buckles up. The exiting driver connects the radio and helps the new driver tighten the straps.

Two people refuel the car. One places a pan below the car. While one person pours two jugs of fuel into the car, the other stands nearby with a fire extinguisher. Both are in full gear – suits, gloves, helmet with the visor closed. After all the fuel is in, any other necessary work can be performed.

At this point, all this is mostly theoretical to me. Lauren and I had only gotten in and out of the car one time before we actually raced, and we’d never done a pit stop.

Eastbound

Our first travel day took us from Denver to Davenport, Iowa. I’ve been fortunate that for all my road trips since we moved back to Denver, the drives to and from my destinations have been as important as any other aspect of the trip. This was not one of those trips. We were on Interstate highways pretty much the whole way. They are great roads for getting from place to place as long as you aren’t interested in what’s between the places.

Dennis, Phil, and I were in the truck. Lauren was flying in from California and would meet us there. The truck is a big diesel pickup with a smaller than expected fuel tank. Due to heavy headwinds, we were stopping every two hundred miles to refill. The long drive gave us a good chance to visit; to get to know each other better. Visiting was necessary, as there is pretty much nothing to look at through Nebraska and Iowa. About the only new thing to see on I-80 is all the windmills in Iowa.

In Davenport, we had dinner at Gramma’s Kitchen. Dennis wanted a steak and Phil wanted a beer. I’d have eaten a salad if they’d had a nice one on the menu.

Phil asked the waitress “What kinds of beer do you have?”

“All of them,” she says.

Phil says, “I’ll have an IPA.”

The waitress goes a bit blank, then says, “We have Bud, Bud Light, Coors, Coors Light, Shiner Bock, …” They have Sam Adams, but nothing like an IPA. A recurring joke on the trip was “We have all the beers!”

“Does this go on our permanent record?”

Friday was check in and registration. This takes place outside the track; we wouldn’t go through the tunnel until Saturday morning.

“Look where we are!”

Registration opened at 3, but we got there about two hours early. We parked the truck and trailer with the other early birds and wandered over to look at the track between turns 13 and 14. I wandered down to a flagging station to get a picture of the track and see there’s a gap in the fence there. I tell the guys “you can get on the track here”. “Should we walk it? We’re probably not allowed.” What the heck, we’ll just take a quick look. Once on the track we head downhill toward Canada Corner. We walked along Kettle Bottoms like tourists, wide-eyed. A maintenance guy on a little tractor went by and waved at us. Gee, he didn’t make any indication we weren’t supposed to be there so we kept going. We made it to the chicane after the Carousel before track officials arrived. Our presence here is strictly verboten: we’re in deep doo doo.

Dick, the security guy, asks us for our IDs. “You with ChumpCar?” “Yes”. “You shouldn’t be here, it’s a maintenance day, the track is closed.” By the time he finishes writing our info in his memo pad, another car comes by with a track manager. While Dick filled her in about us, a third car went by. She instructed Dick to take us back to the main gate. On the way, I ask Dick “Is this going on our permanent record?” He didn’t recognize the reference. Or Dick has no sense of humor. For a while we were sweating that we’d get a penalty from ChumpCar. We didn’t think they’d eject us from the event, but I can’t say we didn’t worry about it a little.

Canada Corner panorama

Back at the truck, we make the acquaintance of the teams around us. The guys in front of us were from Texas. We shot the breeze with them for a while. After a couple of minutes, one asks me “Are you the guys who got in trouble for walking the track?” These guys were in the third car we saw. They had somehow talked somebody into giving them a ride around the track. On the main straight they saw somebody in bigger trouble than us – somebody else had driven their car onto the track (not their race car).

On our left was a team with a TR-7. They have it decked out in a James Bond theme. It’s number 700 instead of 007. One guy says, “Check out our license plate”. I walked to the back of the car. He pushed a button and the European style plate pops up revealing another plate behind it. I didn’t see that a little water nozzle also deployed. I got sprayed and sported a nice big wet spot on my left thigh. A few inches to the right and I’d have looked like I peed my pants.

Finally 3pm rolls around and we get registered. We take our gear – suits, helmets, shoes and socks to safety tech. On the way there, I see that I have a little tear in my suit from the sharp edge on the CG lock in the Lotus and worry that it will fail. It wasn’t that close of an inspection – just looking at the safety labels, and I pass with no problems.

A short while later they open the gates. Although we were early, we end up in the middle of the line. We drove into the paddock through the tunnel, headed up the hill and found a paddock spot. We were assigned a pit spot and assumed we had to take the same number paddock spot, but we could have parked a couple of spaces closer. We unloaded the car and took it up for inspection. They gave us a pile of sponsor stickers to put on the car and we were done.

Aside from our run-in with the “law”, there was a lot of waiting around. One of the topics of discussion was fast we might be lapping. Dennis suggested four minute laps. I was thinking we’d be faster – a 2:20 lap at HPR is over 60mph and Road America should be faster. Just how much faster was anybody’s guess. We all looked forward to finding out just how fast we would be.

High Plains Drifter

Posted on April 14, 2015 by Dave

I spent yesterday at HPR. The day was sponsored by Emich VW. It was too good a deal to pass up – just $80 for the whole day. As you might expect with a price like that, there was a good turnout. I didn’t ask about the car count, but the morning sessions were about as crowded as I’ve ever seen.

The weather early on was gorgeous – a bit cool, but sunny and pretty calm. About mid-morning Genae texted me, asking if it was windy yet. It wasn’t, but the calm didn’t last long. The wind came by late morning, with strong and prolonged gusts. On several passes down the highway straight the headwind was quite noticeable – no acceleration on the second cam in fifth gear. Between afternoon sessions, Scott and I found refuge in the wind shadow of a trailer, and tumbleweeds were a regular hazard both in the paddock and on-track. I never tried too hard to miss them and managed only to hit one or two. A Subaru came back from a session with a few big ones still stuck in the grill. They were stuck all over the chain link fence along the pit out.

As I said, the morning sessions were pretty crowded. With more cars, there were more incidents. Yellow flags were out a few laps in a row in the first two. But I did manage to get at least one clean lap each time,

I really had a blast in the car. My rear tires are completely shot, I should have bought new ones months ago, this was definitely their last hurrah. They’re done after thirteen thousand miles, but that includes nine track days.

I had the car sideways several times in each session. Only one or two were big wobbles, all the rest were well under control. I laughed out loud with joy more than once. I am strongly under the illusion that I have good control of the car.

That said, I didn’t feel like I was as consistent as usual; as consistent as I want to be. I outbraked myself a few times and just plain missed apexes at others. But when I looked at the lap times after each session, my fastest laps each session were not more than two seconds between best and worst. My best lap was 2:16.14 and I had a theoretical best of 2:15.99.

I ran seven sessions for a total of 56 laps. I emptied my gas can into the car after the fourth and cut the seventh session short at 3 laps due to low fuel. I probably shouldn’t have done that last short session. At the end of the day, I asked Scott to follow me to the gas station in Byers in case I ran out. There, I pumped 10.1 gallons into my 10 gallon tank.

There were only a few familiar cars there. All the usual marques were represented, perhaps a more Corvettes and Camaros than usual, fewer Porsches. There was only one other Lotus, a 2005 Elise I hadn’t seen before. Supercharged, but with aged out tires. He was fast in the straights (he said he hit an indicated 135) but not much better than me in the turns. The oddballs of the day were two Vegas, one of which was a station wagon.

I have a busy week ahead and won’t have time to go through the video for a couple of weeks.

altezza

Posted on March 23, 2015 by Dave

Saturday night Michael and I went to the premiere for the altezza Drive Resort.

For the last couple years I’ve been hearing that somebody was threatening to build a new racetrack somewhere in the area. I’d never heard anything definite and I didn’t give it much thought as I’m perfectly happy going to HPR a few times a year. Then, a few days ago I got an email from Auto-Archives about the premiere of altezza (I’m told it’s always lower case). I was intrigued. From their video I figured becoming a member would be beyond my means but the premiere is a free meal and a presentation by Al Unser, Jr. And I might run into some LoCo people.

It was held at Exdo Event Center, an exhibit place downtown, north of Coors Field. From the map, there didn’t look to be much parking so I thought it best to arrive a bit on the early side. Michael and I left the house at 6:00 and got there just before the doors opened. Their little parking lot was full. Rule #1 of driving an Elise is “Never parallel park” but I found a spot between two driveways where nobody could park near me.

We got raffle tickets when we walked in. In addition, Auto-Archives was raffling off a big prize – a Base membership to altezza. The Base membership goes for a cool $10,000. Tickets were ten bucks for one, twenty bucks for three. There weren’t that many people there, certainly not more than a couple hundred. How many would buy tickets? Pondering it a little bit I figured it was much better to buy three than one. I never carry any cash, so I was thinking I didn’t have the $20. I asked Michael if he had ten bucks. He doesn’t have any cash at all. Turns out I had twenty so I bought my three tickets. I never win anything, but what the heck.

After a while, they open up the curtains and let us in the main area of the room. They have a stage at one end and a bunch of round tables with chairs. A buffet is set up in the back, and a cash bar is on the side. They show us the video that’s on their website, then do a little introduction: altezza is Italian for “altitude”; they own the land, they have a Hermann Tilke design, they would have broken ground on Thursday if it hadn’t rained. “Grab some food and then we’ll show you another video.”

After we ate they showed a video of the track generated by software by Hermann Tilke Engineering. A bit like a video game, they showed us various views of the track with a few cars running on it. Looks like a pretty cool track. In the video they talk about elements from European tracks. This one will have a carousel much like the old Nurburgring. They’ll be able to run both directions and by using various cutoffs they can run something like 15 different configurations. I smiled when they said the track was designed to “provoke driver error”.

Two representatives of Hermann Tilke went into more details of the facility – garages, clubhouse, kart track, paddocks, RV parking. The track itself is a grade 2 FIA track. They said the only difference between a grade 1 and grade 2 track are infrastructure – having a media center capable of handling 500 people, a 5,000 capacity VIP area, more garages, and so on. But from the perspective of the track itself, it’s F1 ready. It will handle the speed of those cars and the safety features are up to the same level. Pretty cool.

They wrapped up with a brief Q&A session and then had Al pull the raffle tickets from a bucket. First up were the prizes from Wine Country Motorsports. They gave away four or five items including a pair of driving shoes and a jacket. Surprisingly, Al called out several numbers that nobody claimed. I was hoping to win the shoes. I need a pair for my Road America race next month, and these were red to match my suit. Al called out 3365. I had 3364. Missed it by one! For the jacket, it was one off Michael’s ticket.

The last prize was the Base membership. Al had been calling out the last four digits of the number on the coupon. He pulls a ticket out of the bucket and calls off the numbers. But this time he decides to read five digits. It takes me a second to realize I had the winning ticket. I had to read it twice. I yell out “Bingo!”

Al Unser, Jr., Jo Taylor of Auto-Archives, and me. Photo courtesy of William Taylor.

I can’t believe it. I never win anything. I pass William on my way to the stage and shake his hand with a big grin. Up on the stage I shake hands with everybody, get my picture taken. Afterward I got Al to autograph the certificate and exchanged a few words with him. I told him I was a big Champcar fan but haven’t followed IRL. Naturally, he pitched the IRL.

Anywho, the track is currently scheduled to open first quarter of next year. By which I assume April 1. I’ll be excited if they get it done by June 1.

RM Solo Autocross

Posted on March 19, 2015 by Dave

On Sunday I attended my first autocross. Autocross is a contest to see who can run their car fastest through a course defined with traffic cones on an empty parking lot. This one was SCCA’s event #5 in their 2014/15 winter season, held at Front Range Airport.

I’m the autocross event chair for LOG 35. I needed to meet the guys running the event, have them show me around, soak it all in. My mission was observation, so I didn’t sign up to run. I didn’t take my helmet, or the camera and OBD-II dongle. That was silly of me. Clearly I was never a boy scout.

Front Range is a two runway airport a couple miles southeast of DIA. On the east side of the Front Range facility they have a remote apron next to a fire station. We were at this remote apron rather than the main terminal area of the airport. It’s basically a large parking lot with light poles and marked with big T’s indicating the parking places. Around each T are several re-bar rings embedded in the asphalt, used to secure the aircraft. The airport doesn’t close for this event and twice they had to red flag operations to allow planes to taxi through.

Facilities are minimal. There is no paddock as such, and we weren’t allowed to park on the grass. Cars were lined up on the access roads. I was parked a couple hundred yards from the grid. No bathrooms, two porta-potties at the far southern corner. There was a concession trailer, I had a breakfast burrito.

I met with Arnie and Lindsay. We talked business for a bit and they showed me around. Before long they asked what class I was running. “I’m just here to watch.” Don’t be stupid, Dave. So they got me signed up, found me a helmet, assigned a grid spot and sent me on my way.

One hundred twenty one drivers were entered. We ran three heats. I was in the third heat. Cars are divided into classes. I had no idea how many different classes there are. I was assigned to SS (Super Street). I had to pick a number, so I took 1 as it’s the easiest one to make out of painters tape. There was another Elise there. He had Hoosiers, so he was SSR. There was only one other car in SS, a 2014 Corvette Z51. He’s only had his car a couple of weeks, but he’s been autocrossing a couple of years.

So I’m really only competing with one other guy. There were 33 classes. Four classes (Classic American Muscle-C, Street Modified, B-Street, and C-Street) made up about a third of the field, Twelve classes had only one or two cars. Twenty five entrants were novices.

We novices had a meeting where we learned about the cones. The course is made of cones. Some are standing up, some are on their sides. Their positions are marked by chalk outlines. The cones on their sides are pointer cones. Knocking a cone over, or moving it out of its outline is a penalty. If you hit a cone but any part of it is still within the outline, no penalty. One guy managed to flip a cone up in the air and land upright and in position. Driving on the wrong side of a cone is a DNF.

After this lesson, we walked the course. Everybody walks the course, but we novices did it as a group.

The course began with a left turn out of the starting box, then into a 360 to the right. It’s not quite a 360, obviously, but it’s close enough. This is the only place the track crosses itself. After a left turn, we’re heading south along the western edge of the lot into a slalom. We have our choice of which way to enter – we can go either left or right. Then a chicane and a couple of 90 degree left turns, a 45 to the right, and into a second slalom. On this one we must enter on the left. Finally, a tight 180 to the right and across the finish line.

After the course walk, we had the drivers meeting, then the first heat. During the first heat, drivers from the third heat work the course. There are four sectors, each with a crew captain, a radio, and a fire extinguisher. Each crew has a scribe and three or four people to reset cones. I was the scribe for sector 1.

I quickly discovered that the scribe is the busiest of the corner workers. It was my duty to record the penalties – the number of cones hit, or DNF. They come out in no particular order: 14 AS, 33 CAM-C, 101 STU, and so on. The first run, I write them down and record the penalty. The list filled the page in two columns. On subsequent runs, I had to find the car in the list. They didn’t go in the same order each run and once a car leaves our sector another is started, which gives me about ten seconds to find the car on the list before then next one was coming.

Everybody got five runs. Because there are four cars in the course, sometimes a driver will catch up to the car in front. That’s pretty much guaranteed if somebody spins. When that happens, it obviously ruins the following car’s time so they get a re-run.

There was one car that made a DNF right out of the start, but there were very few penalties – not more than ten for the entire heat. So guys shagging cones weren’t that busy. The crew chief worked the radio (“Control, sector 1, car 13 AS plus one.”) and helped me with some of the numbers – “Is that 171 BS or 71BS?”. Many cars had two drivers, 171 BS and 71 BS are the same car, different drivers.

GBS Zero Lotus 7

I grabbed lunch during the second heat then moved my car to the grid. The tech inspectors came by, gave me a quick once-over and put a sticker on my windshield. Then I was free to wander around. These events are as much a social thing as a competition. You meet all sorts of people, all of whom are interested in cars.

As to the cars, most of the usual suspects were represented: Mustangs, Corvettes, Porsches, BMWs, Audis, Minis, Miatas, Subarus, Acuras, Hondas. There was a Factory Five Cobra and a GBS Zero Lotus 7. I saw a little formula car that was basically a snow mobile. There was even a kart; the driver’s helmet had a pink Mohawk.

P-51 Mustang

One of the Mustangs had quite the livery. It took me a couple seconds to get it, but it should have been obvious. It wasn’t just a Mustang, but a P-51 Mustang, complete with bullet holes. I talked with the guy. I told him I always joke about putting an RAF bullseye on my car along with some small German crosses for “killing” Porsches. He said he wanted to do Japanese flags with Subaru logos, but figured it would look too busy.

I was gridded up between a Honda on A6’s with two drivers and a 600+ hp Mustang GT 500. After each run the guys in the Honda sprayed water on their front tires to cool them off. Across from me was the Z51 Vette in my class, the A8 next to him. Behind them were a Hyndai Veloster and a 30 year old Celica.

While heat two was still running I went off in search of an empty passenger seat. I found John in his mini and he welcomed me to join him. I was surprised by the speed. Not just in the sense that we’re going fifty in a parking lot, but that the 48 seconds is over so fast. John didn’t have the greatest run, he hit two cones. Looking at the results I see that was his worst run.

I didn’t hear any announcements about the start of the third heat, but they started sending us to the starting line. When it’s my turn, the starter motions me to the line. The Honda in front of me leaves the first sector. The starter drops his arm and I go. Instantly I’m through the slight left turn and into second gear. At the entry to the 360 there’s a nasty bump that unsettles the car. My tires sing to me and I get the car a bit sideways. I feather the throttle and straighten the car for the gates before the slalom. I have a moment where I nearly forget which way I wanted to enter the slalom but get it together and go left.

Before that first run I hadn’t had the car running long enough so it wasn’t properly warmed up. Going in to the slalom I got the limiter instead of the second cam. In the two turns before the second slalom, a left then a right, I’m sideways again. Through the second slalom and into the tightest turn on the course. I stayed in second gear every time but the car was pushing here and in retrospect I should have tried downshifting. I go through the timing beam and slow down. I finish in 49.394 seconds.

Back in the grid we await our next runs. A few minutes later, the Honda is rolling again. I was about to follow him until the grid worker told me it was time for the second drivers. It was probably fifteen minutes between runs. Gives you a chance to ask your neighbors what sorts of times they’re getting.

On my five runs, I hit no cones but did manage to mess up the second slalom for a DNF. My fastest run was 48.563 seconds and good enough for 847 points and a class win. Woohoo! The big picture tells the real story, though. In the indexed standings, I was 95th of 121 drivers. I was better compared to novices only – 11th of 25. To arrive at the indexed standings, each time is multiplied by a factor. Each class has a different factor which allows some sort of comparison across the whole group.

We were all done by 3:30 or so. That makes for a long day – a full eight hours – to get about four minutes of “track time”. I had a good time, but at this point I think I prefer going to the track. The track costs about three times as much, but I never get less than thirty laps. Measured by the minute, autocross is about 12 or 15 times the price. I look forward to doing it at the LOG, and perhaps occasionally in the future.

Lake Haiyaha addendum

Posted on March 10, 2015 by Dave

One thing I forgot to mention…

On the hike out, I paused to catch my breath. A little bird, a gray jay, approached. First it landed on a tree branch six or eight feet away. Then it hopped to a closer branch, and then to one just inches from where my right hand rested on my trek pole. It sat there a moment, then flew away. It quickly returned, and repeated its movements.

Next, rather than flying away again, it flew up to look me right in the eye, hovered momentarily about a foot from my nose then returned to the branch. It did this hovering maneuver twice. I’m quite accustomed to having birds come begging when I’m eating, but this was a bit unusual. I don’t know if it was looking for food, or if this was some sort of defensive move. I understand they rear chicks in winter. Was our track close to its nest, or was it just curious?

Lake Haiyaha

Posted on March 9, 2015 by Dave

Saturday, March 7

Some of the folks on the RMNP forum get together every year for a Stomp. I forgot all about it last year, and the year before Jerry and I made it for the pizza dinner but never got to the lake. So this was my first Stomp.

I’m not a big fan of snowshoes. I generally only go on commonly traveled paths in the snow so I can get by with the microspikes. Our route to Haiyaha is off-trail, though, so I definitely needed the floatation the snowshoes provide. I took poles, too. I don’t use trek poles when hiking but figured they might be good with the snowshoes, but won’t again.

This was only my second winter hike to Haiyaha. The first time, I took the summer route. I won’t go that way again in snow. There are a couple places where you traverse steep snow and I’m not a big fan. Ed’s way is a much nicer route. By the time I hiked out, it had been pretty well traveled. I think I could find my way again, now that I’ve been that way.

With the weather the way it’s been lately, I figured the road to Bear Lake would be snowpacked and icy so I arranged to drive Genae’s car, stranding her at home for the day. But Friday was clear and warm – bright sunshine, brilliant blue cloudless skies all day. It was nearly 70 here at the house and the snow almost completely melted from the pavement in the cul-de-sac. I decided to take the Lotus.

Up at 5:30, out the door a few minutes before 6:00. Grab a breakfast sandwich at Burger King in Boulder and head up the canyon. Coming down Pole Hill into Estes, the Mummy range blanketed in brilliant white snow, the sky above the deepest blue, and again not a cloud in the sky, not even contrails.

I took the “shortcut” by the hospital out of habit. It avoids the traffic through the village, but that’s not a concern in winter. I also tend to go up Riverside rather than 36. Just a couple hundred yards past the brewery I saw an animal cross the road. It was in shadow, but looked too small for a deer or elk, and might have been gray instead of tan. When I got there, I saw the coyote standing forty feet from the road. When I passed Manor RV park I got a bonus – a flock of about a dozen turkeys crossed the road. (I just learned the group name for turkeys is not a flock. It’s either a rafter or gang, take your pick.)

A sign near the park entrance warned the road was icy and recommended 4WD or AWD. Not a good sign when you’re RWD with bald tires. But as I suspected, the sun did it’s work yesterday and the road was clear all the way to Bear Lake. There were a couple of icy patches where the wind blows snow across the road, but even the parking lot was mostly free of snow.

I connected with the group and after introductions (where I apologized in advance for forgetting nearly everybody’s name), we hit the trail about 8:15. We set a leisurely pace, which suited me just fine. I find snowshoeing much more tiring than hiking. I have to alter my gait so I don’t trip over my own shoes and of course there’s the weight. It doesn’t seem like much, but compounded over thousands of steps it adds up.

Before long we were off the trail. We weren’t exactly blazing a new trail, as we had Ed’s (days old) track to follow, but the track was generally faint and fully blown over in a couple of spots. All in all, though, the going was fairly easy. It’s not a long hike, there are only a couple of sections with much of a grade, and it has pleasant views. I saw no other hikers, although a couple did catch the end of our group just as we got to the lake.

It took us a bit over two hours to make the trip. We went to the igloo and met Ed and the rest of the gang and socialized for a while. A bit after noon, most of the gang left. It was lunch time, though, so I sat on the rock above the igloo and enjoyed the view and my picnic. I didn’t exactly eat and run, but soon said my goodbyes and headed back.

The igloo is sheltered by an enormous rock; the floor is about level with the top of the door.

When I hiked to Emerald last month, I was only able to shoot a handful of pictures – the batteries weren’t working well in the cold. This time, I carried them in my pocket to keep them warm. There wasn’t any point in setting the cameras up for time lapse as there were no clouds all day. So the next order of duty was to put the batteries in the camera and check out the ice on the lake.

I’ve been to ten lakes in the park when they’ve been iced over. Lake Haiyaha is unusual. Many of the lakes seem to maintain the same level in winter as summer. At Lake Helene the water level drops a foot or two, but it’s so shallow that the water is quite far from the summer shore. Haiyaha sits next to a large boulder field. Some of the rocks are as big as houses, some as big as cars. When it gets cold it ices up. At the same time, less water flows into the lake than out and the water level drops. Not a foot or two, but eight or ten.

There are a number of large boulders that are fully submerged until the lake drains and they punch through the ice. I wonder how long it must take – it takes a long time to drain a lake and the water drops very gradually. When the ice makes contact with the rock, the pressure will build up slowly but inexorably. As more ice is lifted from the water, the bottom surface of the ice is put under tension. Ice doesn’t handle tension well – I bet it makes quite an interesting sound when cracks.

Icy volcanoes

Now, a line of these rocks poke through the ice like glacier shrouded volcanoes. The broken faces of the ice are no longer razor sharp – wind and blowing snow have softened, almost melted, the edges. It’s crystallizing on the top, but under that zone it’s the palest blue glass. Up close you see the bubbles lined up like beads on a curtain. My pictures don’t do it justice.

Blue ice

I probably spent half an hour soaking it in.

Wind sculpted snow

The hike out was uneventful. I heard voices occasionally but never saw anybody else until I regained the trail. (Again, am I hearing voices, or am I hearing voices?) A few other parties had done round trips on the track by the time I started down, so it was very easy to follow and often well packed. For a while I thought I maybe could do it in spicks instead of snowshoes, but that would have been optimistic.

Back at the car, I considered taking the top off for the drive home. That would have been a bit optimistic, too. And besides, by this time I realized I hadn’t even thought of sunscreen and had burned my face. Oops.

San Diego, day 4

Posted on March 1, 2015 by Dave

Monday

We hadn’t planned any activities for Monday, and with a 6pm departure we had all day to get to LAX. So we avoided the interstate where we could, and stuck to the coast.

We hit the road after a leisurely breakfast and spent some quality time in SoCal traffic. It must be soul crushing to endure this every day. Even with the cost of living so much higher there, people seem to be able to spend a bit more on their cars. Perhaps that’s a strategy that helps deal with that traffic. We had a Tesla S behind us for quite a while, a nice Bentley passed us, two or three brand new Jags. I caught a quick glimpse of an Alfa 4C and wished I’d gotten a better look. I hadn’t seen one in the flesh before. Very pretty car.

We abandoned the interstate and exited rush hour traffic at Torrey Pines. From here to Oceanside, where Camp Pendleton forces us back onto I-5, the road varies from divided four lane to busy two lane as it rises and falls at each of a half dozen estuaries. Commuter rail runs alongside the road for long stretches as well. For the most part, there isn’t much ocean view except when descending into the estuaries where you get a good view of the beach. It was all very nice, clean, and pretty much all high-rent district.

You have to take the interstate for a while but we wanted off as quickly as possible. Our desire to avoid the interstate led us to a dead end at a beach before we finally got exited into San Clemente on El Camino Real, the Royal Road. In Dana Point, we finally get to the southern end of Highway 1, the Pacific Coast Highway. We got a kick out of the street names here – Golden Lantern, Street of the Violet Lantern, Amber Lantern, Ruby Lantern, Blue Lantern.

After Dana Point, it’s Laguna Beach, Newport Beach, Huntington Beach, Sunset Beach, Seal Beach, Long Beach. (Fun note: the spell checker doesn’t like “Laguna” and suggests “gulag”.) The farther south you are, the more unique the businesses are. For a long time, we didn’t see any chain fast food restaurants, very few Starbucks, a couple 7-11’s. Lots of little boutiques, antique shops, surf shops.

There were quite a few places where we remarked we couldn’t imagine living in. Not just because of the high-dollar nature of the place, but the houses themselves. Particularly the houses perched at the top of cliffs. It wouldn’t take an earthquake to bring one down, a big rain like we had here recently could do it. Along great stretches, the houses between the road and the beach were jammed side by side, separated by a single gated walkway. Every couple blocks there’d be a gap for beach access. Very similar to Malibu from what I recall.

We stopped in Newport Beach for lunch, at the Newport Beach Brew Co. I had a Cobb salad and a Belgian golden ale but I forget what they called it. Insane Monkey or Crazy Monkey, something like that.

I think it’s Sunset Beach where we got a nice extended stretch with a nice ocean view. The notable feature of the view today was all the container ships standing between Santa Catalina Island and Long Beach. Genae counted 23, but she probably missed a few. And I understand there are others farther from the port. I stopped to shoot a couple pictures and chatted with a guy there. He said it wasn’t as bad as it was last time, back in 2004 or so.

At Long Beach we’re back to heavy traffic and more than a few blocks from the water. The pleasant drive beside the ocean was over now; welcome to the megalapolis. There are a lot of lane closures and in places oncoming traffic was stopped for blocks. I know the way to LAX from here. We went the entire distance without navigational assistance except when we decided to find somewhere to eat lunch. I’m not sure whether to feel proud or sad that I know my way around LA as well as I do.

The rental car place was on Century, a couple blocks west of the 405. I went east to find gas. The six block detour saved twenty cents a gallon at 2.89 (much more than we’re paying here). The rental car place is not exactly a well-oiled machine. The office is a bit on the dodgy side but that’s not a big deal – quite a few of the LAX car rental offices could use an upgrade. More telling is that they basically operate out of the alley. There’s an entrance to a multi-story garage where they also do airport parking. When you pick up the car, you have to turn it around in the alley.

We had to when we picked up the car, and when returning it had to wait for somebody else to do it. The guy that recorded the car’s mileage and fuel asked if we needed a lift to the airport. When we said “Yes”, he said he’d probably take us in the car we just returned. Instead, as there was another couple as well, he took a minivan which was obviously one of their rental fleet. I’m guessing they can’t pick us up at the airport because they lack the proper licensing. So how can they legally drop us off?

As of today, by my count, I’ve flown in and out of LAX 190 times, which is the same number as Phoenix, which blows my mind. And in all those times, this trip was my first time for both terminals 4 and 5. I was pretty impressed with terminal 4 for a while. But we were out of gate 44H. There are about a dozen gates out of 44. Here you go down a flight of stairs to a door. Shuttle buses run from here to another terminal for the little CRJs. Signs you don’t see every day: “Stop for Aircraft”.

I had my sweater in one bag and my jacket in the other. The overhead bins in the CRJ are pretty small, so they took the small rollerboard and I volunteered the duffel. I didn’t know if we’d have to go to baggage claim to fetch them. If that was the case, they might as well take both. So when the pilot announced it was 13 degrees in Denver I hoped we’d have to get them from baggage claim. But no, this was valet service, so I had to wait for them at the end of the jetway.

By now it was down to 10. The jetway isn’t heated and by the time everyone is off the plane, about fifteen of us line each side. The guy across from me says I’m about two months early to be wearing a Hawaiian shirt. He says he’ll be the last one to get his bag. I disagree, it’ll be me. The bags appear two at a time. A woman closely inspects the tag on a dull gray one but a man from up the jetway gets it. A bright green bag comes soon, the woman take it. Was she really confused which bag was hers? We’re down to six of us and the guy says “Told you I was going to be last” just before his bag arrives. I get the first one with 4 people left and the other is one of the last two. Tied for last bag! I can now put my sweater and jacket on.

Icicles broke from the bottom of the car when we got in. The snow was hard, and the ice beneath it was harder and a quarter inch thick. But it was brittle from the cold and came off the windshield quite easily. There was ice on the inside of the windshield, along the darker band at the top. That never thawed on the thirty five minute drive home.

All in all, not a bad way to spend the weekend. We traded a few days of cold and snow for, well, not exactly sunny southern California weather, but mid-60’s anyway. And we had a whale of a good time.

San Diego, day 3

Posted on March 1, 2015 by Dave

Sunday

We had reservations for another Hornblower cruise this morning – whale watching this time. A few weeks ago we saw a news story that said the whale migration was a bit early this year, so, not knowing any better, we were concerned the tour might be a bust. As it turns out, we saw exactly one whale.

While standing in line waiting to board, some guys in yellow jackets showed up. They were volunteers from the natural history museum. They said they have to go out on these tours at least three times a month, but some of the retired guys go much more often. They gave us short lessons on whales – baleen versus teeth, where they’re coming from and where they’re going, how we expect them to behave when we see them.

The volunteers and crew serve as lookouts, but I wonder if that was really necessary. A few miles off the coast we came across another whale tour boat and a sailboat. Word was there was a humpback in the area. Within a few minutes we saw the whale blowing and slapping her tail on the water. We don’t really know if it was a he or a she, but everybody always says “Thar she blows!” so I’ll refer to it as “she”.

She slapped her fluke on the water for quite a while, announcing to the gathering whale watchers that she was ready for her close-up. There are restrictions on how close we’re allowed to get, something like a thousand feet. That is close enough to hear her blow, but not close enough to smell her breath. Our boat stayed on her left, the other whale boat and the sailboat on her right. She’d exhale, slap her fluke a few times, then make a short dive. It was a bit hard to predict where she’d pop up next; she was moving generally westward, but along a meandering path.

After a while, she quit slapping and started breaching. When whales are swimming in pods, the males will breach to demonstrate dominance or to attract a mate. We’re not sure why they engage in such behavior when they’re alone. We all decided she was doing this because she’s a showoff. Which suited us just fine.

She probably breached forty times. Each breach moves not only tons of whale but tons of water as well. She makes a sound a bit like a giant belly-flop, except that she’s on her back or side. This went on for quite a while, breach, breach, breach, dive; repeat a couple minutes later. It was quite a show, so not at all disappointing that we only saw one whale.

It was lunch time when we got back, so we walked over to the Fish Market Restaurant. I had the fish and chips, Alaskan cod, panko style.

Coronado Island skyline

After lunch Genae and I went to the Maritime Museum. I particularly wanted to see the HMS Surprise, having read and enjoyed all of Patrick O’Brien’s Aubrey/Maturin books. Of course, this wasn’t really the ship sailed by Captain Aubrey two hundred years ago but a replica built from the plans of the HMS Rose, a sail training tall ship on the East Coast. It was purchased by 20^th Century Fox, then extensively modified to become the Surprise for the move Master and Commander: Far Side of the World.

The Museum also has the Star of India (the oldest active merchant sailing ship in the world), a Soviet Foxtrot class submarine, the USS Dolphin (the US Navy’s last diesel-electric sub), and several others.

“Stop”

We could have easily spent an additional couple hours there as they have a lot to see. We concentrated on the Star of India, the Surprise, the B-39, and the Dolphin. We took a quick look through the exhibits aboard the Berkeley, a ferryboat from San Francisco bay. It’s loaded with large, detailed models of all sorts of ships. Those models are incredible.

I found the Star of India and the Surprise fascinating but I don’t really know anything about sailing vessels. There was a docent on the Surprise talking about the materials used in the rigging, but I really had no clue what he as talking about. On the other hand, I really enjoyed getting to compare the two submarines. The B-29 is a few years newer but the Dolphin is much more modern. Obviously, it’s been upgraded since it was launched in 1968 – the electronics and the microwave oven give it away. It’s a smaller boat, but doesn’t feel nearly as cramped. The Soviet sub looks almost “steam punk” in comparison, and moving through the ship was fun. The watertight doors between compartments are round and wide; going through them is a bit like getting in and out of the Elise. Oh, and we looked through the periscopes on both subs.

When making our way to the Dolphin, we chatted briefly with crew members of the America. The America is an America’s cup boat. I’m not sure if it’s a replica of the original America’s cup winner from 1851 or if it’s a later design. This boat was just tying up at the dock, returned from whale watching. They had heard about our humpback and tried to follow it but arrived too late.

It started raining just as we left and stopped by the time we got to the car. It rained just long enough and just hard enough to soak us thoroughly. We collected the folks and made our way back to their motel where we said our goodbyes.

For dinner we went to Pizza Bella for dinner. Their menu claims they were voted “Best Pizza in the World”. I don’t know who did the voting. It was good pizza, but falls short of Beau Jo’s. As usual, I managed spread molten sauce all over the roof of my mouth, burning it badly. So it goes.

San Diego, day 2

Posted on February 28, 2015 by Dave

Saturday

We didn’t have any specific plans for the day, but we had a list of possibilities. The only constraint was that our activities should have minimal walking, as my mom’s mobility is somewhat restricted.

We stopped by their motel a bit after nine and after discussing the possibilities decided to do a two-hour harbor tour in the morning and visit the Cabrillo National Monument in the afternoon.

Littoral Combat Ship

The weather was on the cool side and overcast. The first part of the tour is a loop of the northern half of the harbor. We passed the boats of the San Diego Maritime Museum (the Star of India, the HMS Surprise, a Soviet submarine), the live bait barges and their attendant sea lions sunning themselves, and the submarine pens below Point Loma. A small flotilla of pleasure craft raced ahead of us, exiting the harbor. We turned around and concentrated on Naval Air Station North Island.

The USS Ronald Reagan, CVN-76, is berthed there undergoing repairs and refitting. It was in the same place last time we visited the area, ten or twelve years ago. (How long has it really been? I was still using a film camera at the time).

The tour boat went back to the dock to disembark the folks who only bought the one hour tour and load up another set of folks for the southern harbor loop. This loop took us under the San Diego

US Naval Ship Bob Hope (T-AKR-300)

Coronado bridge to Naval Base San Diego. I can identify the various classes of naval ships of World War II and describe their purpose and function. But modern naval vessels are a mystery to me, slab-sided, opaque, lacking obvious armament. But we did get to see a couple of helicopter aircraft carriers, a supply ship described as the Costco of the sea, a littoral combat ship (tri-hull, angular, loaded with stealthy attributes) and the Sea Slice, an experimental ship built by Lockheed which seems to be available for purchase.

Sea Slice – experimental littoral ship

Back on shore, we made a quick visit to Tuna Harbor Park. This little park is directly south of the Midway Museum. It attracted my attention because of the giant sculpture of the kiss – that famous photo of the sailor and nurse kissing on V. E. day. It’s called “Unconditional Surrender”. Also in the park is a set of statues – Bob Hope and an audience of fifteen life-sized bronze sculptures. Pretty cool.

After this, we piled back into the car and headed to Coronado Island

The Kiss

for lunch. We made our way to the Brigantine Seafood restaurant, across the street from the Hotel del Coronado. I couldn’t decide which fish to eat and ended up with their Steakhouse Burger – Grass fed California beef, smoked wild boar bacon, tomatoes, chopped lettuce, blue cheese, caramelized onions, white truffle-black pepper aioli. Yes, it’s wrong to have a burger at a good seafood place, but so it goes.

Next we headed to Point Loma and the Cabrillo National Monument. Ideally, we’d be there during low tide and wander through the tidal pools searching for sea urchins and starfish. The tides weren’t right, the parking lot was full, and my mom wouldn’t have been able to make it down to the water anyway.

So we went to the visitors center, enjoyed the view of the harbor and city to the east and the

Bob Hope entertains the troops

ocean to the west. The folks watched a short film about whales while Genae and I went to the lighthouse. There, we found a docent, or perhaps not actually a docent but someone dressed in period garb, knowledgeable in the lighthouse and its times. We had a nice little chat. His character wasn’t the lighthouse operator but a newspaperman.

I asked if he felt isolated there. “Look around you – there are lots of people!” He told us that in 1887, many folks would visit the lighthouse on Saturdays and Sundays, make a day of it. I asked if the water catchment basin provided a sufficient supply and he described the effort required to bring water from the nearest spring. Next I asked if he was a Cleveland man or Harrison man. He enjoyed the question, being in actuality not a newspaperman from 1887 but a former fifth grade history teacher.

We left the lighthouse and wandered along the paths. Past the old WW II gun emplacements, to the ocean overlooks decorated with a whale’s spine and kelp, to a nice view of the new Point Loma lighthouse. On the way back to the visitor center we stopped at a small blockhouse holding exhibits of the shore defenses – a 155mm artillery shell, a cross-section of the howitzer’s barrel showing the rifling, binoculars and telescopes used for spotting.

Old Point Loma Lighthouse

By now we’d managed to wear out my parents. We dropped them off at their motel and returned to ours. We’re in Old Town, so after a short rest we took a walk and looked for an interesting Mexican restaurant. We found ourselves at Café Coyote. I had enchiladas – one beef and one guacamole. I’d never heard of a guacamole enchilada before. Like the dinner in general, it was okay but nothing to write home about. That’s the thing about Mexican restaurants – it’s pretty easy to find average food but above average is fairly rare.

After dinner we walked up and down the streets of Old Town. Lots of Mexican restaurants, a few bars, a number of stores selling trinkets and souvenirs of the area. Kitschy stuff we’d never buy, but didn’t mind browsing.

San Diego, day 1

Posted on February 25, 2015 by Dave

Back in December it was obvious I wouldn’t be flying USAir before my miles would expire at the end of February, so we needed to use them or lose them. We considered all the big west coast cities and picked Seattle until we realized the only flight we had enough points for was an overnighter. So we went with Plan B: San Diego. My parents like to go there so we suggested they meet us there. And we timed the weather perfectly, missing a big winter storm at home.

Friday

Up at 5:30 and out of the house a few minutes before six. Bad traffic on I-270 cost us twenty minutes, but we arrived at the gate only a few minutes behind my target time, no worries. Our first flight was DEN to PHX. There were two youth soccer teams aboard and the flight was noisy. Not because the kids were loud, but because the two chaperones in the row behind us were the loudest people on the plane.

We had a short layover before our flight to LAX. Not long enough to grab a meal, but enough to grab a snack. This was a quick flight, about an hour gate to gate. We were out at the waiting area for the rental car shuttles a few minutes after noon. We watched patiently as Hertz, Avis, Enterprise shuttles went by. Waited more – Alamo, Fox, Budget. I asked one of the drivers what color van Economy Rent-A-Car uses. Never saw one. I got the phone out and searched for Economy. Panicked a bit when the nearest one according to Google was 38 minutes away. Went to the info desk where they gave us a phone number and told us to take the parking shuttle to lot C and call for the shuttle there.

I wasn’t sure why Economy didn’t run shuttles to the airport like all the others. They’re on Century Blvd like most of the others, and they’ll drop us at the terminal when we return, so why not pick up customers there as well?

So we were running a bit later than hoped. The plan was to meet a friend at the In-N-Out in Costa Mesa at something like 1:30. By then we were getting fairly hungry: skipped breakfast, had a snack at about eleven, and it was actually 2:30 for us rather than 1:30 because of the time change.

We had told my folks it would take us a couple hours to get down to San Diego. We didn’t account for lunch, and we certainly didn’t account for southern California traffic. After lunch we followed the smart phone’s navigation instructions which put us on a toll road. Because we didn’t opt for the express pass for the rental car, we decided it best to avoid the toll road. So we turned around intending to take the 405 south but, typical for the area, that was not an option. We ended up making a u-turn in front of the In-N-Out after driving eight or ten miles.

So we finally arrived at the hotel in Old Town a bit after five. We called my folks, found our way to their motel, and from there to the Bali Hai restaurant. This is a Hawaiian themed seafood place on Shelter Island. Our table had a beautiful view of the harbor, the San Diego skyline brightly lit, mirrored in the water. I had the braised swordfish (with grilled orange, forbidden rice, and black pepper sauce). It was delicious. And all the waiters were dressed like me!

The Rental Car

The car this trip is new to me, a Chrysler 200. I found much of its operation alien. No gear selector in the console, must be on the tree. What I thought was a skinny shift lever was instead a fat windshield wiper control. I didn’t so much put it in drive as turn on the wipers and spray the washer fluid. The gear selector is a knob. As is common now, there’s a fob with no key. Keep the fob in your pocket, press the brake, push the button and the car starts. I found it unnatural to pocket the fob. I’ve driven cars for forty years and I’ve always had a key and I’ve never changed gears with a knob.

It spends quite a bit of time shifting. It’s a nine speed automatic. You’re in third by the time you hit 15 or 18, sixth at 40. This is just cruising around; I didn’t put my foot to the floor the entire four days. Quite often the shifts were pretty harsh. The brakes were good, but kind of touchy.

The back seat passengers hit their heads every time they got in the car, even when warned “watch your head!” I’m a bit too tall for the car. With the seat all the way back, the pedals were too close. This made for more fatigue on longer drives. There was no manual in the glove box and never figured out ~~many~~ any of the controls. Managed to mute the radio but never could turn it off. How long before I tell kids to get off my lawn?

It’s a nice car, seemingly well built (this one was brand new), and has nice lines. When I was picking everybody up once, a couple of guys said they thought it was sharp. I’m sure it would be a wonderful car for folks who only cart short people around.

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