We also pigged out at the continental breakfast, or at least I did.

So we get up to the mountain and because of some screwed up way the place is laid out you have to take a truck ride to the ticket booth. No problem though. We got our tickets after waiting for the lady in front of me to pay with food stamps or something, it took her an honest 10 minutes to complete her transaction for her and her 900 children.

By this time we had met up with Utah and Eileen who arrived that morning. I abandoned my wife to ski school and we started our day.
Here’s Eileen enjoying the snow.

And Utah and Eileen as we wait for rusty Tim to remember how to snowboard.

Here’s me and Ei trying to figure out how to take a picture of all of us on the lift.

Then Tim figured it out

And Tim trying his best not to get pissed off at the snow.

Utah decided he could skii and operate the camera at the same time, I figured out that I really couldn’t on the snowboard, I have to use my arms too much because I suck.
As you can see in this video as Eileen looks totally natural and graceful and I look like I’m in some kind of perpetual fall.

2010/02/14 Snowboarding from gtluke on Vimeo.

We then went and found my wife who had been successfully navigating the bunny hill by herself and having a good time, and we took a few more runs and our lift ticket’s were done at 4:30.

I had a really good time snowboarding, but on the very last run i felt a really sharp pain in my back. I had felt a little pain while sitting on the lift but I was ignoring it. I had 2 Motrin in me from the morning and I guess they were wearing off. While walking back to the car I experienced some of the worst pain in my life. I couldn’t even walk, it was intense shooting pain right in my spine. UGH. My wife carried my stuff and I eventually made it to the car. The whole ride home I had back spasms every few minutes. Once we got home we decided to go back out and get dinner as a group again. Tim didn’t want to come, I think he missed his wife too much
During dinner and after my back continued to spasm like crazy. I really thought I was going to have to go to the hospital or something for real pain killers. I had by then taken another 5 Motrin in the last few hours and it wasn’t helping at all. When I got home I used my heating pad to calm down my back, my normal 15 minutes on, 15 off. Eventually my back unclamped from it’s incredibly tense position and I was able to stretch and crack my back. By the next day I was completely fine. I took it easy anyway and didn’t do anything. Now today (Monday) I feel like nothing ever happened. So strange, usually when I have back spasms that mean’s I’m stuck in bed for weeks. hmf.
Maybe I’ll have to get a huge heating stick on thing to wear on my back next time. Something to keep my back from tensing up.
Now I want to go snowboarding again!

All the pictures: http://gtluke.smugmug.com/RallyAddict/2010-WinterRallyNY

The 2010 Winter Rally New York was RallyNewYork’s first winter rally event. Though in traditional Upstate New York fashion we have seen snow (flurries) on stages before this was a full on ice race.  I was really excited this whole month after we got quite a few days of snow, but it let up a few weeks before the event. Luckily it never really warmed up too much upstate and the roads held all their snow and ice, but mostly ice. The roads were an honest 3-4″ of solid ice. The speeds these guys were traveling was purely astonishing.

I arrived around noon on Saturday, as this event was untraditionally set up as a Saturday-Sunday event instead of Friday-Saturday. I stopped by the remote rally HQ at the 10-Mile Scout Camp and picked up my media pass for the weekend and got to check out the cars on display and the ceremonial start. I stayed for the first few cars and left to see SS1, but when I arrived at the entrance to the Camp Kernochan spectator area I was turned away because the parking lot was full. I can usually use my media pass to gain extra access, to that road or to traditionally off limits evacuation roads but I almost always choose not to. I try to participate in rally events like a standard spectator, but I use my media pass to get unobstructed angles for better pictures. Once in a while I’ll take a walk to a better turn or just a different turn if the stage is a repeat. So, with that in mind I headed over to the alternative spectator area at Camp Aquehonga. I’ve been to both spots before in previous rallies and  I knew that Kernochan wasa  better spot, and the cars would pass at EVERY pass instead of every other pass like at Aquehong so I was a bit disappointed.  But I arrived at Aquehonga, informed some other spectators about the full lot at Kernochan who were interested in going there. Here’s an overall map of the rally so you know what I’m talking about: mapoverallnywr2010

So, I did choose to take a walk from the spectator area since it was a complete straight away. I knew there was a beautiful forested area down the hill from the spectator spot and walked down there to find that it just didn’t work well at all in the winter. I headed back up the hill and found a little clearing after a long Right-5 where I could set up. One of the really challenging things about the winter rally is actually finding a safe place to take pictures from. The snow really makes the safe spots few and far between, as the footing is terrible and the cars have a fraction of the normal traction. I found a nice cluster of trees just of the road that I could shoot through.  The only thing worse than getting hit by a flying rally car is being yelled at by the rally organizer Ivan for being unsafe, so safety first!

Here’s my favorite pictures from that spot, SS2:

My favorite from the weekend:

The Mitsubishi showing was pretty incredible, and thumbs up to bringing an E30-M3 to a snow rally!

After that stage it would be a while until the next passing of cars which is SS4 so I took a walk. I found a stunning pine swamp with a fallen tree across the road, but high enough that it wasn’t cut down for the rally. It was fantastic.

Unfortunately I just couldn’t get that spot to work for me. The branches made it really hard to focus on the cars coming, the sun was just about down and I just couldn’t get my act together. I did have a great time and got at least one good shot of the GreaseCar.

After this passing I packed up my stuff and walked back to my car. I had no company with me for this rally so I didn’t bother getting a hotel room and drove home, it’s about 2 hours each way. My Wife’s grad school semester started this week and she had a lot of work to do. My friends have no excuse other than being afraid of the cold… yawn…

I woke up at the glorious hour of 5am and jumped back in my car and headed north. I was one of the first people in the Kernochan spectator lot, I took my time and put on about 900 layers of clothes and packed some chemical foot warmers. For the first passing, SS7 I chose the same spot I used during 2009 Fall Rallysprint which was basically inside a giant pine tree up on a hill on the outside of the turn. I got some good shots from there and got a chance to talk to Neil McDaid aka Lensman. He gave me some pointers on shooting rally cars in the suck when the cars have their headlights on, one of the situations I have a lot of trouble with. Here’s what I got from SS7

A little off course

Best turn of the weekend

After that passing the 3 way intersection seen in the background of the pictures is rearranged so that the cars are coming down the road where the spectators are standing, and back on the road the cars were previously turning on. Basically, the cars are coming by me again, in the same direction but totally straight, no turn. So I walked down the hill a bit to the next turn to try and get some good shots. A bunch of other media people had gathered there as well. The cars starting coming by for SS8

And then…
Broken Motorsports came in a bit hot

Result:

I actually had my helmetcam laying on the ground recording for this stage so I have some video. There will be a lot better video from the video crew that was right next to me, and there was even a camera in the tree that Broken hit! I haven’t seen the video’s online yet so here’s mine:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV6dN5fDprg

Chris Meegan (from down in the comments) has an AWESOME video of the crash in HD, Check his out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDPtcpEpmGc

I kinda froze when I saw it happen, but luckily I was surrounded by a bunch of people who knew just what to do. They made sure the team was OK, and they were. They steered them off the road, waved the cars by and found the OK sign from the co-driver’s book to alert the other competitors that they were OK and there was no need to stop and assist.

After hanging out at the crash site I wandered back up the hill for SS9 which was the same format as the first pass of the day. I tried from a different angle and it really didn’t work out well. I got another good shot of the GreaseCar though. Having such a bright color orange, against black highlights, on an older car that has a lot of sharp line makes their car really easy to photograph. My camera can snap into focus on their car considerably faster than say a silver brand new Subaru that has very vague lines and little contrast.

SS10 was a repeat of SS11 and I tried to set up a little differently and get some high speed panning pictures while remaining at the spectators area. Here’s what I got:

After this stage there was an extended service and then another repeat of these 2 stage formats. I decided to call it a day and drive home. I’m pretty glad I left when I did though, as the roads were horrible. Even with 4 snow tires on my horrible hyundai I was still sliding all over the road. I saw a few accidents while driving to rt17 and after I got on, I found people flashing me and noticed that ahead the entire highway was shut down because of an accident. I jumped off the highway and took back roads ALL the way home. Took an extra hour but I kept moving so that kept me from getting frustrated with traffic. There was some seriously sketchy sections of roads where I went sliding down some hill but I managed to keep my paint off of trees.

So pretty much everyone I know is booked on the same flight out to Vegas for the pair of weddings that weekend. Our friends Rich and Dawn are getting married on Sunday, and Phil and Ashley are getting married on Monday.

Here’s Craig and Phil’s brother

We got on the flight and after an intense game of musical chairs we all got seated near our mates and we seriously occupied like 1/4 of the plane.
Steve, Rene, and Craig

We landed, and because I use the world’s best rental car service (National) I was able to get us into a brand new full size Silverado pickup truck. Handy for the rest of the week and damn was it comfy to cruise around in.

We got to the hotel and I started putting together my bike.

We eventually went out and met up with Rich during his last night as a single man. He was eating dinner at a sports bar in Paris.

Craig drinking a beer

Ted doing the same

We hung out that night and walked around and went to bed. The next day was Rich’s big day. We met up with him at Paris where he was getting married. We chatted a bit and went inside and waited for the ceremony to start.

Here’s Dawn and her Dad coming down the isle.

The two of them

awwww

Dawn

Richard pretending to be serious

For reception we headed over to Planet Hollywood where we had some great dinner.

We ate, hung out and called it a night.

Monday morning maria and I went over to Mandalay bay to check out the aquarium again.
Fishy

Sharky

Maria likes sharks

That night was Phil’s and Ashley’s wedding. We arrived at the chapel early and thought we were lost. A few minutes later people started rolling in though.
The gang

Phil and Ash arrive in their limo

While we were waiting, Elvis came and introduced himself to everyone in the room. Awesome guy.

Ashley and her dad being danced down the isle by Elvis

Elvis doing the service, Ashley looking nervous!

Elvis being awesome

Awwww

Everyone wanted a turn with Elvis

Even the newlyweds

Damn kids

Even Maria and I

Elvis was awesome

After party at Margaritaville

After that we went down to Old Vegas to hang out.

Maria

The next day I woke up early and went for a bike ride around Vegas

After that Steve and I headed over to Bootleg Canyon for some riding. Here’s a shot of Steve coming down Girlscout.

The next day we packed up all of our bikes and headed back to bootleg. Rene brought his Ritchie travel bike and he went for a road ride around Lake Mead.
Crappy picture of Rene in the casino with his bike.

Up the escalator

In the elevator

Here’s Rene’s travel bike

That night Rene and I figured out that there was a pinball museum in town and went over. It’s not so much a museum as it is the largest collection of pinball machines you have ever seen. There were 6 rows of them. Here are just 2!

We hung out there for like 2 hours playing pinball, pretty awesome. I would totally go back to play some more. He had all the machines in tip top shape.

I stopped on the parking deck to take some pictures.

The next day we were hanging out in the casinos checking stuff out.

That’s about it for now. Wish I took more pictures of us biking but it’s such a pain to carry a camera. I really need a smaller point and shoot camera to keep with me all the time.

This was the first cyclocross race I’ve ever been to, I enjoyed it! Lots of fun and lots of great people.

http://gtluke.smugmug.com/Biking/Horseshoe-Scramble-NJBA

http://gtluke.smugmug.com/Biking/200910-Critical-Mass/10150413_tE3bV

The complete gallery of images can be found here:
http://gtluke.smugmug.com/RallyAddict/2009-IRNY

Click the picture to see the rest of the highlights and writeup

Dave had gotten to the rally earlier in the day and had checked in for us, and alerted us that we actually had a time share condo type room with a full kitchen. This prompted us to pick up some food to cook in the room as I was seriously sick of eating out for the past week.

Here are a few pictures that Dave took at the Ceremonial start.

Here is an unflattering picture of me cooking up some pasta for the crew.

SS1 started at about 9:30 am and we took the 30 minute cruise over to the stage in our rented Dodge Challenger. Here’s a tip, always be nice to the rental people when they are out of the car you booked, I ended up swapping out a crappy car I didn’t want at a different location and they gave me a sorta awesome Challenger. It’s not really aweosme, but I tell you it was a damn nice car for a crappy cheap rental. It got over 30mpg and was impressively fast for a v6. Held a massive amount of our stuff too, great vacation cruising car.

Anyway back to the stages…

SS1 We arrived at the stage just in time. I decided that this was my vacation and I wasn’t going to stress myself out over trying to take awesome pictures. I casually snapped some shots while standing in the spectator area, as did Dave. Here is what we got:

SS3 After the cars passed Dave and I decided to venture down around the corner sporting our awesomely provided press passes. Normally I like to take pictures at the spectator area, as I try to keep the point of RallyAddict in perspective of a fan. But the cars were going to pass 3 times so I figured we should get some different angles. About a 2 minute walk down the course brought us to an awesome downhill sweeping right turn that was fed by a quick left. Dave set up at the entrance to the sweeper and I set up at the exit. This was a terrific spot, both action packed and safe.

SS5 we waited in the same spot but I crossed the road to get a different perspective. I ate my penut butter and fluff sandwiches during the break.

I’m no rally car builder, but the camber on the front of the grease gun can’t be right, can it?

SS7 is in another location. There was another photographer with us at the last spot named Steve who told us a shortcut to a good spot at the following stages. We drove up what was the previous SS2-4-6 course but I ended up going too far and having to turn around and come back. By the time I did that I was on what was going to be a hot stage, so after passing the guys setting up the finishing line I ran into a course marshal who asked me to get off the road. Conveniently there was a huge open field on the inside of the next turn. We buried our cars at the end and hung out at the finish line. The crew setting up the finishing line was awesome. We got rally updates and great conversation in the 40 minutes of downtime between stages.

We decided again that since we were going to watch the cars come through SIX more times we would take it easy on the photos and actually get to enjoy some rally. We got some good shots anyway.

SS8

SS9, Sun is getting low and some of the rally cars have their headlights on. Rally lights are so bright that it completely freaks out the cameras with a giant white orb and they can’t focus so shots are limited for the rest of the day. This is one of my favorite shots of the weekend, it’s Dave’s shot but he happened to catch my remote flash going off across the road.

SS10

SS11-12 Now it’s just totally dark but the light put off by the cars is just staggering. Makes for a beautiful sight in the dark raining NY forest.

SS15 We decided to sleep in a bit and skip SS13 and we arived during the following service break and we got to check out a bunch of the cars, or what was left of them. We wandered over to the spectator area which was close by but delayed too long and missed the first 2 or 3 cars through. I have to note here how cool the rally village was. There was a WARM huge mess hall packed with treats and food. Right outside was the service going on, and seriously a 3 minute walk away you could spectate. Really cool that the crew could actually watch a real stage and take care of the car easily.

SS16 Was another passing of the same stage, this time I concentrated more on pictures.

SS19 Start was preempted by an awesome sight at service. The Jackson Rally Dirt Subaru had busted a real control arm and the rear knuckle. Since Subaru changes their lug pattern and axle setup every 5 minutes, none of the other competitors had a spare to help out the team, everyone else had some other combination of splines and lugs. The team was able to rip off the knuckle, chop out the bushing, weld the knuckle back together, and weld in some makeshift scrap metal bushing to hold the control arm on. I’m not sure exactly what happened to the knuckle, possibly the control arm bolt snapped off horribly in the bushing so they had to cut the knuckle to get the entire bushing out quickly.

Here is the team welding the knuckle back together. I’m not up on my Subaru tech but the direction of the mount kinda now makes me think it’s the trailing arm, but there was a bent control arm in the grass in front of the car as well.

Welding it back together:

We knew the stage was starting and the team had just started to put the knuckle back in, but by then at least 1 or 2 cars had started to line up. The start was basically at the service which again was super cool to see. While at the spectator area we waited anxiously to see if they got the car working. Their position in line came and went but to our surprise about 5 cars later the Subaru lined up. We were spectating from the starting line, something I had never done before.

After watching Stage 19 there was a extended break before we could see the cars again without some hiking and by now I was just plain tired. We hung out in the rally village a little longer and decided to call it a weekend. I saw more cars driven at speed in what was supposed to be my relaxed rally weekend than at any other rally I’ve ever been to. Ivan and Rally New York have put together an awesome rally where everyone could easily access every part of rally. Yet at the same time it never felt like a rallysprint or a rallycross, it wasa full fledged rally but it was EASY on us spectator. I presume it was easy on the crew and racers too yet the roads were far from short. Excellent job Rally New York.

http://gtluke.smugmug.com/Biking/2009-Mountain-Man

http://gtluke.smugmug.com/RallyAddict/2009-Fall-RNY-RallySprint

Team No Tights clenches the victory for the Men’s Sport 30-34 class. Go Utah!

All the pictures are here: http://gtluke.smugmug.com/Biking/2009-Ringwood