How I Broke an SLK 55 AMG

Sigh. And it was all going so well. But let me back up.

Last weekend I did the AMG Stage II course at Laguna Seca. An element of the course was to run in an autocross challenge competition. This is essentially a single timed lap around a coned-out course, set up on the concrete paddock area at Laguna. So far, so good. We got to run both a practice and qualifying session, and were sorted into 4 groups of 10 drivers with the top 8 (2 from each group) progressing to the final. Glad to say I came out top of the group I was in and so made it into the final, but in the process I broke one of their cars.

Turns out the oil cooler on the SLK 55 is hung low and to the right of the engine bay, at what turned out to be a very convenient height to get hit by wayward cones. Now by "wayward", when applied to cones, I of course mean that it stood still and I ran over it. Well, in fact it and one of its siblings to be precise. And in order to effect at least a measure of revenge one of the two - and I never did figure out exactly which of them were the guilty party - smacked a hole in the oil cooler, resulting in a long streak of nicely warmed oil being deposited over the track. Oh, and a big pool of the stuff in the staging area off to the side. And they had to retire the car.

Tsk, and there was me thinking that AMGs were made of stronger stuff. One teeny weeny cone and the thing's off the road? Pah.

(Nope, I didn't win the final. Was way too conservative on the timed single lap, a failing I am still beating myself up about days later. I hate losing. But on the plus side, I got awarded a Meguire's car care kit for services rendered to said mortally wounded car!)

AMG Stage II Course

Decided to take a bit of a break, so over the last weekend spent two days at Laguna Seca doing the AMG Stage II course. I'll post some more on that later but it turned out that coincident with this, the first running of the course at Laguna Seca, AMG was launching the Mercedes SLS.

Although none of us were allowed to drive it, we were at least allowed to paw all over it and generally take a look at what Mercedes hope will follow directly in the footsteps - tyre tracks? - of the original and now iconic 300 SL Gullwing.

I can't really say it's a beautiful car. The cabin sits a bit too far back in the chassis for my tastes, leaving the whole thing looking a bit unbalanced, at least from the side. Still, it's certainly, err, purposeful, and clearly a descendant of the joint venture McLaren SLR. It's hard though to put oot of one's mind the "penile" effect created by the extended bonnet line (or more aptly, perhaps, the "hood", for those reading this in the US), especially bearing in mind the average age of likely buyers.

Price? Reputed to be around the $300k, which makes the decision not to buy one a bit easier at least. For that money you do however get a unique car, and one that embodies some pretty interesting technology. As an example, the prop shaft, a component that's called upon to transmit the 570 bhp produced by the monster engine without complaint or, frankly, flying into a thousand small and very expensive pieces, is made of carbon fibre and weighs just 4 kg, or about 8.8 pounds. An example was hanging in the small static display area they had set up for the launch and really it's an exquisite piece of work.

Mercedes should be proud of this car regardless of of the petty whinings you see above. It's only jealously at work after all, and I'd promise to utterly change my tune for the promise of a short, weekend-long test drive!

Eastern Sierras Trip #12

Time to head home, but in order to have a stop along the way we had a single night booked at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite. However, there was yet an obstacle to overcome, namely that the Tioga Pass was closed. The snow we encountered earlier in the week had shut the pass a couple of days before. It didn't appear to us that this very early fall would close the pass for the winter, but that didn't mean it would open by the time we needed to use it either! There was another way to reach the valley, but only by following a 4+ hour detour, something we'd much rather not have to do.

The Ahwahnee is not a cheap place to stay - hence he decision to be there just one night - and we wanted to eat in the main hotel dining room, the only available slot being a table at 5:30 pm. Leaving Bodie at 1 pm would allow us to make this comfortably if the pass was open, but with the detour then there'd be no way to make this work.

Thankfully, the travel gods smiled upon us and the pass opened. There was still a few patches of ice around Tuolumne Meadow, something a bunch of Harley riders found out to their cost, with one bike ending up sitting in the middle of a field below the road, but apart that tat it was plain sailing ... err, driving. The only slow down was waiting for a work detail clearing trees from the side of the road around an area that had burned in a fire over the summer.

At the Ahwahnee we stayed in one of the cabins following a recommendation from a friend instead of opting for the main house. Cabin was fine, no real complaints, but hard to really conclude it's value for money if you just view it as a hotel. However, that's not the point. The point in staying here is the location, smack in the middle of Yosemite Valley and hence a unique opportunity to spend a night right under the granite cliffs and open skies of the Sierras. (Oh, and the food at dinner was fine but the scrambled eggs I ordered the next day for breakfast were inedible lumps of rubber. Go figure!)

Eastern Sierras Trip #11

After Mono Lake we had one more major place to go on the trip: Bodie. I already touched on this location here but thought I'd anyway post another picture now just to show another side of the place.

In addition to the abandoned houses, sheds and varied bits of machinery, a few of the original buildings still have the (presumably) original contents laid out inside. Until fairly recently, Bodie was less well managed than it is now, with the park being open at all hours and with little in the way of restrictions or park management. It was possible to get into places like the hotel and mortuary to photograph and explore, seemingly without much in the way of restrictions. Alas, a situation that holds no more. In order to do the best they can to preserve the essence of the place, access is now much more controlled meaning that you can only peer through the dusty windows in order to see what's inside. (Actually, I think that's a good thing. This place really does deserve to be preserved "as is" without visitors constantly disturbing the interiors of lay buildings, or worse taking things away as souveniers.)

Of the places shown with contents in place, the mortuary to me was the most interesting, conveying best the harshness of the place and most especially the endless mini-tragedies that must have accompanied a mining community high up in the Sierras at the end of the 19th century. It's worth remembering that Bodie is over 8,000 feet above sea level; it's barren, dry and a most unforgiving location at all times of the year. How bad can it get? According to this source, in January, 1880, temperatures fell to -26 degrees F and mules froze to death trying to get additional supplies of wood for heating into the settlement. And trust me, the houses I saw were absolutely no protection at all from those extremes, firewood supplies or not, so it's hard today to imagine just how hard life must have been for the early pioneers and gold miners.

Shown here is a child's coffin leaning against a wall, seemingly ready for an occupant who never ultimately arrived. We don't know why it's there - indeed, we have no real idea if it was ever part of the layout of that room in the first place - but it does make a powerful statement I think.

Eastern Sierras Trip #10

Home stretch here, at least as far as the photo workshop is concerned. After Bristlecone Pine State Park we headed onto Lee Vining to photograph Mono Lake.

We hit the lake shore for both a sunset and sunrise session, with the sunrise one working better I thought. Mono Lake is famed for the tufa formations dotted along its shoreline. These oddly-shaped towers of soft carbonate deposits give an other-worldly appearance to the lake, especially first thing with a slight mist rising from water, which is what we saw on getting there some 15 minutes before dawn.

Well worth a visit but getting there early pays dividends as it got quite crowded, quite fast, to the point where it was challenging to find the view you wanted without it now having some bloke with a tripod smack in the middle of it.

Eastern Sierras Trip #9

Or, to apply a subtitle, "onwards and upwards". That afternoon, the plan of record was to head to Bristlecone State Park to photograph the trees. As related in the last post, the only wrinkle that had appeared in the crisp, white handkerchief of well disciplined organization was the fact that it was snowing at a level some few thousand feet below where we were heading. Still, we had a plan and concluded we were made of something tougher than nature could throw at us, in early October at least, and hence should get out there and get photographin.

The finest grove of trees sits at around 11,000 feet, high up in the Inyo range. To reach it required a fairly long drive up the hill on paved roads, plus about 13 miles on unpaved roads, so it took us over an hour to arrive at our destination. It was cold, but with blue skies at the bottom of the hill all looked well. However, by the time we were well along the dirt track section, it had started to snow. Arriving at the parking lot, we all anyway decided that since we were there it would be good to at least try and get some decent shots, despite the cold. Hey, at least the soft light from an increasingly snow-leaden sky meant that we could get some decent shots without having to manage blow-out highlights!

Out in the trees - which really are spectacular and well worth the visit - it was easy to get engrossed in trying to capture their beauty and to miss the fact that it was starting to snow a bit harder. And then harder. And then it got windy. In the end, though, I think we all realised at about the same time that the snow was now driving hard and it was getting difficult to see the car park! Time to head down the hill and back into the sunlight.

Just to give you some idea, this shot shows you the view across a field to a small grove of trees and a hill on the left, the outline of which you can just about make out!

Eastern Sierras Trip #8

OK, so now we get to a lake, this time for sunrise. Once again we found ourselves above Bishop, this time at a small area of water high-up in the Sierras. It was bitterly cold being out in the lakeside air at dawn, especially given that just as we were reaching our destination it started to snow on us. Yup, Death Valley to snow in two days flat ... gotta love California!

On the bright side of things, at least the wind had backed-off somewhat so there was some opportunity at least to get decent reflections as a part of the image. Having said all that. before long, even wearing gloves, hat and three layers of shirt, sweatshirt and fleece jacket, I couldn't feel my fingers any more. Time to quit once more.

Driving down the mountain I could see across the valley to the peaks the other side, roughly in the direction we were heading that afternoon. Hmm, wonder if it's snowing up there too ... ?

Eastern Sierras Trip #7

From Manzanar we drove onto Bishop for a sunset shoot in the mountains behind the town. Alas, the weather was starting to turn and the wind was getting up. Combine that with a chosen location several thousand feet up and now it was starting to feel like autumn. (In fact, it was soon to feel much more like winter, but that's for a future post.)

Ultimately, the original idea of shooting at a lake didn't pan out so instead we all ended up photographing a hillside to try and get the sweep of colour shown by trees fast turning golden as the seasons change. Alas, strong winds and leaves - even when still attached to branches - really don't mesh well together from a picture-taking standpoint, so I finally gave up and headed down the hill again. On the way back, though , I saw the above stacked set of lenticular clouds forming, framed by the intersecting mountains. This is a phenomenon that's a particular characteristic of the prevailing weather patterns in the Sierras and although what's shown here is interesting, a simple Google search will reveal some simply amazing examples from mountain regions around the world.

Eastern Sierras Trip #6

Manzanar was a location for one of the various internment camps used by the US government to imprison Japanese-Americans and nationals following Pearl Harbour. Clearly, this wasn't one of the finest hours exhibited by the US during the second world war, but since no one can go back and re-write history so it remains a stain on the nation's history. However, at least this gross error of judgement is now being recognised as such, and some amends are being made.

Interestingly, Ansel Adams was retained by the government to photograph the inmates, presumably with the intention of showing just how well they were being treated. A by-product of Ansel being paid to be there by the government "from 9 to 5" was that he could use the remaining hours to do whatever he liked, including taking a number of his most iconic images of the eastern Sierras.

From what remains (and it's now a national park in order to preserve what little is actually left) Manzanar was clearly quite a large facility, holding at peak some 120,000 individuals and stretching across 6,200 acres (the US military never doing things by half, even back then). Although there's now a visitor center and museum, really little else is visible apart from a single guard tower and concrete slabs marking where the various huts once stood.

Manzanar is a bleak looking place, even today with a main road right alongside. In the middle of winter in 1943 it must have been a miserable place to suddenly find yourself, especially when your only "crime" was to be of Japanese ancestry, something against which even a US passport could not provide protection, apparently.

Eastern Sierras Trip #5

And now for something a little bit different in that after a couple of days on our own it was time to join the Eastern Sierras photo workshop we were using as an anchor for this trip. (Yes, it was again a course led by Alain Briot, and as per the trip we took to Arizona a while back to photograph, amongst other things, Antelope canyon).

As always, an early start, this time to see the Sierras lit by the morning sun through a handily-placed arch, located just above Lone Pine. Again, another popular spot, made worse by adding another 9 photographers from our group. Still, people figured out a way to spread themselves a little, at least once they'd got the chance to photograph through the arch, and as shown above I got my turn in there too.

After some discussion time we headed to a couple of nearby locations from where Ansel Adams made two of his photos of the Sierras in the area (one of which is shown here). Next stop, Manzanar.