Playing in the Rain

So much for trying to get into work early today. I spent 30min stopped in traffic in Pacifica trying to get out of town via Highway 1 north. I finally gave up, made a u-turn and took 1 south, intending to catch Highway 92 over to 280S. I made a spur of the moment turn onto Highway 35 south and, well, this:


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For those unfamiliar with the local roads and microclimates, this route took me along twisty back roads through the some of the worst weather that the current set of strong winter storms pounding the Bay Area have to offer:

• 50mph+ wind gusts
• Flooding
• Downed trees
• Smaller debris (think leaves and small branches) all over the roads
• Fog
• Rain falling in horizontal sheets (which blocked the view worse than the fog)

I'd been planning on just taking 92 over to 280 but I turned onto 35 on the spur of the moment, since I was enjoying the weather and wanted to get out of traffic and see some more of it. The thing is, I'm kind of crazy. I LOVE driving in severe weather, as long as I can get out of traffic so I can set my own pace and not have to worry about some other driver making a mistake. Severe weather is the only time that I can experiment with car control on the street at legal speeds...It's really the only "interesting" driving that I can safely do (for a certain definition of "safely") on the street, so once I'd made the decision to flee Pacifica via 1s, it was a no-brainer to turn onto 35.

When I hit Page Mill, I turned the traction control off. ;)

Hitler Finds out Ken Block Drives for Ford Now

Just when I thought this meme was done...

Every OS Sucks

Old, but I'd never seen it before:

Seca!

Signed up for my first track day of 2010: 02/15 at Laguna Seca with Hooked on Driving.

Utah and Arizona

Pictures from my New Year's trip to southern Utah and Arizona...

Zion National Park:

  

Bryce Canyon National Park:

  

In the "not exactly living in harmony with Nature" department, I took a series of three shots of the Navajo Nation coal burning power plant spewing crap into the atmosphere:



I also experimented some more with handheld stitched panoramas. This one from Zion was composed of thirteen source images:



(Full set, including a few pictures from Red Canyon, UT and the Hoover Dam.)