I spent a few days in sausalito last week. Alfonso helped me work on a few projects on the boat including cutting all of the uprights to support the floor, as well as fabricating the boards to cover the floor. He was also kind enough to let me crash at his place overnight. It was very stressful as usual driving the trailer through 19th street and across the Golden Gate Bridge. As I was pulling into sausalito, I went around a sharp right turn and the car made this awful sound like I had hit something, and the boat looked crooked on the trailer. My first thought was that one of the bunks had broken a and punched through the hull, but after careful inspection, nothing was wrong with the trailer or the boat. I had to drive to west marine down the street from his office once, and while turning sharp out of the driveway of west marine, I heard a big pop again. After returning home, I dropped off the expedition at our mechanic and there are two different problems with the suspenssion. Both problems are being fixed so we can tow the boat up to huntington.

Below is a video of some of the things I worked on in Sausalito.

Today started just like any other Sunday, I woke up and decided to ride my bike. Jess wanted me to come say hi to her and her family up at the regatta at Lexington so that’s what I went to go do. I rode up the creek trail to the lake, and just as I went up the first little hill, before crossing over the spillway, there was a group of people gathered pointing up the hill. As I approached, I looked up and my stomach sank. There was a pickup truck, with a rowing trailer with five 8-person rowing shells on it, half way slid down the hill, facing backwards. The truck was in very bad condition; it looked like the truck bed was bent at about a 30-degree angle to the cab. The driver and the passenger were OK and climbed out the passenger side window and up to highway 17. This all just happened about five minutes before I arrived at the scene. I immediately called Jess who was at the boathouse and told her what had happened, and I think she was the first to tell anyone who was still there. Most of the people had left the regatta by then, but the few that were still around went to go help out. I rode over to the boathouse to show them some pictures, and then headed home. On my way home I decided to go up St. Joseph’s hill to see if I could see the accident from above, and sure enough, I could. I whipped out my camcorder again and proceeded to film for an hour, or until the tape ran out, while they removed boats from the trailer and pulled the truck and trailer back onto the freeway. The story I’ve heard thus far is that the brakes on the pickup gave out, and the trailer wanted to go faster than the, causing it to jack knife and fall off the freeway. At $20,000 – $30,000 each, this was no cheap accident. I dont even know if they will be able to repair the one boat they removed by hand before pulling the rest up the hill, as it was missing its entire bow. (see video)

Video Footage: SI-Crew_Boat_Accident.mp4

Except for the first 15 seconds or so, I took this footage from half way up St. Joseph’s hill in Los Gatos. To the very left of the main shot, is Lexington Dam, and to the right, is downtown Los Gatos. The camera shot is from at least a mile away, zoomed in all the way on my little Panasonic 3ccd minidv camcorder. I didn’t use any digital zoom. I took interest in this accident as I rowed for LGRC for 4 years and know the kind of dedication those rowers have put into their sport. Hopefully they have more boats at their boathouse so they can continue their season.

If you have more info about this incident, or if I didn’t quite get something right, let me know. If you’ve come to this site, and are a member of SI Crew, I’m very sorry for your loss and am very happy to hear that both people in the truck are doing well. I can provide a DVD copy of this video to those directly related to this incident.

Linked below is my short (3:35 min) video of my snowmobiling trip with Jess. I’ll blog about it soon as well as about making the Igloo on sunday of last weekend in Tahoe.

Huntington.Winter.2006.mp4

This past weekend was our now annual ‘Geeks on Snowboards’ trip. This year started off with my Friday scramble to get everything ready to go. Shuffling work and preparations for the trip was a bit of a headache, especially with having to drop off the Expedition for an oil change. I also had the mechanic look at the transmission fluid, which was actually ok, but it seems at high altitude the transmission has some strange problems. Not having snow tires on the vehicle, I also set out to find a pair of snow chains for it. Kragen sent me to this place called A & M (i think) in Los Gatos next to the Acura dealer that I actually never noticed before. They were awesome about the snow chains, trying to find the right pair that would fit my tires. Not only did they insist on trying them on, they showed us how to put them on correctly and take them off without damaging them. It was like a ‘snow chains 101′ class, for free. After dropping $150 plus tax for snow chains I might not ever use, I had to go put gas in the car. $70 after that I picked up some new wiper blades for about $35 and all the cash I got from my Treo650 sale was gone.

We left at around 7:30 I think, which was an hour and a half later than our original plan, but its hard to coordinate people all getting together from far away places to leave on time. Joel and Corrie came from San Luis Obispo and Adam came from Santa Cruz and while everyone got to my house at about the right time, we just moved slow and it took us a while to get everything packed and ready to go.

When we eventually made out the door and were under way, it was dinner time, and we couldnt make up our minds where to eat. We went throught the Jack in the Box drive through for Corrie, and were going to head to Carls’ Jr., but then Adam and Joel saw Uno Mas or something like that.. some mexican place across the parking lot and went there instead. On our way out, my dad called me, and told me I had left the new wiper blades on the kitchen counter. Since we were already 30 mins away, and 2 hours behind schedule, I asked him to find me the closest Kragen, so I could buy new wiper blades, again. It was just one exit down 680 and a few blocks after that.

We were making great time, and Dan decided to leave Sacramento early to go hang out with Andy, who was already at the cabin. Its a good thing too, because dan forgot a few key items that would be required for the trip. Since we didnt make it to Sacramento yet when Dan called, we stopped by his house as well to pick up the items he had forgotten. Adam and Dan kinda needed their boots in order to snowboard, which is what he forgot.

We made it to the cabin in Truckee around 1:30 I think, and it was time for bed. We had a much confusing discussion about who was going where and at what time the next day before we went to sleep. Andy didn’t want to go to a big resort, and most everybody else did. I didn’t care too much and though the smaller resort we went to last year would be find, but nobody else wanted to go there. We decided that Andy and I would go to the small resort later for half a day, and everyone else would go to Northstar.

Our plans didnt exactly happen as I just decribed. I woke up with everyone else at 7:45 and decided at the last minute after everyone else had eaten that I wanted to go with them to the bigger resort. Andy was then woken up so he could come too and that was that. We all went to Northstar.

Renting equipment was not a fun or pleasing experience. The line was out the door, and through several switchbacks. The minute we made it through the door too, i knew it was going to be a long morning. This place reminded me of Space Mountain at Disneyland. Lots of switchbacks in line outside, just to hide more inside for your waiting pleasure. On the plus side, they did have a web based registration system so it was much easier and quicker to fill out the form to sign your life away. When all was said and done, it took us 1.5 hours and $104 each to get our equipment rented and lift tickets purchased… Man what an expensive weekend.

It was Joel, Corrie and I who needed to rent equipment. When that experience was done, we hopped on the Gondola that took us to the base of the major ski lifts. I called dan and he told us to meet him at the rondevous lift, which was located 2/3rds up the mountain. We actually had to take 2 large lifts to the top of the mountain and then snowboard down to the lift where they would meet us. By this time, we went up and came down the hill once, before we decided it was lunchtime.

Lunch was another 20 mins in a line. I got some tri-tip steak that wasnt very good, but the jalapeño corn bread was awesome. The steak was dry and I could tell it had been sitting under the heat lamp for quite some time. Everyone else wanted the chili, and they ran out when there were just three more people in front of us in line.

After lunch I was tired and Andy didnt want to snowboard much more. Everyone else wanted to go down the backside of the mountain, and while they did that, Joel and I made our way, slowly, down the mountain. I think we both learned a lot on this trip and didnt spend as much time as expected on our butts. Needless to say, we were all still really sore at the end of the day.

Returning the Snowboard rentals was not as hard as renting them, but it still took a decent chunk of time. I beat Joel and Corrie to our meeting point, and decided to go get some starbucks coffee with Andy while we waited for Joel and Corrie to return their snowboards and boots. As we were leaving there was a band playing music on the walkway as we walked out. We stopped for a min or two and then went on our way to the car. There was this lady with a sign walking in with her two little girls, and a box. The sign said “Girlscout Cookies”. I bought 3 boxes to share with everyone and that was that. I bet the little box of cookies they brought went very quickly in that crowd.

On our way back to the cabin, it started to hail. It was a strange hail too, it still bounced off the car and winshield so the wipers were really needed to see, but on the freeway, it sorta just bounced off and flew with the wind as the cars drove by. It was like a white river of ice on the freeway, very eerie but also very cool. I had never seen anything quite like it before.