2003 BAJA 1000 & 15" POWER BOOK
EARLY MORNING CAMP FIRE ON THE BEACH WITH OUR 40 GIG i-POD & A CUP OF JAVA
With the drizzle and dark days of Winter upon us, we decided to close up shop and head South of the Border to spend the Thanksgiving holiday in Baja. We have a little house on the Sea of Cortez that we enjoy spending time at, especially when Portland is cold and gray. We also thought this would be a great opportunity to bring along a new computer to test. Apple was kind enough to send us one of the new 15" aluminum PowerBooks, with the cool back lit keyboard and DVD SuperDrive (more on that later). Baja has seen a round of nasty hurricanes this year, we were concerned about the condition of our home, and how it held up to all the water and wind. One of the first things we noticed on our journey South was how unusually green the desert was, and all the wildflowers. A green desert means only one thing....huge amounts of rain.
Upon arriving at our home, we noticed some minor water damage. We were fortunate that it wasn't much worse, as some of the homes lower on the Baja peninsula were hit hard. Never the less our home insurance in Mexico skyrocketed this year, as the insurance companies have had to pay millions in repair costs. It was good to be at our house again, the ocean was beautiful with a soft green hue. We did some painting, and worked on various house projects. We also upgraded the Solar Energy system, and added a strong Optima battery to the equation. We were able to watch "Finding Nemo" on the DVD player, which we thought was kind of appropriate being that many of the Tropical fish in the movie swim in the Sea of Cortez in our front yard.
OUR FRONT YARD IN BAJA
In addition to checking on our house, we were able to check out this year's Baja 1000 off road race. This year the race was a loop format, starting and finishing in Ensenada, as opposed to the 2002 Baja 1000 and the long haul to La Paz. The most southern section of this years race course was about an hour from our house, so we piled in the truck and headed out to see the 700+ horsepower race trucks, costing between $500,000 and $750, 000, with close to 3 feet of suspension. Our friends were racing in the unlimited class, and we were there to cheer them on. We watched the race from mile 480, about the half way point of the the entire course. The course this year was especially gnarly, and the attrition rate was very high. In some of the classes, 2 out of 3 race cars broke, and "DNF" (Did Not Finish).
Race night was very cold (40's) and dark, with no moon to help the racers. It also made viewing the race challenging, because of the lack of light. It was still an amazing event, with all the sound and speed of desert racing. I feel fortunate to have been at this incredible race many times, now we just have to figure out a way to win it. It's important to point out the Baja 1000 race course uses existing dirt roads and washes for the motos and race cars. The Baja desert is beautiful, and everyone wants to see the race continue into the future, so every effort is made to protect it. Once the race is over, it's very difficult to even find the race course without a detailed course map.
CHEERING FOR THE RAGLAND'S AT MILE 480 ON RACE NIGHT..... VIVA CHEVY THUNDER!
This time of year is dark being that Winter solstice is only 1 month away. Most of the Baja 1000 is run at night, the race cars run incredibly bright HID lights manufactured by the German giant Hella that run for about $600 each. Some of the race cars run 15 of these lamps simultaneously.......you do the math. We have Hella headlights on our Audi Quattro and they are amazing on dark nights. It's hard to put into words how bright the lights are coming down the race course, it looks almost like the amount of light in a football stadium coming off just one vehicle ......incredible technology. We all commented on what a dark night it was, and the stars were a solid swatch of white in the sky. Hands down, the stars in Baja are the most beautiful I have ever seen. It makes me want to sharpen my Astronomy knowledge, and get a big telescope for the Baja house.
This year Mario Andretti was the Grand Marshall for the Baja 1000. How's that for a racing endorsement? He brings a huge amount of credibility to any form of motorsport. We met Mario in Portland a couple of years ago at a CART race, he's a good guy and laid back. There was gigantic media presence this year for the race, the most Press Passes ever issued in the history of the race. A documentary movie of the Baja 1000 was also shot by Bruce Brown's son, to be released next Summer. Many racers of different disciplines participated, Jimmy Vasser of CART, Stephan Johansson of 24 hour of Le Mans fame, Rally stars......the list goes on. It was hard to even find a hotel room near the course, as it seems the whole world of auto racing had descended upon the Baja peninsula to watch this racing masterpiece go down.
A VERY TIRED TEAM FUELS UP TO HEAD BACK OUT INTO THE DESERT
As we waited in the darkness at mile 480, there was a constant buzz of motos coming down the course, as the bikes are first off the start line at 6 AM in Ensenada. You have to give all the racers of the 1000 huge props for their courage and focus to head out into the pitch black desert in the middle of the night at over 100 mph. It takes a determined soul to do this for 20-30 hours straight with no or little rest, they definitely have my respect. You can see the fatigue in their eyes, and the equipment is barely holding together, that's what makes this race so famous. Baja can be so brutal, that even the best engineering, preparation, and driver talent can still be humbled in a matter of a few hours. Some teams have spent millions of dollars for this single race, only to end up loading a broken race car on the trailer and heading back north to the States.
At about 7:30 PM we heard a big boom of Chevy Thunder on the horizon and could see very bright lights, much brighter than the motos. The #81 Chevy Silverado Trophy Truck rocketed past us at over 100 mph, covering us in Baja silt. It turned out to be our friend Ryan Arciero at the wheel performing his off road magic. Ryan's a good guy, always has a positive attitude, and huge enthusiasm for racing. I always enjoy talking with him. Ryan would continue to lead the race the whole night "Clear Air", and at 2 AM he crossed the finish line in Ensenada to earn the Trophy Truck win. This was a huge win for Ryan and his partner Mark Miller, they worked incredibly hard for this victory and I'm sure Chevrolet is very pleased as well. There where many more Ford's entered in the Baja 1000 than Chevy's. When all the dust settled, and everything was said and done, Chevy earned 1st and 2nd overall! To Ryan & Mark..... Congratulations #81!
INJURED RACE TRUCK IN THE PIT AT MILE 480- HALF MILLION DOLLAR RACE TRUCKS DO BREAK!
Race night was fun, we all had a great time even though it was the coldest I can ever remember Baja in my 25 years of traveling down there. It was especially sweet knowing that a friend had won the race. It was time to hang out at the house, do some chores, drink good Mexican beer (no that doesn't mean Tecate), & enjoy the ocean at our door step. Baja is a harsh natural environment, and I can see that our house is taking a beating. It's makes us a little sad we can't be around as much as we would like, and give our casa the "TLC" it deserves. For those of you out there who are parents, you know what I'm talking about. As our children grow older, there just doesn't seem to be a whole lot of time left over for travel. It amazes us how much we traveled when Sierra was little. It would seem at times that we were gone more often than we were actually home.
I still have fond memories of traveling for 2 months through Baja with Sierra when she was 4. We camped the whole trip, and that's a lot of nights spent in a tent with a little one. I was able to sea kayak and fly fish every day, great to spend so much time by the sea. It was a magical trip, and one that ultimately helped us to decide where we wanted to buy a home on the ocean in Baja. Mexico is good for the soul, a time to slow down, and enjoy a more relaxed pace. Maybe that's why many American's choose to retire South of the Border, most of our neighbors in Baja are from the States. Most people in Mexico have few material possessions, but I sense that many of them are genuinely happy in life. I see many more smiles in Baja than I do in the NW. When I travel to Mexico it reminds me to live "simply", and not to get too caught up in material acquisition.
SIERRA WORKING ON HER POWERPOINT PRESENTATION FOR SCHOOL
Being that Sierra missed a week of school for our trip to Baja, her teachers were kind enough to give her the assignments in advance so she would be caught up when she returned back to Oregon. One assignment was a PowerPoint presentation for Science. As I mentioned earlier we brought along a new 15" aluminum PowerBook to work with and test. Sierra was able to crank out her Prezo 1,500 miles away from her school. I asked her about her take on the new Aluminum 15" computer and she stated that it felt like a bigger 12" PowerBook. I have to agree the new 15" P-Book feels much more like the existing 12" PowerBook, than the old 15" Titanium computer that I use daily. The new portable sports the factory installed 10.3 or code name "Panther". The boot is incredibly fast, after the computer finally sends a video signal to the screen. All of us commented that the lag of activity at the start of the boot, almost makes you think that the "Power" button didn't quite engage far enough. Then about 15 seconds later you are reassured, when the 15" P-Book starts to crank out the Boot files.
The new 15" PowerBook computer is fast with a 1.25 ghz G4 chip supplying the power under the hood. The computer can accommodate 2 Gigs of RAM, that I'm sure OS 10.3 and all the memory hungry applications would adore. It comes loaded with all the default apps such as i-photo, i-movie, i-tunes, and i-DVD for burning your own custom movies. We brought down our Olympus digital camera this trip, and i-Photo was easy to work with and organize the 400 pics we shot. The new 15" PowerBook is very quick and rock solid. I don't think the entire time we worked with the computer did an App freeze or did the computer need to be restarted. So far I'm really impressed with 10.3 "Panther". Of course in the traditional pace of high tech, there is already an update to 10.3 on apple.com which is affectionately refereed to as 10.3.1. I should mention that if any of you have an Olympus digital camera, and snorkel or use it in very wet conditions, there are a couple of very good underwater cases available.
SOLAR POWER-WATCHING "FINDING NEMO" DVD IN BAJA
The screen is bright and crisp on the new 15" P-Book, and it has just about any port you would ever need on either it's right or left flank. Initially there was concern about the quality of the case of the new computer. I heard grumbling about the latch not working on some of the first models. I'm happy to report that our 15" PowerBook had great finish quality, and everything worked as it should. The new 15" PowerBook runs hot as the 12" and the old Titanium 15" did because of a metal body and the speedy G4 chip inside acting like an CPU inferno. Wireless performance of the "Airport Extreme" card was good, and it has better range than that of the Titanium P-Book (which wasn't especially strong). One aspect of the new 15" PowerBook that I didn't care for was the battery life. It's safe to say that the new 15" PowerBook is a power pig. I think battery consumption is too high, and Apple engineers need to address it in the next "Rev" of the computer.
One feature of the new P-Book which is really nice is the back lit keyboard. It's light sensitive, adjusting both the screen & keyboard brightness simultaneously. It works very well making it easy to hammer out text in low light. We first worked with the new technology on the 17" PowerBook and I'm sure we will see this feature on the Dell laptops soon. I worked with the PowerBook on the plane flying back to Oregon. Even in low light of the airplane flying at night, I was able to work on various projects without an interruption in workflow. What many people don't know about the new backlit keyboard, is that "Mercury" is the element that provides the illumination......yikes. It is a cool feature, albeit the toxic material.
"PANCHO" THE HUMMINGBIRD WORKING THE FEEDER
The SuperDrive on the 15" P-Book offers you the ability to burn CD's and DVD's. Flying home I was able to edit our pictures of the trip in i-Photo, export the different Photo Albums into i-DVD, dropped some cool AIFF formatted songs to play in the background, and burned a Photo Slide-Show DVD. The encoding of the DVD was very quick, much better than the first generation of SuperDrive and i-DVD. You have to love good intuitive technology! A weakness the Apple Superdrive has, is that it currently only accepts DVD (-), and not the DVD (+) blank DVD's. So remember next time you are out buying blank media, choose DVD-R or DVD-RW, and save yourself the frustration.
When Apple released the 12" and 17" PowerBooks in January at Macworld San Francisco, I knew it would be only be a matter of time when the 15" PowerBook would loose it's cool Titanium shell. Now it's here with an all aluminum enclosure, and I do have to say that it's a strong mid-size portable. With the speed of the G4 chip and the stability of OS 10.3 "Panther" this computer appears to be bomb proof. Personally I'm still partial to the 12" P-Book simply because it's more conducive to travel, smaller, weighs less, and relatively close in performance. I do have to say that I think the 12" would be too small for a primary computer, the small screen size would be limiting at times. However as a secondary computer, the 12" would be a mighty tool. Either way a new 15" or 12" PowerBook would surely bring a smile to any users face (that's what it's about after all).
PART OF THE CACTUS GARDEN
Baja was incredible! It was cool to see the race, hang out on the beach, and snorkel with the tropical fish. It was also nice to paddle the kayak again, and do some fly fishing. There were numerous Oregonian's scattered up and down the Baja peninsula, with stacks of wind /surfboards on their cars. I think it's all the windsurfers from the Gorge, trying to find warmth and sunshine again. I do think that Baja and the warmth of Mexico is a nice balance to cold & wet days of Winter in the NW. Baja is a remarkable place with incredible natural beauty, outdoor recreation opportunity, and it's still relatively unspoiled (at least the lower peninsula). Living in Baja is a good way to stay young, strong, tan, and stoked (smile). Our hope for this web update, was to blend both travel and technology, two things we love..... hope you enjoyed it. There are a few Quicktime clips of our trip and some Baja 1000 race footage on our VIDEO Page. Happy Holidays Amigos!
SUNRISE IN FRONT OF THE HOUSE