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

4th of July weekend

We had a pretty sweet fourth of July weekend with lots of activities. Things started off well with dinner with friends in Oakland, then on Saturday we explored a new beach in Santa Cruz with Mattias, Cindy and Maya. Sunday was parade day in Redwood City and we met my former instructor at the academy who had his classic car on display. Later that day we went to see our friends up in the city, but it turned into an enormous a struggle to drive around and park the car because there was way too much traffic, many streets were closed off and we had to park far away and walk. The party was on a house boat at Fisherman's Wharf and there must have been 40 people there, just crammed on the boat. I think both Baylee and Lucia enjoyed themselves more than Heather once they got fed. We left just after the fireworks started to get a head start on the traffic out of town. Monday we had a BBQ in San Jose at some friends house and it was a birthday party too. We really enjoyed the super tasty steak and chicken!
Overall I think it was a great weekend, and we are now looking forward to see my parents arriving soon!

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!

Low key brag fest

Mattias suggested we go to this car meet in the parking lot behind Santana Row in San Jose to check out the nice cars that show up there Saturday in the AM hours.
It was well worth it. Although there was not a lot of cars there, the few that showed up photographed well.

Lucky for me Mattias offered me to drive his Porsche 996 Carrera (isn't that the model number Mattias?) which was a dream to drive. The car just felt amazing, I would drive it everyday.