Delectare

Blueberry thief. Last seen climbing the fence. Possible repeat offender.

Although I never got around to blogging about it, Olympus Rally 2008 went well. We didn’t make it out of Portland until about 9:00 PM due to some problems getting our trailer braking system hooked up and running. Once on the road we made pretty good time, and were in Pomeroy by 3:30 AM and asleep (in the back of the Xterra) by 4:00.

We had a driver’s meeting the next morning at 7:30, followed by a full day of recce, tech, and other short meetings. We were all a little snippy from our lack of sleep, and I have discovered that unless both driver and co-driver are very focused on their task, bringing passengers along on recce is a good way to invite distraction.

After a good shower and full night of sleep in a hotel, the actual stages went quite well. We were much more organized this time, and Shanna did a great job of helping us get all set up and ready to go before our first stage on Saturday morning. Even with the added hassle of the HANS devices, we made it into all of our controls on time, and got some good runs in. We even placed 3rd in our class on Sunday!

GPS tracks are up on my box at work, and there’s a movie on YouTube of us taking one of the corners. We’re at 8:18. Keep in mind that other people (like National Champion Ken Block) drive like this. Hopefully Kyle will eventually get around to downloading our in-car video off the tapes, and I can link to that as well.

Oh yeah, and my glasses broke halfway through the first day of racing, and I hadn’t brought any contacts along, so I spent the entire remainder of the event with bright orange electrical tape wrapped around the bridge. I guess they just couldn’t take the stress of being squeezed in and out of my helmet every 15 minutes. I’ve been wearing my contacts, and haven’t yet got around to going over to Rainbow Optics to order new glasses. One of these days…

In other news, we got the fence in this past weekend! There are some things I would do differently next time - using a fixed measurement for the runner heights, paying more attention to the pre-marked locations when digging post holes, and not letting the wood sit out in the weather for nine months getting all warped - but the end result is quite good, I think. Now we’re on to planning other projects, like a garden shed/chicken coop and reseed of the front lawn. I’m excited!

Sara and I spent last Saturday upriver at the Wayfarer with the family. The weather was beautiful; by far the warmest day of spring so far - we kept the doors and windows open, lounged about in the sun, and just generally had a great relaxing time.

I’m taking tomorrow and Friday off for the Olympus Rally. There’s more prep to be done on the rally car, the brake controller needs to be installed in the Xterra, and I have to drill and mount the HANS d-rings on both of our helmets, after I pick mine up from SafeDrives in Scappoose… all before Kyle gets off work at 3:00 PM. From there it’s like a seven hour drive up the Columbia to Pomeroy, where we’re planning to sleep in a tent at the fairgrounds. Did I mention the forecast is for lows in the upper 20s with a 40% chance of snow on Saturday? It should be an adventure

It’s been far too wet this week to do anything productive in the back yard, fence-wise at least. There’s actually a puddle where the garden shed used to be… I guess I’m not building the coop there. Sara and I stayed up until 5:00 AM last night watching Atonement and Lust Caution, and made it through Hard Candy tonight. All greats in regards to story and cinematography, but not the kind of films you necessarily want to watch a second time.

The only marginally productive thing I did today was wander up the Amazon bike path and play with my new lens some more. I got some great pics of a rainbow that I happened to catch - you can even see (in Lightroom at least) where the sensor picks up the UV section as sort of a hint of green just past the purple. Very cool.

Protip: Check the second page.

So I got my sexy new lens yesterday. It’s a Nikon 55-200mm DX-format with vibration reduction. It picks up nicely where the stock 18-55 leaves off, and actually does better at 55mm than it does.

I took it out this afternoon and put it up against the stock 18-55 and the AF Nikkor 70-210 that I’m borrowing from Dylan. TL;DR is that the new lens is great, but check out the full post for comparison images and some other thoughts. Keep in mind that, as Dylan said, “lens comparisons are for dorks.”

Read the rest of this entry »