Art Center Car Classics 2011

Finally a weekend all to myself. I can't remember exactly last time I had a weekend without company of any sort and it was a nice break. I stayed with David out in Venice and I am super grateful for his hospitality. He lent me the sofa and the keys to the Jetta. I was also struck by how nice that part of LA is, just a great neighborhood.
I came down to LA to go to the annual car show at Art Center where I went to school a few years ago. This car show is not like any other, its quite unique. Most car shows are either centered around new and coming cars, or vintage classics, or race cars, or hot rods, which are all exciting on their own, but the show at Art Center tends to bring the best and most significant and unique cars from all these genres together in one show. Usually there are other vehicles as well such as aircrafts and motor cycles, but I have also seen u-boats and spacecrafts there. This year was no exception with a very cool amphibious plane on display and although Jay Leno and Chip Foose was not there I met up with old friends and caught up on the latest.
I now have several hundred photos and videos to go through but in the mean time here are a few pictures from the show:

The impressive new concept car from Cadillac: "Ciel"

Very rare Ferrari #1 

Very rare Ferrari #2

The Eco Jet

It started as a quiet whistle, we have all heard it before sitting in an airplane, but now I heard it coming from a car sitting 50ft away. This I had to see for myself, and heres the video I took:

Jay Leno's Eco Jet from Pete Hansen on Vimeo.

More info on the EcoJet can be found on Jay Leno's website.

A weekend in Pasadena

I went to Pasadena last weekend to be at the yearly car show at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. This is not a normal car show or concourse, but an event focused on designs that push the limit for what is bold, beautiful or innovative, and this year they not only focused on cars, but boats, airplanes and more.
There were cars of all ages, one-off prototypes, experimental airplanes and space crafts, a u-boat, a bat mobile, boats, motorcycles.
This year Burt Rutan received a lifetime achievement award and held a keynote about his planes and hobbies which included figuring out how the pyramids were built, efficiency (home and automotive), the JFKs assassination, and global warming.
He spoke mostly about his hobbies and it was incredibly interesting to hear how he tried to solve each problem like a flight data engineer using the raw data and drawing his own conclusions. Very cool.
I drove down with Christian Morsing and we had a great time. We got stuck in traffic more than a few times and didn't get to do all the things we intended, we also had 43C (110F) driving through San Joaquin Valley. Definitely not a top-down environment. Thank you A/C!
I took a lot of pictures this time and I will make them available soon. I even have a video!

Chillin

It's Sunday a.m., Pete's in Pasadena for a car show and I'm handling things just fine, thankyouverymuch. We got a new high chair yesterday, courtesy of Craigslist (whoo-hoo!). Here's are the full specs on it, in case you care (three reclining positions??).

Little Miss has decided that puffs trump everything, and bananas are no longer interesting. Or avocados. She ate puffs for a good hour this morning, and I was so impressed with how many she was eating and figured, hey at least she's eating. Then I removed the tray and realized where at least one-third the puffs had gone, all over her lap.

I have had some challenges putting her down for naps; she wants me to pick her up and in the past I have; I've created a monster! I'm getting better at it, and though she cries everytime, it's getting easier each time.

We're headed up to the city to see my girlfriends, and I've packed banana and oats with me for her. She'll be eating it, for sure.

I hope Pete is having fun -- it was his birthday yesterday!

The day of the Zoo

I had an extra day in L.A. after Heather went back to San Francisco, and I was invited to go to the L.A. Zoo with Mary, David, Danny and his grand parents. Located near Glendale, my old neighborhood, I had actually never been to the zoo before and was happy to finally be able to see it.
The L.A. Zoo was much larger and nicer than expected, and it had animals you could actually see. I really enjoyed the primate exhibits, but I felt like I was kind of intruding on their home, and felt a bit awkward taking pictures of them. There was nothing awkward about the tigers:

Dannys 1st Birthday Party

The Big Day finally arrived! We went over to The Pants Department early to help out and have a great time. We picked up birth day cake, parked a car, filled up the kids bath ring with water, made salad, hosed the concrete down and quality controlled the snack food. At least I did.

Too soon the shadows grew long and the night was again signaling sleepy time for some of us. Lucia kept it going until she just stopped moving on the carpet.
Heathers step cousin Janice also came by for a visit coming all the way from Oceanside near San Diego:
with gifts! She had the cutest clothes for Lucia and a gift card to Babies-R-Us. We were sad to leave, the weekend went too fast, we hope to see them again soon!

Going to LA

We got off to a nice early start and noticed that there was not many people at the airport at all, which meant the nazis at airport security was checking everybody super slow.
We flew with Virgin America which we love because they treat you nice and have nice airplanes, it was a smooth ride too.
We were very excited to see Mary, David and Daniel but were most excited to have the wicked burgers they picked up at the bar Fathers Office for lunch.