The pictures are now fully posted for your viewing (and obtaining prints) at:

www.printroom.com

… just click on the Muscle Car 1000 category. Printroom is a great lab, and produces top-quality photos … so that 8×10 of your beautiful muscle car will look great.

Oh … and one more thing: If you need to contact me (Jason) about anything my email is jason@thecalendarfactory.com … and my phone number is (714) 575-0000. Thanks, and I look forward to seeing you again next year!

Leaving Monterey in two separate caravans, we headed down to Morro Bay for lunch, then down to The Four Seasons Biltmore in Santa Barbara for the grand finale dinner.

As the official videographer as well, I was a bit behind on video editing and bypassed lunch … and also didn’t photograph nor video the dinner. So there’s no footage of Saturday to upload. However, I can tell you that the Awards dinner was hilarious fun. Drew and Stephanie were again the hosts of the unofficial awards portion of the night, showering praise and fun “roasting” down upon everyone present, and some who weren’t. We watched 16 minutes of the video, and gave awards for the fastest car that drag raced (in an upset … an Impala!), and the people’s choice award (Michael’s Cobra). Chris and Michelle were honored in surprise announcements by several of the MC1000 attendees, and wore their new pink robes for part of the ceremony.

It was clear (to me, at least) by the end of the night that this was an historic moment in the path of muscle car history. The first rally could’ve been a dismal failure, never to be repeated. But it -was- repeated, and the second annual event featured more fun, more cars, and even more friendships. Was it perfect? No, of course not… but was it everything I expected and more? Yes. And I think I can speak for everyone when I say that I’ll miss hanging out with such a great group of people, and that I’ll always remember the amazing cars, drives and venues of our trip.

Special thanks to Chris and Michelle for their vision in making this happen … to Jan for her execution of the vision … and to Mark Ontiveros for his major — and important — support of the photography/videography aspect of the trip.

We had an incredible room at the Monterey Plaza Hotel. It overlooked Monterey Bay, and — since I was up late at night and early in the morning, I was able to capture 2 views: night and morning. It’s a large file (1.3 Mb), so only click-below if you don’t mind a few seconds download time. What follows is an animation I’ve put together that shows the difference from night to morning:

Read the rest of this entry »

Although in “real life” we’ve returned from an incredible second annual Muscle Car 1000, I’m going to finish off the highlights on the blog over the next day or so. So keep your eye out for a few more posts.

On Friday we had the morning free to wander from the Vintage Inn and see surrounding Napa. Our small caravan happened to head over to Opus One, although everyone did what they wanted:

After that, we caravanned (is that a word?) down to Monterey, to the beautiful Monterey Plaza Hotel and dinner at The Aquarium… which was unbelievable:

Oh … and one of the major highlights of the trip — our Day 4 Merryvale Cask Room Dinner — well, its photo didn’t make it onto yesterday’s entry. So here’s a picture from Thursday night’s dinner (and yes, by the way, this is a real, unedited picture of our dinner!):

Well, where do I start? Today we began in San Francisco (above is the view from our 40th floor cocktail reception) … just imagine Bullitt … that’s the scene (well, in my mind at least) as we drove through the city. We crossed the fogged-over Golden Gate Bridge…

And from there, we headed up to Infineon Raceway (used to be called Sears Point) for a little drag racing … wow, you can’t imagine the sounds and the feeling (and the smell!) of really being there …

But I have to admit the highlight of my day — even after all that really cool drag racing — was the ride in Michael Armand Hammer’s very very rare Cobra up to Napa. This car is unbelievably raw, and insanely fast. It’s like an animal, roaring with speed and downright raw… I just don’t have a better word for it. We hit somewhere between 120 and 130 mph on the roads, and Michael is just a down-to-earth great guy. What an amazing ride…

We topped it off with an even better dinner … more on that tomorrow …

This was one of those days always remembered fondly in the future, but not always taken so well at the time it’s happening. From mechanical problems, to scheduling issues, to traffic, today certainly had its challenges… and yet, as we all sat in our fantastic dinner, we realized just how fortunate we are. From cruising (racing?!?) up Highway 1 — one of the most beautiful roads in the world — to eating lunch at Pebble Beach overlooking the golf course & ocean, it really was an incredible day. Here are just a few of our memories:

Here we’re seen leaving the Carlton in the morning … great cars, huh?!?

Highway 1 is so spectacular, yet nearly “uncapturable” with a camera. This stunning vista is barely a taste of what we experienced, with 2-lane, very curvy roads with 1000 foot drop-offs down to the ocean. Amazing…

Well … you can’t beat this for a lunch view. This was taken within feet of our lunch tables:

Okay … a little traffic getting into the city made for a little frustration … but nothing our dinner — and the cocktail reception on the 40th floor — didn’t cure:

Here are a few more pictures from Tuesday that didn’t make it up yet … enjoy! First we start off with Hearst Castle … it was amazingly beautiful, a highlight of California:

It seems they could use a better exterminating company, though, as they have some MAJOR insect issues. (This happens to be the first live, wild tarantula I’ve ever seen… they are gigantic.)

But regardles… how can you complain about this?!?

Here are a couple of pictures from Tuesday, Day 2 of the 2006 Muscle Car 1000 … Above is lunch on the pier in Avila Beach. And this first shot below shows our notebook that we received (along with a great jacket, door stickers, etc) at the Driver’s meeting…

Applying the door decal …

And finally a small hint of the scenery on our drive…

The pictures for viewing (and also where you can obtain prints) are now at:

www.printroom.com

… just click on the Muscle Car 1000 category for the pix!

The Muscle Car 1000 has officially begun! Most of the cars made it (albeit with some mechanical challenges already for 3 teams — see the first auto parts store pic?) to Bacara in time for the beautiful, perfect Santa Barbara sunset.

We followed that with a fantastic dinner — and the hilarious introductions of the cars & drivers — in the Rotunda at this world-class resort. We leave tomorrow at 10 am … more updates late on Tuesday night, so check in again! And for more photos now, click through the link here… Read the rest of this entry »